need some help with some grammar phrases.

[huxley]

are they correct and some i need help with correct puntuation. I 'll try some to puntuate some. you tell me if it's wrong.

1. "C'mon, you two. Let's go get our tickets."

2. Parallel to the pectators' bleachers. (i'd say yes. because it's who's bleachers.)

3. They race down the track at incredible speed(s).or is it: at an incredible speed. ? (They = race cars.)

4. They drive under (a arch bridge or an arch bridge). (?)

5. The birds fly out like angry ( ) wild beasts. (i'd say no comma.)

6. She witnesses the crash then turns to Sam. (could that be writen better?)

7. They follow the old man (down / between) the rows of tables.(?)

8. They stop in front of a gigantic ( ) dark silhouette. (i'd say no comma.)

thanks

 

[HoopyFrood]

I'll just say about number four...Whenever a word starts with a vowel, then the word before it is "an" rather than "a". (thus it would be "an arch bridge"...actually, would it be an archED bridge? Hmm...)

 

[Pyan]

1. "C'mon, you two. Let's go get our tickets.""go and get"

2. Parallel to the spectators' bleachers. (i'd say yes. because it's who's bleachers.) Do you need "spectators" at all? Who else would be in them? It's right, though.

3. They race down the track at incredible speed(s).or is it: at an incredible speed. ? (They = race cars.) Either is fine, but the first suggests they often do so, and the second that it was an unusual occurence.

4. They drive under (a arch bridge or an arch bridge). (?) Hoopy's right (of course )

5. The birds fly out like angry ( ) wild beasts. (i'd say no comma.)You're right.

6. She witnesses the crash then turns to Sam. (could that be writen better?) Difficult to be specific without more context.

7. They follow the old man (down / between) the rows of tables.(?) Between. Down the tables would suggest to me that they were walking on the table-tops, but I suspect that there may be a cultural divergence here.

8. They stop in front of a gigantic ( ) dark silhouette. (i'd say no comma.) I'd agree.

Hope this helps - if I'm wrong, I'm sure I'll hear about it!
It's punctuation, by the way.

 

[Lenny]

Number 1 can either be written as you've said, or as Pyan has said.

If you want to be grammatically correct then go with what Pyan has written. But as it's speech, it doesn't really matter. Choose a random person in the street, and 9 times out of 10 they'll miss out the "and", I'd say.

 

[Pyan]

Depends how casual the conversation is, but, of course, Lenny's right.

 

[Teresa Edgerton]

The first question is dialogue so it doesn't really matter, so long as it's appropriate for the character. (That "C'mon" seems to indicate that it would be.)

In #5 or #8, whether to use a comma or not is a matter of style (and possibly of emphasis). There is no right or wrong choice -- although if you sold the story a copy-editor might change what you had done to make it conform to house style.

In #3, it should be "speeds" unless they are all going at the same rate (which wouldn't be much of a race).

"Down the rows of tables" is an idiom common in the US -- so it's fine if the rest of the piece is equally informal, but not in formal writing.

because it's who's bleachers.

And for future reference, although you didn't ask about this one, the word you want is "whose." "Who's" is a contraction, meaning who is, or who has (as in: "Who's been sleeping in my bed?"). You need to watch out for those possessives that are really contractions. It's/its is the one that trips up people most of the time, but only because it comes up more often than who's/whose.

 

[chrispenycate]

Frequently changing the puntuation of a sentence changes its meaning, sometimes subtly (sometimes not) Your "angry, wild beasts" or "angry wild-beasts" is an example (and as a simile it's a bit wishy-washy. If they poured out like rabid wasps - yes, I know wasps don't get rabies, thank you, but rabid lemmings just doesn't carry the same message - anyway, they'd have been more convincinly angry)
Your apostrophe after spectators is right; but the "who's" in your explanation of why should have been "whose", the former being a contraction of "who is", not a possessive.

She witnesses the crash then turns to Sam.

I would have expected that to end up in two sentences, if only because of how cold-blooded the transposition of the two concepts makes her seem ("hey, look, he's crashed")

They stop in front of a gigantic ( ) dark silhouette

I was taught that if there were two adjectives associated with a single noun, they would always be separated by a comma, because in speech you'd always put a tiny pause there. Now, I'm aware that some commas are falling by the wayside; personally I even like the commas before "and"s and "but"s, and speak that way, splitting of concepts like kindling, rather than forcing the reader/auditor to attempt to follow my separation as well as my (frequently difficult) logic.
There is a fair amount of flexibility i punctuation yet, but changing it can change the mood, if not the meaning, of a piece.

 

[huxley]

about the comma between two ajectives. don't you place a comma only when you can replace the comma by a "and"


They stop in front of a gigantic (and ) dark silhouette.(it doesn't really work, so no comma right?)


The birds fly out like angry ( and) wild beasts. (it doesn't really work either, so no comma, right.)

 

[jackokent]

I would always put a comma between two consecutive adjectives.

 

[huxley]

thanks for the help guys.

would this phrase be better.

