I have to admit that I am one of those people who thought that they knew English and grammar very well but I am learning that I definitely have some challenges. I suppose that the reason I thought I knew English and grammar so well was that I have always received high marks on my writing assignment the last few years with nothing less than a B and most of them I received an A. One of the things that should have tipped me off was that in my writing class I had more markups than I usually had on any of my other papers. I think as students we all have classes that we have to try a little harder in and this is going to be one of those classes for me.
As I was reading the Topical Guide I ran across a few things that I have always had issues with so this is my way of trying to learn the correct way to write them. Affect/effect have been one of those words that I an not sure if I am using properly. I usually just choose "affect" in almost all cases. According to the Topical Guide "affect is almost always a verb that means "to influence" or "pretend to have." Effect on the other hand is a noun and is known to have "impact". What I mean by this is that the spelling will be used when it shows that something had an impact on the person or thing that is being described. The example in the book is "Voters are questioning the effect of term limits". Now where it gets tricky is that sometimes "effect" is used as a verb too but this usually means "to bring about". I'll just have to continue to do everything I can to remember all of the rules as there are so many to remember.
I am constantly running across grammar errors and punctuation issues as I work on a global scale but even the simplest things pop up where someone is in a hurry and doesn't check their work. For example one issue I see often is "hi" is in all caps. This is an easy mistake to make as the "h" should be capitalized and usually in business people are in a hurry because there is a lot to do. Other mistakes I have seen is run-on sentences and I will provide some examples of those as the weeks go on.
The affect vs. effect distinction is a really common mistake, though it's not as frustrating as people pluralizing with an apostrophe or the confusion surrounding the various homophones of "There."
ReplyDeleteI can definitely empathize with your feelings of thinking you know grammar well. Then I started taking this class and realized how very wrong I was. I wish that grammar was taught in school. I also want to make sure that when it is taught, it continues to be taught. I remember learning how to diagram a sentence in eighth grade, but I couldn't tell you anything more than that. Grammar is part of how you show that you are educated! Why aren't we teaching this more?
ReplyDeleteMost people don't know grammar well enough for copy editing. Grammar for editors requires the ability to memorize so many rules. I'm sure even the best still have to use reference guides. This topical guide is a good condensed version.
ReplyDelete