Article 1 Response~

I read the grammar article and thought that it all seemed like common sense. The topics that the author covered were fairly basic and simple to understand. The only things, out of those choices, that I know that I am guilty of is wordiness and bad parallelism. I tend to put a lot of words into one sentence and then word them in such a way as to confuse the reader. Of course I do this by accident, but nevertheless, it happens.

I believe the main points of the article are strictly based on opinion. For me, the main topics that I noticed were bad parallelism, wordiness (didn’t have its own section, but mentioned in opening paragraph), and the subjunctive section. I noticed the first two because I immediately knew that they pertained to me. However, I noticed the subjunctive section because I know multiple people that still use “were” and “was” wrong. Although it is not a big deal, it is still mildly irritating. In summary, this article basically listed seven common grammatical errors (whether big or not) and gave examples of how to avoid the mistakes. It was helpful for me to read through the examples and see how to properly word a piece of writing.

“As I noted in my previous article, the meaning of words inevitably and perennially change.”

The above quote is wonderful. No matter what, the meaning of words tends to change based upon society itself. People use words in different ways than they were originally intended, which can cause trends that briefly (or permanently) change the words meaning.

“On the other hand, no one thinks anymore that astonish means "turn to stone," and it would be ridiculous to object to anyone who does so.”

This quote, later on in the paragraph, further proves my point. It would be silly for someone to interpret astonish into “turn to stone” in this modern day. That’s the beauty of words, they are forever changing. And we are changing with them. 

This article just made me picture a giant rule book of good and bad writing styles.