I suddenly tired of commas after one entry about them. I will carry it on properly but not now.

The problem with not writing about commas is that there isn't really anything to write about. Well, it's either commas or world poverty/similar...I find it hard to strike a balance!

Seriously though...world poverty. And all this.

We are gruesomely lucky.

What he said.

Here begins a little series on commas. Commas go right to the heart of grammar so they’re tricky things to write about. Gotta do some background work on clauses first.

A clause is a group of words. Clause spotters say that a clause is made up of a subject and a predicate (something that describes the subject). I learnt to find a clause by looking out for the verb and I quite like the focus on the verb because it helps my mind get into gear about other things too – like correct tense or mode and subject-verb agreement…sorry, got a bit boring there.

So, yeah, look for the verb. This is a doing or being word and will be attached to a subject (the thing that is doing/being). I have put all the verbs I used up to this point in bold to help you see what a verb is. Sometimes it made more sense if I included some of the surrounding words in with the verb. This is called a verbal phrase. For example, is made includes two verbs (from the infinitives* ‘to be’ and ‘to make’) so both words merge into a verbal phrase.

*Infinitives. You may remember these from such things as French lessons. We have them in English too. They are the home of the verb. Look at the examples below to see how the verb breaks down from the infinitive so that we can use attach it to lots of different subjects (n.b. I have only included how they break down in the present tense):

Infinitive: to be
I am
You are
We/they are
He/she/it is

Infinitive: to make
I make
You make
We/they make
He/she/it makes

I guess infinitives are a helpful way to identify a verb: ask yourself if can you find a version of the word that you can put ‘to’ at the beginning of to make it into an infinitive. It takes some thought to do this though.

The way this will all relate to commas eventually is that commas can be used to separate clauses to help make writing clearer. And if you find a verb, you've probably found a clause. More on that another time though.

This sort of grammar is hard to get to grips with because, like emotions and thought, language seems to come, at least partly, from within us. It’s hard to explain why we do things that we have always done. Children have such an inherent understanding of grammar that they are sometimes over correct. For example, they know how verbs normally get changed into the past tense so they might say I runned instead of I ran.

Might be worth saying, if you want to see about apostrophes for possession, go to April 15th 2008. This is the one about the other use for apostrophes...

...and it's actually really simple: the apostrophe is just put in in place of some missing letters. Sometimes we want to merge two words together to make it easier to say or read something. For example, instead of saying do not go there we might say don't go there. In this example, and in most examples, nothing changes about the original words other than a letter is missed out and the words are squashed together into one word. Sometimes more than one letter is missed out and very occasionally there are changes to the spelling of the original words*. Here are some examples of the change:

do not...donot...don't
must not...mustnot...mustn't
have not...havenot...haven't
It is...itis...it's
cannot...(no merge - one word already)...can't
I will...Iwill...I'll
would have...wouldhave...would've
will not...willnot...won't*

The blue letters are the ones that get missed out and replaced with an apostrophe.

You will notice that I have included it's in the list above. Only put an apostrophe in the word 'its' if you are saying 'it is' in a shortened way. That is all you need to know. If you are saying 'its' to mean that something belongs to 'it' you DO NOT need an apostrophe. Here are some correct examples:

Its main advantage is that it goes faster.
Its tyres are bald.
It's a shiny red car.

For some reason there is a big debate going on in the world right now about semi-colons. It's not just the usual about what to do with them but whether they should exist or not which I find faintly bizarre...they do exist! Even if someone tells me they don't exist, I will still use them.

Maybe this is because I'm a teacher and feel that it is necessary to say the same thing in three different ways to ensure that I have imparted knowledge thoroughly enough: semi-colons are there to link two sentences (or would-be sentences?) that are closely related to each other. So I might want to say: Semi-colons are cool. All the gangstas are using them. Well, the second statement confirms the first so that's pretty strongly related...you might as well use a semi-colon: Semi-colons are cool; all the gangstas are using them.

There's no rule about how exactly the sentences have to be related...I don't think! There are a few examples below of sentences that are linked in different ways just to give you a feel. I wouldn't say that you ever have to use a semi-colon. You would just use one having made the decision to communicate to your readers that those two sentences were related.

Some examples:

• The goldfish came home from the vets'* today; it had been there for a week.
• Her hairstyle is freaky; I don't think it's normal to have snakes' heads on the end of each hair.
• The effects on the goldfish population were monumentally catastrophic; there has never been such a serious dip in the population.

The other time to use semi-colons is in a list when you need to use commas to describe the things you're listing. (This is ringing a bell...have I posted about this before?) For example: My favourite films are Finding Nemo; Jaws, the all-time classic; and Shark Tale. It just helps make it all a bit clearer. And cleariness is next to godliness in Grammar World.

