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Basic Sentence Structure: Additive Sentences

@Gower is created a guide for how so write good for proper sentence making and so thank him for it even if u don't need of it like.as good as me.

Finally

In fact, we can even use this thread as Professor Gower's Office Hours.  Any CYS subject who needs sentence structure suggestions for any reason at all, post here, and I'll happily offer my two cents.  It's got to be more interesting than whatever I actually have to grade.

I just have one question.
Is she IS, or is she AIN'T my baby.

Professor, over here! A question!

Some people think lists should have a comma before the "and" and some don't.

You failed to mention what you think, and as your opinion is likely more educated in relevant matters I'm sure people would appreciate additional guidance.

References

• [1] Gower, 2019, Basic Sentence Structure: Additive Sentences, HALOGEN STUDIOS, viewed 3 September 2019 GMT+11, Article Number 4315

I am a strong advocate of the Oxford, otherwise known as the serial comma.  It helps you avoid problems like the below:

I went to the store and bought firecrackers, razor blades, fertilizer, macaroni and cheese.

That sentence, at first glance, looks like I have purchased four things, because "macaroni and cheese" seems like one item. 

But if I wrote

I went to the store and bought firecrackers, razor blades, fertilizer, macaroni, and cheese.

The extra comma after macaroni makes it obvious on first reading that those are two different things.

 

In short, it can't hurt, and sometimes it will make a sentence clearer.  But you have to be consistent.  Are you a free-wheeling, devil-may-care Oxford comma ignorer?  Or are you a straight-shooting, clarity-seeking Oxford comma user?

 

Without trying to knock what Gower said:

There is no one list of approved grammar rules for the English language. In fact, there are several "style guides" that different editors may employ; one corporation that I once worked for had its own style guide for internal/external communications.

Using the "Oxford comma" or not using are both 100% correct. Like Gower I am a proponent of using it, because it adds clarity. But I have dealt with an editor who removed it from my articles because he didn't like using the Oxford comma. There seems to be an opposing school of thought that commas are rare and precious, and should be used as sparingly as possible.

It often comes down to how people were taught in school; if they learned a particular rule one way, they will become OCD about until the day they die.

Definitely.  A lot of this stuff is just manners, and no more objective than rules for how to dress at a wedding.  Anyone who gets uptight about "the rules" of stuff like the Oxford comma should be roundly mocked.

Hey. At least I have written two sentences right lol. For me, that's a great step beyond.  I think that I am improving. Sort of.

Thanks Gower. I ended up correcting all the dialogue punctuation on my first storygame after your first article. This one's extremely helpful as well. Now I need to take care of the headache mizal's sentence caused me.

Great article; this and the one about dialogue punctuation should be mandatory reading. Before you create your very first storygame on this site, you should be required to score at least 95% on a Gower-administered English test.

The dialogue punctuation usage here never ceases to amaze me, because it seems like 98% of the kids here do it incorrectly in the exact same way.

"I am going to the store." He said.

"Great. Bring me back some bananas." She said.

Doesn't anybody read anymore? I learned to write by reading and absorbing the styles and techniques of the writers I liked. For the people who might be scared off by the idea of thinking of a sentence of a mechanical structure, with certain parts that need to be in a specific location for the entire thing to work, the "intuitive approach" may be a good substitute: read something good, and then imitate the technique.

The problem, though, might be that too many people are reading things off the internet... most of which never undergoes the editorial process. Therefore instead of Hemingway, the kiddos are reading some hack with a well-read blog or something, and thus we are witnessing the birth of an entire generation with no concept of grammar.

I would totally agree with you about the birth of an entire generation with no concept of grammar, except that I recently came across someone writing practically the same thing about people in the 14th century, and then *another* piece in the 16th century.  I guess this is a perennial issue.

And the one in the fourteenth century also complained about people wearing tight clothes that showed their butts off too much!  Even then, the leggings-as-pants issue plagued us.

In the 14th and 16th centuries, were the complaints about people writing in Latin? My understanding is that standardized spelling in English didn't come about until the 19th century; even Shakespeare spelled words inconsistently.

As for the leggings-as-pants: I assume the complaint back then was against men.

Yes, against men, particularly two color leggings.  I'll dig up the quotation when I can find it.

The complaints were more about vocabulary than spelling--using words words taken from other languages or using them in the wrong contexts--being snooty about taking words from French or "inkhorn," overly scholarly words. 

Chaucer famously makes fun of how people from the North talk, too, seeing them as total hicks.

To be fair, two color leggings are even more retarded than regular leggings--if such a thing is possible.

Tbf I read a shit ton of books growing up, and had the same dialogue stuff I'm always correcting everyone on here hammered into me only when I started posting writing online, in high school.

I'm hypersensitive to it now but just never noticed it until then. When a kid is reading a book they're not usually paying attention to the punctuation, they're imagining the story. And schools just don't teach this stuff.

At least you're somewhat self-aware.