writing my book and watching sga (though not the detectives) and going grammatical

[lobelia321]

I apologise to all of you who have no clue what I am talking about when I mention the acronym 'SGA' but alas, certain persons have managed to corrupt me utterly and now I watch one episode per lunch time. Ah, to be on sabbatical, eh. Actually, it is a really restful and fun break from writing. I have been writing like a lunatic; my Introduction is up to 6,400 words; the maximum I've allowed myself for the Intro is 5,000 but I am clearly having to a) rethink and b) revise. I can only revise on a print-out, however, so my plan is to finish the Intro and then hie me to Caffé Nero with my trusted print-out and do scribble pencil revisions. I am actually looking forward to that! Because revisions are so much more enjoyable than the blank page and tabula rasa and horror vacui.

It's also been a good strategy that I've adopted to work on the book only upstairs in my loft on my ancient (Ancient?!) imac. That way LJ and so forth-land is quite separate and stored on different hardware (downstairs ibook) from my work. This has proved beneficial. I am also setting my timer for 20-minute increments. I then make a mark, prisoner-style, on a bit of paper. 3 marks = one hour. This way I keep time tabs on myself. I have to clock up a certain number of marks before I am allowed to descend to activate the ibook. *g*

So today I watched Hide and Seek which is episode 3 of Stargate Atlantis, series 1. Somehow I missed that one and by now I've already watched the last four or so of series 1 so it was a backtrack. But a fun one! I witnessed my first McKay/Sheppard moments, hooray!! But these were swiftly followed by some rather intimate Sheppard/Ford moments. Sheppard said 'pretty boy' to Ford so it can't be canon that's making fans not write Sheppard/Ford in massive amounts because Sheppard/Ford is certainly there in canon.

T'h has been sucked into my evol world. He came in as I was watching the last episode of series 1 which is called The Siege Part 2 and didn't even comment on the paperclip sets this time as he was too busy getting involved. When it finished with a cliffhanger he was distraught, and sat huddled over t'laptop to watch the sequel, hahah.

Anyway. What a lovely show it is. I am completely won over to it. I would never have thought of watching it without fanon as I don't watch sci fi or much TV. And I may not have liked it without fanon, either.

Now I must return to my Ancient Device aka imac, MacOS 8.6.1, and type out another thousand words of Introduction.

Sorry to everyone whom I have neither tigged nor togged! (And yes, I know this diction is irritating to some; indeed, it is even sort of irritating to me, except it a) reminds me of my entrance fandom and b) is faster to type than 'whose posts nor comments I have not commented on'. Also, the 'tigging' avoids the deployment of a final preposition which I do like to avoid, if possible, grammar pedant that I am.

Speaking of which: THREE GRAMMATICAL ERRORS I PARTICULARLY LOATHE

1) misuse of 'I' in the objective mood
As in: "This is a photo of my friend and I."
*screams in grammatical pain*

2) split infinitive
As in: "to boldly go"
Okay, I even admit that "to boldly go" is in a class of its own and has a certain flow to it. But I still don't like split infinitives. Most often they seem to appear in combination with the adverbs "really" and "actually".
As in: "I want to actually get out of here."

3) misuse of 'lay' in place of 'lie'
As in: "He laid down on top of him."
Laid what down on top of him? I want to scream when I read this one! I really, really can't stand this one. And it occurs not rarely in slash because there is such a lot of laying and lying in slash! Someone once posted a little rhyme on how to get it right a few years ago but buggered if I remember who it was. It was very funny, though. Meh.


GRAMMATICAL ERRORS I'M NOT SO BOTHERED ABOUT

1) final preposition
As in: 'grammatical errors I'm not so bothered about'
It's nice to avoid this, if possible but I can cope with it. *g*

2) misuse of 'me' in the subjective mood
As in: 'me and my friend went down the shops'
For some reason, although the obverse of this bothers me mightily, I don't mind this one. I do correct it dutifully in the children, *g*.

3) misuse of the dative in place of the possessive in German
As in: 'Wem ist das hier? Das ist mir.'
I am actually quite fond of this one. Perhaps because it's not so much a misuse as an endearing dialectic quirk of people living in Hessen. So by rights I should be writing: 'Des isch mir.' Heh.