I do feel like I'm missing something, bearing in mind that there's a global debate about this. Am I? Have I got it all wrong? I haven't consulted anyone/anything about it since my GCSEs 10 years ago.

*I'm assuming this was a practice run by several vets.

Well, it's better now so not worse than ever but still not finished!

Just undergoing some refurbishments here! Sorry that it looks worse than ever but Toby is working some wonders to make it look great. He's a love.

Well hello again.

We'll do contractions (e.g. contracting 'do not' to 'don't') another day.

For now it's what to do when something/someone owns something/someone:

Jane's porridge (single owner = apostrophe before the extra 's')
All of the boys' porridge (more than one owner = apostrophe after the already existing 's'. No further 's' required.)
The children's porridge ('the children'* make up a single group so, like with Jane who is a single person, there is an apostrophe before the extra 's')

Just ask yourself, "Who/what does _______ belong to?" After the last letter of your answer to that question, put the apostrophe. Add an extra 's' if you need an 's' sound. It's up to you whether you bother if you don't need an extra 's' sound; both Jesus' porridge and Jesus's porridge are legitimate.

A couple of tricksy areas:
1. Sometimes you will see apostrophes that aren't there because of contractions and seem to be nothing to do with anyone owning anything. Think laterally: The kids' performance 'belonged' to the kids. Last week's news 'belonged' to last week.
2. You do not need to worry about how many things are owned. You do need to worry about how many owners there are.

This is something that people do find hard so why do we have to bother? As with all grammar/punctuation it is supposed to make something seem clearer. For example, the apostrophe could clarify that there was more than one boy in the porridge scenario. Or it could clarify that the porridge wasn't made out of boys but belonged to boys. The context normally makes it obvious but the punctuation does help. In some cases, especially in officialdom, the punctuation can be essential for resolving disputes about the original meaning of something. I think that is the way of it in the legal world.

*'Children' is a collective noun. The same applies for other collective nouns such as 'team' or 'government'...or a 'bloat of hippopotami' for you collective noun lovers.

After a nice little comment on a post I feel encouraged to post again. But what about?

Maybe apostrophes because they are a problem. I'll just go and check I haven't done one on that already (although how?) and then I'll log into Firefox (no little formatting icons on Safari) and then I'll BE BACK!

Peace.

Well, I still haven't found a new layout for my blog. But I will put a picture on here anyway.



I made this at our churpch's ladios weekend. It was a good old time and Mary ran a craft session with scraps of material and ironing them down. I also did some embroidery on it but I cut off the beads to fit it into a frame. It went to Megs and Malcs in the end because I don't have anywhere at home that is turquoise or even goes with anything turquoise. They have turquoise towels.

It could be a sea or a bird or a mess. I made it as a sea and there are little orange fishes and bits of spray and the water meets the sand.

Go take a look at Orangette. It is a lovely food blog. I've just made an Onion Tart from it and it was really superb.



Yum.

So anyways. I think I will start posting some pictures of my paintings and stuff. That's why I've changed my template but I actually want something more blank but more interesting than this one. Don't know how to do that but Toby's on the case.

xxx

Toby has sorted out my naughty font. Fairly predictably it was all my fault. I pasted the code into the CSS that was already part of my template. Oh dears. I thought I had followed the instructions but I hadn't. They were a big lump of text and I didn't really understand them. Toby sorted it out though, as well as my photo.

Joely's coming for dinner tonight which is chili. Or chilli? Toby makes a nice one. Unfortunately we haven't tidied up because we don't care about the house today! Our car has broken again and I feel that, consequently, I don't have to tidy up or do any work. So there.

Oh no. My blog has gone all Times News Roman on me and for no good reason: I added some Google thing that Toby said about and then the font changed. I don't even know why I added it because I'm blatantly not going to get hits on my blog through Google because no one comes here. Oh well.

This photo is determined to publish itself sideways but it looks Christmassy anyway so until Toby can sort it out, I'll keep it here in all its sideways glory.



Paul Dring, writing for this month’s Waitrose Food Illustrated says that whereas centuries ago mulling wine made sense because it rescued it from being vinegary and unpalatable, nowadays, “mulling is a good way of making perfectly good wine undrinkable”.

This is a classic example of opinion represented as fact (for any of you GCSE English students out there). Why do winies (what’s the noun? I’ve adapted ‘foodies’ because I can’t remember) say that mulled wine is undrinkable when it is demonstrably not as lots of people drink it with pleasure? Of course, they are sad about how the delicate process of wine-making is all for nothing in the end if we just add orange juice, brandy and spices to it. But people do like mulled wine and how else are they supposed to make it, other than by using wine?

