Grammar RockFollow

Lesson the First: Ellipses

An ellipsis is three dots. "..." Three shall be the number of the dots, and the number of the dots shall be three.

An ellipsis is used to indicate an omission in a quote, frequently enclosed by brackets. "An ellipsis is [...] frequently enclosed by brackets."

It can also be used to indicate a pause in speech or at the end of a sentence signify trailing off into silence.

However, just because an ellipsis can indicate a pause does not mean you can substitute it willy-nilly for every period, comma, and semicolon.

Asylum Rule: Excepting quotations, no more than one ellipsis is to be used per every ten lines of text.



Lesson the Second: Apostrophes
When pluralizing acronyms, apostrophes are not required unless the acronym ends in 'S'. Years do not require apostrophes.
URLs, CJs, 1990s, and GPS's are examples of correct usage.

Adding an apostrophe otherwise would indicate possessive form.
The FDA's new safety regulations are warranted.

Advanced Lesson: The situations where you can use an apostrophe to pluralize are letters of the alphabet and words that refer to the word itself.
Steve got three B's and two A's on his report card.
I counted 12 fu[/b]ck's in that paragraph.

It is important to distinguish between pluralizing a word, and pluralizing a word-as-a-word.
The ins and outs of grammar include proper usage of in's and out's, which should not be used to end a sentence.


Its is possessive and it's means "it is." I know this is counterintuitive, but now that I've brought it up, it will stick with you, right?**

[b]Asylum Rule: When using an apostrophe, think about the following three things.
- Is the word a contraction, i.e. can it be written out as two words?
- Does the word indicate possession?**
- Does it fall under one of the pluralization categories above?
Your fellow posters will thank you for it.



Lesson the Third: I
"I," referring to one's self, is capitalized.

Asylum Rule: Failure to capitalize "I" will be interpreted as low self-esteem. Disagreeing with you would surely fracture your already weak ego, so we will acquiesce and rate you "awful."

Umm.....i don't think trickys thread is worth a sticky. Anyone who cant use these rules' is a moran.

Can I just add that "alot" and "noone" are not words?

It's "a lot" and "no one". Thank you.

LOL

took me a while to understand it all but that was funny ^^ and the funniest is that I learned something ><

Tricky,

You have a couple more rules exampled rather nicely here that I think you might want to add.

Five .s WTF is that? Or is it five .'s or maybe five '.s' '.'s' .'''s'?

I learned that ^^

I thought the capitalize was used only for God ><

I think someone has done this before only with different rules and less style.

Was it YSU? I can't remember vividly because because I only skimmed the post.

I fail at the Advanced Apostrophes.

Why would you ever use an apostrophe in the second sentence listed?

I counted 12 ****'s in that paragraph.

Isn't+1 it merely a pluralization of the word? You felt no need to add an apostrophe for dots in "Three shall be the number of the dots, and the number of the dots shall be three." so why use it in the second example?

It may be a stated rule, but still makes no sense.

It's not polite when you point and laugh at its wee wee

See?

If you are pluralizing dot, it becomes "dots."
That side of the die has 6 dots.

If you are pluralizing instances of the word dot, it becomes "dot's."

Jimmy used far too many dot's in that sentence he wrote.




Edited, Thu Aug 18 05:06:13 2005 by trickybeck