Comments

[bunnysquee.livejournal.com]

ooo ... your grammar lesson made me purr. i need to dig out my strunk and white and polish myself up. i've been reading so much fanfiction lately i don't know where my grammar went ... i did that deliberately.

but!

i'm not getting the 'my friend and i' thing. when is it correct to say that? i assume at the beginning of a sentence? e.g., my friend and i went to the shops and bought some cute hair clips.

[bunnysquee.livejournal.com]

oh! and the final preposition thing drives me bats! who came up with that? it only started in the last 10 years or so. if your mum's trying to make you eat liver and onions, what's wrong with saying, 'i don't want to'?

[lobelia321.livejournal.com]

I don't to want! *cackles* Or, to split it even more: I don't really to want!

Or perhaps just: Don't wanna!!! (Does 'na' count as a preposition???)

[lobelia321.livejournal.com]

i've been reading so much fanfiction lately i don't know where my grammar went .
What, are you saying that fanfic writers can ignore grammatical rules??? *shock, horror, well, I never*

;-D

i'm not getting the 'my friend and i' thing. when is it correct to say that?
This is tricky if you don't know another language that has obvious grammatical cases. English doesn't. I find it easy to distinguish because it's quite obvious in German.

The difference is between the subject of a sentence and the object. 'I' can only be used if the 'I' is the subject; 'me' is used when the 'I' is the object.

So: I am hitting the dog. 'I' = subject. 'Dog' = object.
But: The dog is biting me. 'Dog' = subject. 'Me' = object.

The best way to remember is to substitute 'him' (which is one of the few words in English which signals the object function) or to get rid of any other words surrounding 'I'.

So to get back to the wrong sentence 'This is a photo of my friend and I'.
Get rid of the words surrounding 'I'; get rid of 'my friend'. You are left with: 'This is a photo of I.' This must surely sound wrong to you! So now you know that you should say 'This is a photo of my friend and me.'
Because the 'of' makes it not the subject. 'Photo' is the subject in this sentence.

Technically, 'me and my friend went to the shops' is wrong because here 'me and my friend' is the subject. Get rid of the 'my friend' and you have 'me went to the shops'. Tada: wrong! It should be 'I and my friend' (or to be polite, 'my friend and I'.) But, strangely, this misuse doesn't bother me as much as the other. *gg*

Hm. This was longer than intended! Give me some grammar to explain and I will ramble!!

[bunnysquee.livejournal.com]

i sometimes get mixed up with subject and object. i know subject is the one performing the action to/on the object, but sometimes i get confuzzed.

i use that "substitute with 'him'" rule for who and whom. will have to remember that, though getting rid of the words around 'i' or 'me' is much clearer.

thank you!

[lobelia321.livejournal.com]

Yes, I'm lucky, grammatically speaking, to have grown up with German because German has four grammatical cases and they sort of make learning subject / object distinctions a necessity. While in English you don't really need to know the difference. Latin is useful, too; in Latin, the distinction is really, really obvious, and you can't actually formulate a sentence without knowing it.

The subject is the entity that does something in a sentence. 'The girl bites the dog.' The girl is doing the biting: she is the subject. The dog is being bitten: he is the object of her biting.

'I bite the dog.' 'I' is the subject.
'The other day, I remembered to put my keys away.' 'I' is the subject.
'The other day, my keys fell off the table.' 'Keys' is the subject!

'The dog bites me.' 'The dog' is the subject. The dog is doing the biting. 'Me' is the object! (Hence: you cannot say 'The dog bites 'I'.!)

The above are all examples of sentences in the active mode. Here is a sentence in the passive:

'I was bitten by the dog.' Here, even though the dog is doing the biting, 'I' is the subject. Because in the sentence, it is the 'I' that is doing something: it is experiencing being bitten. 'The dog' is not the object, though, it is something else that I will look up if you want.

Not every sentence needs an object but almost every sentence needs a subject. 'I am happy', for example, has only a subject, 'I', and a predicate 'am happy', but no object.