Oh anyway, it annoys me and I keep reading articles slating mulled wine which, apparently, isn’t a very original topic. Why not tell us something useful about what wine to have at Christmas instead?

Well. Even though I have been blogging much more often than some people, I am not appearing on Toby's recently updated list. Even Dave Atherall makes it onto the list and he has not blogged since the 22nd of August. This is not fair.

Toby and Nick are having some jokes downstairs and I'm missing out on them.

my goodness.

There are funner ones but this iz a grammar blog and that is a grammar cat. icanhascheezburger.com - it's one of my hobbies...

Well, it is now November and I'm back at work. There is a lot of it. I am now not working, I realise, but I have been going strong all week and I'm about to be working hard for another three and a half hours in a tick.

It makes the time go by at least!

Tires...

I just can’t get on board with the idea that humanity is getting worse. What makes people think that it was ever significantly better overall? I know that sounds rather rhetorical but I am actually interested in the answer.

There are some things that tempt me towards the ‘everything’s going downhill’ pov, notably areas of British life that have changed dramatically either post WW2 or post industrial revolution (can’t decide which was more pivotal right now – perhaps neither!):

• Technology
• Communication/Media
• Family life
• Food

There are probably more but these leap out at me.

Technology and Communication/Media, I presume, are more advanced than they have ever been before. However, that is clearly not a bad thing all round. The now hackneyed charge that all the new types of communication are destroying real relationships doesn’t hold much water for me. Without exception email, Facebook, MySpace, msn, texts, blogging…have enhanced my relationships with others. Including my family. Perhaps that’s just me. More serious, perhaps, is the way that modern technology etc. has sped up the pace of life. But is that really the case? All (I can’t think of any exceptions) my friends who have lived for some amount of time in Australia or South Africa say that the pace of life there is so much more relaxed and yet they have access to the same technology in those countries.

Oh, there is so much more to say about my first two bullet points (a little taster: freedom of speech, photography, propaganda, hyperreality, charities, medical technology, the Hippocratic oath, image manipulation, transport, pollution, weapons…), particularly about the press . However, nothing that I think of really convinces me that humanity is being damaged by these in a way that we have never been damaged before.

That’s really the same for the state of family life and food (in modern-day Britain, at least) both of which are pretty miserable at the moment. When were they ever that much better overall? The problems and the causes vary immensely over time and location but there have always been horribly malnourished people and appalling mothers and fathers en masse.

Is the problem facing humanity, in fact, simply that there are so many more of us living on an elderly globe? There are more people doing the same amount of wrong things and it’s too hard (as it always has been) for most people, most of the time to step away from the glory of wealth, the pleasure of a quiet life, the horror of suffering or the temptations of what is just out of reach… to take the long view and act. Earth may be slowly (or quickly) dying but compare its rulers, children, youth, parents, teachers, managers, writers, role models, wealthy, poor, etc. to their equivalents in times gone by and I’m not sure there’ll be much in it.

And yet, we’re still here. Somehow, people manage to scrape away the dirt and find love, dreams, talents, pleasure and hope. That is a sign that humanity hasn't gone down the drain with a final glug. This is too. Whatever rises above the rest.

I just commented at length on Toby's blag and now I feel like I should put a post on mine but can't really be bothered to write loads again.

It was a year ago that I tried to blog every day. That was an effort.

Things I would like to do in the next few days:

• Y11 folders
• PSHE plans
• All our filing
• Varnish table
• Research skips?
• Clear out garage and understairs cupboard
• Marking
• Finish my picture

Just thought I'd write that list there and then. You can ask me how it goes. You probably know the answer already.

Went to see David Ford on Saturday. Brilliant! Apart from some rude people. Tone of voice and kindness/politeness, etc are all so important. I know I slip up in those areas too but it really riles me when people are rude to me! Me, me, me.

Well. Here is another post. I've been put off blogging because I don't know the answer to the among/amongst issue. So I'ma ignore that one for the mo and tell you about a dress.

It is blue, has a swooping v-neck, is baggy until below the hips then tight down to the mid-upper thigh. That's where it stops. I love it. It looks so much better than I thought it would. And it was only £2. Woot.

I also have:

• more tights. Thank God.
• a black skinny polar neck
  
• colourful (easily distinguishable) socks. Thank God.
• vest tops.

Luckily it was one of those trips when we all actually needed everything and we all found it too. So no guilt or frustration.

Right. Now I'm going to go make Cec feel ok about washing up stinky old lunchboxes. She just sighed from the heart.

With love. El