GRAMMAR NOTE - especially for those who post multi-paragraph quotes:

[bertha katzenengel]

Please don't presume I have a superior attitude. I promise, I don't. I do, however, confess to being irritated - but that is my own problem.

I just figure some folks might not know exactly how to use quotation marks when quoting multiple consecutive paragraphs. (It can sometimes make it hard to follow a long post - what's in the article/editorial, and what's the OP's own writing?)

"When quoting multiple consecutive paragraphs of text, be sure to follow this hard and fast rule:

"Begin each paragraph with quote marks.

"Do not close every paragraph with quote marks.

"The only paragraph which should have both open and close quotes is the final paragraph being quoted."

Now:

"If you quote a paragraph, then have something of your own to say, and then wish to quote another paragraph, be sure to close the quotes around the first paragraph."

Then make your own comments.

"Then continue quoting the text.

"Remember, the only paragraph that gets both opening and closing quotation marks is the final paragraph you quote."

I probably not have explained this very well. I'm not a grammar scholar but I am, unfortunately, a grammar queen -- meaning only that I get irritated.

Take this with a grain of salt. If anyone takes offense at this grammar note, you might need it for your :popcorn:. :shrug:

[bertha katzenengel]

1. Should I post this in GD?

:suicide: ?

[WCGreen]

3. Fuck it.....

I say send it over....

[RebelOne]

2. I think this will fall on deaf ears.

I don't even bother to correct the grammar, spelling and punctuation errors that I see here on these forums. I'm an a copy editor and I cringe when I see the mistakes.

[Left_Winger]

4. I'm a language teacher and I feel the same way

I teach a foreign language but before I can even begin to teach the second language, I must teach English grammar to my students as they have never been taught this before, only "Language Arts"; which, in my opinion, does not amount to very much.

[hfojvt]

8. but it's an art

not a science. It only needs to be understood, not correct, nicht wahr?

[Left_Winger]

11. Yeah, I know what you mean

you know?

:sarcasm:

[hfojvt]

9. Yeah? Yeah?

"I'm an a copy editor" looks like it contains an error to me.
"Carry out the prime directive! Carry out the prime directive!"
"and so's your old man!"

:woohoo:

[RebelOne]

15. You are correct. I typed quickly and did not proofread it.

I will repeat: I am a copy editor.

[LaurenG]

5. Thanks for the tip

I don't think I remember a thing about quotation marks. While we are on the subject can someone explain whom and who simply?

[hfojvt]

6. sure

before 1965 use whom sometimes, lord knows when or where or why. After 1965 it is always who - everytime, everywhere, except at the beginning of letters that start "to whom it may concern ..."

[halobeam]

7. Only if it "irritates" someone.

Now here's my winkie smiley, because I am just needling you Bertha.
;)

I don't remember the rules of punctuation either. I get the basics, but have not had much call for using it, until these last few years on the web. I graduated over 25 years ago, so it's been a while.

I actually appreciate the lesson though, and I think that may come with age too!:hi:

[bertha katzenengel]

10. Halobeam, I have had so many lessons here on DU and on other MBs --

I have been taken to school many times and have embarrassed myself, too. I think my irritation comes from the amount that I read. I read a lot. Not that others don't, but my point is that that is largely where I've rec'd my education -- just from reading. So what I know is by example but not by teaching. Also, my writing tends to be stilted. Literally, as if I were walking on stilts -- choppy, tentative, wobbly, and sometimes crashing badly to earth.

Anyway, I'm rambling. Dammit, I am coming up with so many great characters & ideas, so many cool tidbits of dialog, for a book I want to write - yet I whittle my time away in MBs. Focus, focus, focus!

/ramble

:blush:

:hi: hb!

[Tyrone Slothrop]

14. "Whom" is objective, "who" is subjective (or nominative)

Basically, you use "whom" when you would normally use him, us, me, etc., and you use "who" when you would normally use he, we, I.

For instance: You gave it to whom? (here, whom is the object of the preposition).

Or,

Who gives you the right? (Here, "who" is the subject of the sentence. Hence, you use "who", the subjective or nominative case.)

This makes a lot more or less sense depending on what rules of grammar you already know...

If you need further elucidation, ask and I'll try to help.

[LaurenG]

18. Thank you very much

I am sure that at one time I had to have known that but after years of under-use it was not a memory I could retrieve. Thanks again.

[bhunt70]

12. I didn't know that... thanks for the tip.

[crispini]

13. Or, when quoting articles on DU, just use the oh-so-wonderful ...

DIV tag! Available in the HTML lookup table under "block quotes." It makes it very, very apparent that

This is what you are quoting

and this is part of your commentary

and this is a quote again!

[bertha katzenengel]

16. Ooh! Handy tags!

TY!

[AnarchoFreeThinker]

17. I wonder if you meant to use em dashes instead of those hyphens.

(just giving ya the business)


:D