Feature: It's Not Just Us!

Dec 11, 2009 16:20

Wesley: Her abuse of the English language is such that I understand only every other sentence.

Believe it or not, the same kind of issues we talk about in fandom_grammar appears in the source text of some of our favorite fandoms. For this Feature, we've gathered some of these examples and are going to break down the grammar and syntax topics they discuss.

Examples from the source texts of Bones, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Castle, Friends, Kiss Kiss Bang Bang, and Stargate SG-1.

Ross: Oh-oh-oh, and by the way, Y-O-U-apostrophe-R-E means "you are" Y-O-U-R means "your"!
A common and frustrating mistake to start. You can find an explanation of this error here.

Castle: "Your" should be You-apostrophe-R-E as in "you are." That's not even a tough one, not like when to use "who" or "whom."
A blast from the past. We discussed this problem here.

O'Neill: You ended that sentence with a preposition! Bastard!
Our article about preposition use can be found here.

Bones: "Complement," not "compliment." "Ple." He means that we complete each other... uh... as a team.
Homophones ahoy!

Harmony: You feel bad. Badly is an adverb, so to "feel badly" would be saying that the mechanism which allows you to feel is broken.
Adverbs are explained here.

These quotes are from (in order):
Buffy - 3.14 - "Bad Girls"
Friends - 4.01 - "The One With the Jellyfish"
Castle - 2.02 - "Double Down"
Stargate SG-1 - 6.08 - "The Other Guys"
Bones - 3.04 - "The Secret in the Soil"
Kiss Kiss Bang Bang

We'd love to do this again sometime. So, if you can think of any quotes about grammar, syntax, or any other topic we have or could cover, you can comment and leave them for us right here.

author:melayneseahawk, word choice:homophones, errors:common errors, word choice:similar words, pos:pronouns, pos:prepositions, writing tips:working in canon, pos:adverbs, !feature

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