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      Welcome!   03/05/2016

      Welcome, everyone, to the new 910CMX Community Forums. I'm still working on getting them running, so things may change.  If you're a 910 Comic creator and need your forum recreated, let me know and I'll get on it right away.  I'll do my best to make this new place as fun as the last one!

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On an only mildly related note, my gentle old German teacher taught me a trick with 'als' and 'wie' which I soon discovered also worked with 'as' and 'like'. In order to determine when to use which one, 'as' is used as 'in the capacity of' and 'like' is used as 'behaving like.' The test sentence he gave was "He came as a professor but acted like an idiot." Ever since, I have had no trouble deciding which of the two to use.

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4 hours ago, The Old Hack said:

"He came as a professor but acted like an idiot."

Oi! I take umbrage to that! /* swings umbrage at the sentence, but with no effect, the sentence now long gone */

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44 minutes ago, ProfessorTomoe said:

Oi! I take umbrage to that! /* swings umbrage at the sentence, but with no effect, the sentence now long gone */

I didn't like Professor Umbridge. She came as a professor but acted like an abusive sadist.

Oh wait, umbrage. Never mind, carry on.

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Give that my meatspace editor has totally flaked on me, I've started using an online service called Grammarly.  Seems to be working rather well.  It does have the option having a human editor look at your document, but it's more expensive than I want to use.  It has a plugin that works with Firefox on any text field, so I have another redline to live and die by.  It does seem to notice using homophones and close to homophones in context.  I has a happy.  It does have the no preposition at the end of a sentence fetish and doesn't speak lolcat.

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6 hours ago, mlooney said:

Give that my meatspace editor has totally flaked on me, I've started using an online service called Grammarly.  Seems to be working rather well.  It does have the option having a human editor look at your document, but it's more expensive than I want to use.  It has a plugin that works with Firefox on any text field, so I have another redline to live and die by.  It does seem to notice using homophones and close to homophones in context.  I has a happy.  It does have the no preposition at the end of a sentence fetish and doesn't speak lolcat.

Perhaps this is a corollary of the "any spelling flame will itself contain an error," but I notice your post should start with "Given" and the third sentence seems to be missing an "of" after "have the option".  Perhaps any post praising a spelling or grammar checker will have at least one error in spelling and/or grammar?

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7 hours ago, mlooney said:

Give that my meatspace editor has totally flaked on me, I've started using an online service called Grammarly.  Seems to be working rather well.  It does have the option having a human editor look at your document, but it's more expensive than I want to use.  It has a plugin that works with Firefox on any text field, so I have another redline to live and die by.  It does seem to notice using homophones and close to homophones in context.  I has a happy.  It does have the no preposition at the end of a sentence fetish and doesn't speak lolcat.

Before you blow big bucks on Grammarly, might I recommend a look at Slick Write? On its face, it might look a bit basic, but that interface can be customized in any number of ways to catch almost any combination of errors. It's also got plugins for LibreOffice (and I think Firefox), and best of all, it's free.

Additional: I used it to write the first draft of my novel. Very helpful.

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9 hours ago, CritterKeeper said:

Happy belated birthday!

Hmm, I always see it phrased this way, but looking at it, this doesn't seem right.  It's not the birthday that's late, but the happy wishes.  Seems like "A belated happy birthday!" would be more appropriate.  Since I almost never see the word 'belated' in any other context, it's hard to be sure about proper usage.

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39 minutes ago, CritterKeeper said:

Hmm, I always see it phrased this way, but looking at it, this doesn't seem right.  It's not the birthday that's late, but the happy wishes.  Seems like "A belated happy birthday!" would be more appropriate.  Since I almost never see the word 'belated' in any other context, it's hard to be sure about proper usage.

Don Edwards did it correctly, with 'Happy Berated Birthday!" >.>

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6 hours ago, Pharaoh RutinTutin said:

homo Goonicus?

 

6 hours ago, hkmaly said:

Considering we are Bunnies, Homo Oryctolagus?

