Monday, February 18, 2013

Grammar? What am you talking about?

     Earlier this week we got a handout about the liberties an author is allowed to take with grammar to make their works better. This is largely because normal people don't talk using the grammatical conventions we learn in school. This is especially true for people who write in colloquialisms form way back when, or who use modern informal speech. Further room for experimentation comes into play when a writer experiments with funny accents.
     And then there's sentence fragments, a major grammatical faux-pas. For example, when you are asked, "Why aren't you eating?", grammar dictates that the proper response is "I am not eating because I am not hungry."

HOWEVER!

     Who actually says things like that? Most people would say something like, "Eh, not really hungry." or, like me, "No reason." That's like sacrilege or something. And while we're on that, like, subject; there's stuttering and catching. This isn't particularly common in the written word unless they have a lithp or other s-s-s-speech impediment. In normal speech, people aren't practiced orators, so they can repeat themselves or other... stuff.

1 comment:

  1. I do this all the time. I feel like I used to be smarter when I was younger and not so exposed to colloquialism.

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