National Grammar Day

The US are celebrating National Grammar Day today, and I'm sure that the parties will be numerous and exciting. Having spent seven tortuous years marking thousands of undergraduate essays at UTas, the dire state of proper English is something far dearer to my heart than the odd murdered whale or a smidgen of global warming!

But now you can help. Visit the website for more info.

The good folks at Mental Floss are doing their bit, encouraging readers to make personal National Grammar Day resolutions, applying the logic that innumerable micro actions yield impressive macro results. After thinking long and hard about it (fnarr, fnarr), my own personal resolution will be to pay more attention to the compounded hyphen. I know, I know, it's a big call, but we all have to do our bit.

Thus from this day forth, I vow to use a hyphen when joining two or more words to serve as a single adjective before a noun. However (and this is the tricky part), when compound modifiers come after a noun, I shall not hyphenate.

Comments

Fernando Klabin said…

Dear Kris,
Thank you very much for your comment and your words regarding my blog. It is always important and encouraging to know we are not speaking "to the walls". I am glad to find out that someone in Australia enjoys my humble attempt to spread the word about this fascinating country which is not even mine... Thank you indeed for including its link onto your own blog!
warm regards from the Balkans
Fernando
fernandokla@gmail.com

6 March 2008 at 00:06

Kris McCracken said…

No problem, it's a very interesting blog. I'd encourage all three of the people to look at mine to pop over and have a look!

6 March 2008 at 09:05

Hold me now, oh hold me now, until this hour has gone around. And I'm gone on the rising tide, to face Van Dieman's Land

Theme Thursday again, and this one is rather easy. I am Tasmanian, you see, and aside from being all around general geniuses - as I have amply described previously - we are also very familiar with the concept of WATER. Tasmania is the ONLY island state of an ISLAND continent. That means, we're surrounded by WATER. That should help explain why I take so many photographs of water . Tasmania was for a long time the place where the British (an island race terrified of water) sent their poor people most vile and horrid criminals. The sort of folk who would face the stark choice of a death sentence , or transportation to the other end of the world. Their catalogue of crimes is horrifying : stealing bread assault stealing gentlemen's handkerchiefs drunken assault being poor affray ladies being overly friendly with gentlemen for money hitting people having a drink and a laugh public drunkenness being Irish Fenian terrorist activities being Catholic religious subversion. ...

But when the strong were too weak to hurt the weak, the weak had to be strong enough to leave.

Can you believe that it is time for Theme Thursday already? Today we are not talking chocolate , toddlers , mess or ignominy . No, today we're dealing with ANIMAL . Now I could have posted a picture of a possum, numbat, wombat, wallaby or any other furry killing machine that roams our fair isle, but I figure that I'd use a far more deadly creature as an example of an animal . Some people - I know them as fools - have chosen to embrace that highfalutin idea that human beans are for some ungodly reason superior to animals. Of course, what these imbeciles seem to forget is that were are simple animals ourselves ! Anyone with a baby, toddler, teenage boy or Queenslander in their household could tell you this. Look at Henry [above]. One chocolate frog in the back of the car on a sunny day and all of a sudden it's Elagabalus meets Bacchus for a quick shandy in the Serengeti and we're down on all fours carrying on like a cat in heat. Fair dinkum, anyone who chooses to ...

Ah, Joe, you never knew the whole of it...

I still have the robot on the job. Here you can see the Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery . And here is a poem: Soliloquy for One Dead Bruce Dawe Ah, no, Joe, you never knew the whole of it, the whistling which is only the wind in the chimney's smoking belly, the footsteps on the muddy path that are always somebody else's. I think of your limbs down there, softly becoming mineral, the life of grasses, and the old love of you thrusts the tears up into my eyes, with the family aware and looking everywhere else. Sometimes when summer is over the land, when the heat quickens the deaf timbers, and birds are thick in the plumbs again, my heart sickens, Joe, calling for the water of your voice and the gone agony of your nearness. I try hard to forget, saying: If God wills, it must be so, because of His goodness, because- but the grasshopper memory leaps in the long thicket, knowing no ease. Ah, Joe, you never knew the whole of it... I like Bruce Dawe. He just my be my favourite Austral...

This will hurt me...

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