You down with POS?
What have I learned in the past week? Well, for one thing I’ve learned that a magazine that is chalk-full of recipes isn’t the best source of grammar to work with. It was somewhat frustrating to be looking for more articles to pick apart for our English-nerd purposes, and the entire last section was just directions on how to make the best Stroganoff. Another thing that I learned, and that rather surprised me, was how gray some of these grammar rules are. When working on my “House Style” section, I was trying to figure out how Sunset did numbers, and it was just confusing as hell. The majority of the numbers were in digits, and it seemed that their policy was to use digits for every number. Of course, things can’t possibly be that easy for me, can they? Nope. I then stumbled upon quite a few numbers that were written out. So, while I noticed somewhat of a pattern in the digit numbers. Most of them were for some sort of measurement. Some were ages, some were time frames, and all the recipes had digits, of course. The numbers that were written out were used more rigidly as adjectives: “four balloons,” or “seven dogs.” I wish it were more black and white, but it’s clear that this rule, among many others that were brought up in the “House Style” section, and very very gray.
Awesome.
We also started covering word classes, or parts of speech, this past week. I remember going over all this stuff for far too long in middle school. I remember going over endless definitions of each and every part of speech (because that’s what we called them in eighth grade), including when and when not to use them. I’m sure that was extremely beneficial to my learning process (too bad you couldn’t see the exaggerated eye roll right there, it truly was a sight to behold). In all honesty, we could have been drilled and tested and poked and prodded until the cows came home and I still wouldn’t have learned the parts of speech as well as I did from my incessant writing. I brought in outside-of-school writing that I was doing to be looked over by my teachers, and that is where I truly learned. So, going over the word classes again in class was very much review, but I appreciated the simplistic outlook on the process. I’m still not entirely sure of how to treat phrases like “act up” or “speak out” because they are confusing. Is the second word in a phrase like that always an adverb? Does that ever change, and in what sort of circumstance would it be different? I still have no idea. At the same time, however, I don’t see how it’s beneficial to know. I’ve never misused a phrase like that (to the best of my knowledge), so I don’t understand how me knowing when and when not that second word is an adverb will ever help me.
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Is this correct? Why (not)? And if not, correct it. She did not know whom she was speaking with.
Awesome.
We also started covering word classes, or parts of speech, this past week. I remember going over all this stuff for far too long in middle school. I remember going over endless definitions of each and every part of speech (because that’s what we called them in eighth grade), including when and when not to use them. I’m sure that was extremely beneficial to my learning process (too bad you couldn’t see the exaggerated eye roll right there, it truly was a sight to behold). In all honesty, we could have been drilled and tested and poked and prodded until the cows came home and I still wouldn’t have learned the parts of speech as well as I did from my incessant writing. I brought in outside-of-school writing that I was doing to be looked over by my teachers, and that is where I truly learned. So, going over the word classes again in class was very much review, but I appreciated the simplistic outlook on the process. I’m still not entirely sure of how to treat phrases like “act up” or “speak out” because they are confusing. Is the second word in a phrase like that always an adverb? Does that ever change, and in what sort of circumstance would it be different? I still have no idea. At the same time, however, I don’t see how it’s beneficial to know. I’ve never misused a phrase like that (to the best of my knowledge), so I don’t understand how me knowing when and when not that second word is an adverb will ever help me.
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Is this correct? Why (not)? And if not, correct it. She did not know whom she was speaking with.