Well, well, well ...and mine, too!

[Belka_Teacher]

Mary May, I have actually found the proof to support my gut feeling

http://www.thepunctuationguide.com/question-mark.html

In contrast with the examples above, when the question mark is part of a title of work, a syntactically necessary comma is retained.



Have you read Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, the Philip Dick novel that inspired the movie Blade Runner?



“Is He Living or Is He Dead?,” by Mark Twain, is one of my favorite stories.



When the question mark in the title comes at the end of a sentence that would itself require a question mark or period, the additional question mark or period is omitted.



Have you read Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?



I have not read Mark Twain’s “Is He Living or Is He Dead?”

[Belka_Teacher]

Mary May,

It arrived exactly at the time when I'd almost lost hope for any response at all and was ready to come up with self-correction - that was exactly the reason why I logged-in today, and - what a great surprise! And AN invaluable help, indeed - as I myself was able to detect only the minor up to nothing part of what you, guys, pointed out.

I'm not sure if that article is correct. Sounds odd to me. Help is mostly uncountable. However, it can also be countable. I'm not quite sure what you ment, but, in my opinion, it doesn't fit into this definition, but I may be wrong.

https://www.oxfordlearnersdictionaries. ... ish/help_2

[singular] a help (to somebody) a person or thing that helps somebody
She was more of a hindrance than a help.
Your advice was a big help.
(ironic) You're a great help, I must say!

[Yety]

I'm not sure if that article is correct. Sounds odd to me. Help is mostly uncountable.

I'd say it's definitely unnecessary here. Invaluable is a 'technical' attribute, just like great.
You were of great help. It was invaluable help.

YET, there are a number of cases in Google Books where you find "of AN invaluable help", however scarce the evidence is: O_o
https://books.google.com/books?id=QrlED ... IQ6AEILjAB

Needless to say that this book will be of an invaluable help not only for ...

https://books.google.com/books?id=rvYNV ... IQ6AEINzAD

I also would like to thank all my collaborators in Liege and in other laboratories who have been of an invaluable help in collecting the data presented here

https://books.google.com/books?id=WnjiB ... IQ6AEIOTAE

Special thanks are due to Dr. Neil Jones whose sophistication in formal languages has been of an invaluable help in the preparation of many sections in the book.

[Kind_Punk]

I even found "great helps" ))

[acapnotic]

To continue with punctuation, let's talk about quotations. I'm not quite sure if you prefer BrE or AmE, but beware of the differences in the punctuation.

https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/punct ... tion-marks

Now, this looks very odd to me.

He called this phenomenon "the memory of water."

Obviously, the period is supposed to terminate the entire sentence and not the quoted phrase. But as it is, it looks like the sentence goes beyond its end. Disgusting! Probably it's done that way to agree with the rule that the period is omitted if the quoted phrase ends with a question or exclamation mark. But I'd prefer the period to be always retained. It's logical, even if it looks a bit awkward.

[Belka_Teacher]

acapnotic, well, try to get used to it)))

[acapnotic]

Belka_Teacher, do I have to? I can always pretend I've never heard of those rules or have forgotten them. Ignorance is bliss. :)

[Belka_Teacher]

acapnotic, you're lucky then; I didn't have that choice.

[Yety]

Disgusting!

Yep. It's just gross. And has always been. Barf!

[Mary May]

acapnotic,
I do understand you.
In Maths, you should always close the brackets if you opened them before - no matter how many of them there were in between. It seems quite logical. But what applies to Maths does not rule here, language having the laws of its own. What I will probably do to avoid the awkwardness that I, too, feel about it - is not putting "...?" at the end of the sentence.
Mastery of the art of compromise - that's what I call it ;)

[Yety]

language having the laws of its own

Or do you see it in a different way?
Hope you still don't mind the pernicketyYety mode, Mary.

[Belka_Teacher]

acapnotic, how about this one? )))

“Is He Living or Is He Dead?,” by Mark Twain, is one of my favorite stories.

http://www.thepunctuationguide.com/question-mark.html

[acapnotic]

Belka_Teacher, yes, it's even worse. What's so bad with the logical version? To me it looks much neater.

“Is He Living or Is He Dead?”, by Mark Twain, is one of my favorite stories.

[Belka_Teacher]

acapnotic, logic? You still believe in it after learning the pronunciation of 'colonel', 'tomb' and 'boatswain'? And what about articles? Why 'the Hague'? Why 'watch TV' but 'listen to the radio'? I don't trust logic anymore.

[Belka_Teacher]

Mary May, I am inviting you to my nest now))) No hurry - I will write there once a week, but I would appreciate your feedback when it is convenient.

[Mary May]

(1) Notice: this post was written and placed here for the sake of writing practice only, so I would highly appreciate that no more topic except language issues would be discussed here. Any comment on grammar/vocabulary/register will be gratefully accepted. Thank you for understanding.

(2) I've written this just as an exercise in writing and am putting it in the semi-privacy of my personal thread - so please leave aside other comments but on grammar/vocab/register. I will be happy to hear from you. Thank you.

I wrote these two to practise register, obviously, and to try to be more persuasive, too - as it appears to be a common practice just to repeat the very same thing again and again to make it right (more right! - fogive me the intended inaccuracy).
Does it work, really? We'll see.
But, what is important: I really mean it. I mean both written above and below.