Do you sort of get it?

In German, you actually have to change the article.
'The man bites the dog.' Both have the article 'the'; you can't really tell what is subject and what is object, unless you know.
But in German this sentence would be: 'Der Mann beisst den Hund.' 'Der' is the subject, and 'den' signals that this is a direct object (because it is the accusative case! Whee!!!!!).

At German school, we learned this in fourth grade, using choo-choo trains. *gg* It evidently made a big impression...

Hey, I love this. Is there any other grammatical point I could bore you with???

[sheldrake.livejournal.com]

my friend and i went to the shops and bought some cute hair clips.

Yeppers. If in doubt, I always like to try the sentence without the 'my friend and' bit. So, for instance, you can hear straight away that 'this is a picture of I' sounds wrong. But 'I went down to the shops and blahdyblah' sounds fine.

*withdraws nose*

[lobelia321.livejournal.com]

*withdraws nose*
Your nose and I...

*g* You couldn't resist!!

[sheldrake.livejournal.com]

No, indeed I could not. And then of course by the time I'd posted, you already said wot I said but betterer.

[lobelia321.livejournal.com]

'Betterer' is a wrong comparative. Surely, this should be 'more better.'

[sheldrake.livejournal.com]

I think the phrase you're looking for is 'more betterer'.

[bunnysquee.livejournal.com]

you mean, 'withdraws bill'?

[lobelia321.livejournal.com]

I stared at this for several seconds before I got it......

[sheldrake.livejournal.com]

Of course.

It's hanging round with all you humans what does it.

[lobelia321.livejournal.com]

Quack.

There's a fic about quacking. You know it, right?

[sheldrake.livejournal.com]

oh yes, I know it. :)

[brightest-blue.livejournal.com]

2) split infinitive
As in: "to boldly go"

I hate it too, but suspect I do it quite a bit.

) final preposition
As in: 'grammatical errors I'm not so bothered about'

It's not too bad, and so common at this point, that I often miss it.

So by rights I should be writing: 'Des isch mir.' Heh.

Ha! I remember my mother constantly correcting me as a child. although she was the one responsible for our Frankfurterisch! (and our constant misuse of the dative)

You are so productive! And I still have an alpha piece I need to get back to you!

[lobelia321.livejournal.com]

On the moment I am on an academic writing roll! My right arm hurts because I typed like a banshee all day. (If banshees ever type.) Fanfic languishes. I manage those quickies of weather and origfic for LJ, that's fun.

How is your piano thing going???? Have you got pupils??

I didn't know you were part-Hessin!! Hah.

[brightest-blue.livejournal.com]

I m trying to picture a banshee typing. Aren t they kind of floppy and shriek-y?

How is your piano thing going???? Have you got pupils??

Well, I have a call in to the head of the local music teachers association and my brother put word out to his (evil) wifes family over here (they alone could fill my schedule) Sorry abou the lack of apostrophes. My keyboard is being uncooperative. This week is spring break for the entire state, so I may have to wait until next week before I reel in any hapless victims. Thats okay though, since my house is still not as presentable as Id like it to be. And I m not being perfectionist here!

Yes, my mothers family has been in Frankfurt for generations, and it was a huge deal to my grandmother that not only had I been born in Frankfurt, I d been born in Sachsenhausen, the old part where everyone drinks "Eppewoi" also known as Apple Wine and eats Ripchen mit Kraut. Everyone she ever introduced me to was immediately informed that, although American, I was still superior to practically everyone just because of where I was born.

[lobelia321.livejournal.com]

I was born in Osnabrück, so that quite clearly makes me more superior than you are.

Isn't there a flylady thing that you only need to clear the hotspots and that makes a room look tidy?

Also, we once had guests coming, when I had only been on flylady for 3 weeks or so, and I did her crisis cleaning. It worked really well! You only need to make one room presentable, don't you? And the hallway, I guess.

[brightest-blue.livejournal.com]

Osnabruck? Hee. My aunt was from there and when she first was introduced to my grandmother, my grandmother turned up her nose and said, "that little place? Well, it's about time you moved to a real city!" However, I will defer to your Hochdeutsch.