The proper way to state a genus and species is to capitalize the first word, the genus, which is the broader category; use a lower case for the species, which is a narrower, more specific identifier; and to italicize both.  Homo sapiens, Homo habilis, Pan paniscus, Gorilla gorilla (yes, that's really the scientific name for gorillas), Tenebrio molitor, Escheria coli.

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So why was I thinking lower case on genus and upper on Species?

Maybe the Boa constrictor cut off more oxygen to the brain than I expected?  Either way, that is something I should get right.  I pity the fool who misspells Mr. T rex.

 

 

Edited by Pharaoh RutinTutin
Relevant detail added

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On 3/21/2017 at 4:20 AM, CritterKeeper said:

Gorilla gorilla (yes, that's really the scientific name for some gorillas)

Slight change to your statement. Eastern gorillas are Gorilla beringei

For maximum gorilla, a Western lowland gorilla is Gorilla gorilla gorilla.

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43 minutes ago, Sjmcc13 said:

I think allot of people make the mistake of....

I am now picturing a new subspecies of alot, perhaps one with an extra pair of horns to go with its pair of 'L's?  :-)

(Thanks for reminding me of a fun and perspective-giving cartoon!)

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I was pleased when I heard about that court case.  The Oxford comma has always been useful in delimiting lists.

For a simple proof that it eases the ability to distinguish things, try writing a sentence that contains a list within lists, omitting both the Oxford comma and the Oxford semicolon.  It's difficult to make sense of things, which is why it is proper to include it.

Rule Number One of writing: if you can't understand the meaning of the sentence properly after reading it once, you broke one of the rules of grammar.

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1 hour ago, ProfessorTomoe said:

I'm a music composer and a wanna-be novelist. Poetry is at the bottom of my creative tree, but it's something I do on rare occasions when I get stuck on something or get a serious muse pushing me in that direction.

Not on topic in the source thread, this seemed a more appropriate place.  Just a gripe about the current use of the word "poetry."

To me, what Tomoe posted was an excellent essay.  But it wasn't a poem.  A poem has the sound of the words as its focus, their rhythm, their rhymes and assonances and alliterations, the shapes they make, the number of syllables and the patterns of their ending words.  They don't all have to rhyme -- I've written cestinas and haikus and various other poems which are based on other things -- but there need to be rules or patterns or some other form beyond whatever comes into one's head in whatever order it comes.  The poem about a cat where the words form the shape of a cat is a poem for the eyes rather than the ears, but to my mind it counts.

Why on earth do people seem to dislike the word "essay"?  Is it because that was the name given to what they were forced to write in school?

I have a similar gripe about rap being called "music" except in the opposite direction.  Rap is poetry.  It doesn't have a melody but it has rhyme and rhythm and wordplay and alliteration and everything else that defines classic poetry.  It's closer to Greek choruses and recitations than to music.  But I guess the cultures rap sprang from think "poetry" is stuffy and nothing to do with their culture.  Good rap is a real art form and deserves to be known as such, but it grates on me to see it stuck in the wrong category!

Okay, rant over.  But surely I'm not the only person who feels this way?!?

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Good rap is something I have never encountered, and doubt the existence of.

Aside from that, Critterkeeper is definitely not the only person who feels that way.

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12 hours ago, CritterKeeper said:

To me, what Tomoe posted was an excellent essay.  But it wasn't a poem.

Interesting enforcement of the style, to be sure. I'll grant that what I wrote doesn't fit any classical definition of "poetry." If you consider free-form or "free-verse" poetry as valid, then it does fall under a currently accepted style of poetry, as I was told by my critiquers on Scribophile. It's a tale told from two POVs of the same narrator (one internal), written in free-verse.

I would not agree that it is an essay, though. An essay makes an assertion and goes about proving it. I definitely didn't try to do that.

However, If you reject the free-verse as a valid form of poetry, I would ask that you consider it as a short story instead, again told from two points-of-view of the same narrator.

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