Well, let's start.
With this post, I'm stepping on a slippery slope of turning into Cassandra - with the difference of me putting forward the unpleasant events that already happened - but equally appreciated, I'm afraid.
Yesterday, March 28, was just one month since the forum opened (or, re-opened) - our first birthday, so to say. The day was marked with a furious row which ended up with one of the nicest persons I've ever known and the one I love here on the forum the best leaving the forum, upset and humiliated. To be more exact/precise (?), the conflict had been lasting for a few days (not noticed by me) but reached its "happy ending" exactly at our one-month anniversary.
Congratulations mates, that's a good start!

But still - let's hope for the better. Try to.

[acapnotic]

to practise register, obviously; and to try to be more persuasive

I would replace the semicolon with a comma. What was your reason for it there?

- with the difference of me putting forward the unpleasant events that already happened; but equally appreciated, I'm afraid.

It looks like the semicolon mistakenly occupies the place of the second dash.

but reached its "happy end"

As far as I know "happy end" is actually a Russian idiom. Native speakers use "happy ending".

[Mary May]

but reached its "happy end"

As far as I know "happy end" is actually a Russian idiom. Native speakers use "happy ending".

Thank you for this remark - never paid attention to it, though definitely met hundreds of times.
As for punctuation, at the moment I don't feel I'm ready to digest anything of the sort as I've never read a tiny bit on it. So, to fully appreciate your notes on dashes and semi-colons I need some preparatory work to do first.
Though I trust you are right and I put the corrections you pointed out back into the text in bold.
But what to do when someone finds errors in the text I already wrote in bold? Nothing, I'm afraid.
Well, anyway - I'm practically out of time to edit already.

[Mary May]

the one I love here on the forum the best

Self-correction:
the one here on the forum I loved the best

[September]

Mary May

You're too kind to me. (And I'm touched beyond words)

Anyway, a couple of days of cat therapy combined with chocolate therapy worked wonders, and I realised I'm not ready to turn into a hermit (yet)).

[Mary May]

More corrections to # 66 and a few questions left

so to SPEAK - thanks to Yety
unnoticed - thanks to Yety
happy endING - - thanks to acapontic
one-month anniversary - might sound weird, agree, because of the Latin ANNUS, but who knows and - sadly - who cares? (so awfully sorry to hurt the feelings of our renowned yetimologist); though, if someone tells me how it could be put in a different way I'd be happy

Still questionable

Cassandra/a Cassandra
...on a slippery slope of turning into Cassandra - with the difference of me putting forward the unpleasant events that already happened - but equally appreciated, I'm afraid. - Is it clear from the sentence where " but equally appreciated" belongs?
the one I here on the forum love best - still struggling with word order

[Mary May]

I'm here today to write abt my first month on the forum though I have a bad feeling that my writing might go wrong and I end up with sth different. In case this happens, I'd like to start with thanking right now those who have given me a helping hand pointing at the mistakes I made in my writing.
They are (alphabetically): acapontic, Belka_Teacher, Kind_Punk and, of course, Yety. I'd also thank ivorfuzzle and zymbronia for contributing to the discussion, and September... for nth special here, but just for her kind and caring attitude in general.

I started this thread in the hope I write here regularly, preferably working alongside on a certain language issue from a coursebook - be it lexis, grammar or syntax. Unfortunately, nth of the sort happened as, all of a sudden, I found myself involved in a daily routine of correcting students' entries in the 100-day marathon here on the forum. Not in the least was it my intention from the start to join it, but what's done is done - I'm there. Though not in the way I'd like to, my job there, nevertheless, not only has made me write a line or two - as feedback to students' texts, but also has brought a kind of regularity in my appearances here on the forum - for good or for bad.

For good - because staying in contact with adult people sharing your interest in language development is a blessing in itself, of which those working on their own with kids are far too aware.
For bad - first of all, as it proved that "Не все спокойно в Датском королевстве" (forgive me for using Russian to quote the bard); then, it takes a little more time than I was ready to spend (though I'm sure I would manage it somehow in a while); and - the last and the least expected, perhaps - I started to feel too heavily into this forum, far deeper than I'd rather do.
Unlike the late efl.ru, which - for many of us - seemed to exist from the beginning of times and last forever (which sadly proved wrong, but that was exactly the feeling), our "new-born" forum is still a baby, desperately in need of care and protection. The "new" community, having lost a good number of its members - some of the "gurus" among them - seems to be more close-knit, not in the sense that all of us here share similar (or, at least, not strikingly opposite) principles, but in the extent to which every one of us here can make a difference - either rocking the boat or keeping calm and tolerant and helping each other.

Thank you for reading this.
Your comments/corrections/ improvements - whatever - are more than welcome.

[Belka_Teacher]

Mary May, I've read your post and haven't noticed anything I'd like to correct. Maybe I should re-read it in the morning, or maybe you've become more thorough thanks to your daily practise in error spotting)))

As for the last few paragraphs - I can't agree more! And I want to add that you do make a great difference, and it is definitely a positive one!

[Mary May]

What I see right now, is that I'm definitely overusing inverted commas (in "new-born" forum and, even more, in "new" community they could be well omitted);
and brackets, too;
and maybe dashes, too...
to say nothing of the dog...

[Belka_Teacher]

Mary May, well, your writing is rather informal, so it is OK)))