We're way beyond hotspots at this point. And the problem is that the kitchen and living room are all one big room. The hallway is a disaster, and the bathroom has to be clean(er). As for the bedrooms, I'll just make sure the doors stay shut!
I probably WILL do her crisis cleaning, because that looks pretty do-able.

[lobelia321.livejournal.com]

Your aunt is from Osnabrück?????

I left there when I was four. However, I seem to have picked up traces of accent. Years later, when I lived in Berlin and people asked me, as they tend to do in Germany, 'where are you from?', and I couldn't be bothered going into the whole spiel, I just said 'Osnabrück', and they would reply, 'Hört man!' They heard my accent!

It's the way I say 'Lehrer', apparently.

Crisis cleaning is teh cool! It's not about cleaning just about making surfaces look presentable! You get to throw stuff out in reckless abandon, and to shove stuff away in cupboards and suchlike. I have found that simply arranging stuff in straight lines and at right angles has a very tidying effect! If the entire room looks like one big hotspot, perhaps you could just pick two spots and designate them 'hot', and just do those every day?

Listen! You can do this (as they say on TV)! If I can, you can! My house was a sty. It smelled. Don't think, whole room. Think, 'this square foot here in front of me wot i designated'.

[brightest-blue.livejournal.com]

and I couldn't be bothered going into the whole spiel, I just said 'Osnabrück', and they would reply, 'Hört man!' They heard my accent!

It's the way I say 'Lehrer', apparently.

Isn't that interesting? I live in Freiburg/Breisgau for a while, and I barely had to open my mouth before someone said, "Frankfurt, wie goldisch!" So, as long as people think it's cute, I'll use it. :-)

For my crisis cleaning, I've actually thought about renting a dumpster for a few days, and just tossing stuff with abandon. It's actually less expensive than having the garbage truck pick up extra bags. Yeah, right now, I'm trying to deal with one little bit of surface at a time.

[lobelia321.livejournal.com]

We did the dumpster thing. No, it is called something else in England. Let me think. It is called a skip! Actually, I lie. I drove to the local dump about five times when we had the loft conversion and we had to clear out the entire attic. This was pre-flylady. It was sort of heady, like a chuck-it-away drug.

[sheldrake.livejournal.com]

Again, I comment before I've finished reading. To say:

a) HAHAHAHAHA I HAVE CORRUPTED T'H! I WILL CORRUPT ALL THE SACKVILLE-BAGGINSES AND THEN I WILL MAKE EVERYBODY WATCH DUE SOUTH TOO AHAHAHAHAHA!

and b) the grammar rhyme thingy was I. I mean me (teehee). Dunno what happened to it though.

[lobelia321.livejournal.com]

Oh, the grammar rhyme wast thou!!

This was before tagging, wasn't it? So it will be lost in the maw of LJ forever. But you may not even tag. Or should that be tig?

Due South!! NOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!

[sheldrake.livejournal.com]

I do not tag. But lately I've been feeling the tagging itch. I think it's the fault del.icio.us.

Anyway, I probably posted it in a comment on your LJ or something.

[lobelia321.livejournal.com]

Personally, I cannot tag as I have not the requisite layout.

[sheldrake.livejournal.com]

Also:

I was going to apologise for constantly spamming you with commentage, but then I realise that I don't mind when you constantly spam me with commentage, so I take back my apology, which I didn't make in the first place, so I can't take it back, but I would if I had.

I have been WRITING! It is a MIRACLE OMG!

[lobelia321.livejournal.com]

*bursts out laughing and would spew food onto monitor if ever permitted self to chew food anywhere near monitor*

Yes, spam away! Spammage ho! But we could also be very polite and constantly apologise to each other about things that need no apology, like people who stand near open doors, saying 'after you', 'after you', 'after you'.

You have been writing! But writing WHAT??! *is in mild shock*

[sheldrake.livejournal.com]

*whispers* it is doctor who fic. but having reread it just now i'm not sure it's very good. but it was fun and i had ideas and things and i will try to finish it and make it better so that's all good anyway. yes.

*spams*

[lobelia321.livejournal.com]