They follow the old man down the aisle that stretches between the rows of tables. They stop in front of a table covered in spaghetti sauce.

 

[j d worthington]

I must have been truly asleep to miss this one. Moving to Aspiring Writers, where you may get more replies to additional questions.

 

[Dr. Atomic]

The problem is, style guides are not absolute, so you're going to get many suggestions from different members of the forum. What you really need to do is figure out what style guide is being used by the people for whom you're writing. I've been a magazine editor for more than a decade, and a writer for longer than that, and I've got more style guides than I know what to do with -- but that's because no two publications seem to use the same one. In the States, anyway, there's the MLA style guide, the Chicago Manual of Style, the NY Times Style Guide, the AP Style Guide...

If you're writing for a professional sale, call up the magazine or publisher and ask which guide they use. I'm sure they'll be happy to tell you -- it means less work for them down the road. And if you're just writing on spec, or for your own enjoyment, or for school, or for any of the other reasons why you might choose to put pen to paper (well, virtual pen to virtual paper, anyway...), just go out and grab any old style guide, and use it to provide consistency within the piece itself. Worse case scenerio -- you sell the story, you've used the wrong guide, your editor asks for a few tweaks. He or she will be able to tell, however, that you were using SOME SORT of internal logic -- i.e., one guide or another -- and will rejoice in the fact that you even made the effort.

And, if you've been consistent, the Find and Replace function becomes MUCH easier to use... I just finished my own book manuscript, and my editor asked me to fix a few punctuation bits -- not because they were wrong, but because they didn't fit the editor's style. (See, I was dumb -- I didn't ask!) But because I didn't have any variation within my own style, I just hit find and replace and it got 'em all. (Though I'd suggest double checking...)

Good luck!

 

[chrispenycate]

thanks for the help guys.

would this phrase be better.

They follow the old man down the aisle that stretches between the rows of tables. They stop in front of a table covered in spaghetti sauce.

Better? That depends on what use you intend from the writing. Though laying out every detail removes possibilities for misunderstandings, frequently compacting the information down makes for tighter, more gripping text(as can be observed from my text, which isn't)

And thank you for the last sentence, a good example; if you add a comma after "table", it completely changes the sense. (as you have written it, the table has had some messy ocupants; the addition of the comma makes it the walkers who are sauced)

I was taught a sort of "vocal" approach to punctuation; listen to it in your head, then every time there's a pause in delivery, punctuate. The "and" rule seems to be for lists (one of the important uses for commas, admittedly, but not the only one; and the serial adjective situation is hardly a list - is it?) But, as long as you're consistant with your rules, and have chosen rules close enough to the norm to be recognisable, (and understand the "why" of those rules well enough to be able to break them while being able to defend your position) you should be able to survive the sub-editor aggression.

 

[huxley]

thanks for all the help guys. i've got one problem that i need help.
i just want someone to tell me if this phrases are correct or not. dealing with the (pass and past) pass=verb, noun, adjective. past=noun, adjective, adverb.

1. "Just one more car to pass, and we'll be in first place." (in this one pass could be replaced with "shoot" which is a verb. so "pass" right?)

2."he'll regret the day he ever tried to get past me." (in this one i could replace "past" with "behind" which is a noun,ajective,adverb. so "past" right?)

I'm preaty sure this are correct. I just wanted to make sure. i think it's because i'm french.

thanks guys.

 

[Lenny]

Completely correct.

I have to say, you're doing pretty well with the grammar, especially if French is your first language.

 

[huxley]

Yeah, french is my first language and I did struggle with spelling. I still do but since starting typing and chating on the computer, I maniged to learn to spell a great deal of words that I keep using.

My english grammar needed some reworking. I did buy a grammar book and it helped alot. now I'm really focusing on puntuation, and it's going good.

But i do slip up some time like when i use seam instead of seem. stuff like that, but it's going to get better with conditioning. I do read alot, and i've started to really focuse on how the more difficult words are spelled. I'm always going to have difficulty in english because I'm french, and I don't have the english eye, but I'm not going to let that stop me from having fun with creating new and exciting stories.

 

[chrispenycate]

T'en fais pas: your english grammar is probably better than my frenc, et moi, je m'explique en français quasiment tous les jours, Et tiens, je vous ai tu-toié sans demandé d'avance, it's what happens when one crosses the language barrier.
Spellcheckers are useful, though I've strangled mine for trying to make me write continuously in one language.
Still, nothing can eliminate the risk of homophones, and many of the total anglophones on this site mix "here" and "hear" or "to","too" and "two", and only experience will avoid this.
Still, you can be certain that few readers will be aussi exigent que moi.

 

[Pyan]

But you'll always get the awkward one that considers that sola lingua bona est lingua mortua!

 

[huxley]

one more phrase. is the comma correct here.

1."See, I told you we'd be fine."

 

[Pyan]

Spot-on!
You may consider emphasising the "told", but that would depend on the context.

"See, I told you we'd be fine."

"See, I told you we'd be fine."

Bonne chance à votre magnum opus!