![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Hello, world!
Aug. 17th, 2005 01:20 pmHow is everyone today?
I slept shamefully late this morning. When I did awaken, I grabbed Eats, Shoots & Leaves and finished reading it. Then I got up, ate breakfast, and sat down at the piano since I hardly had time to do so yesterday. Since then I've been reading Strunk & White's The Elements of Style. Yeah, not exactly pleasure reading...But I have this gnawing feeling that every good English teacher should have read it from cover to cover at least once. So that is what I intend to do. Whether or not it will improve my style and grammar, I am not entirely certain. Grammar to me is so much a matter of what "sounds right" and "looks right." Conciseness is key. I've always thought this viewpoint must be one of ignorance and a failure to properly learn the hard-and-fast rules – or a failure to know what to call them. I've never been adept in spouting terms like "subordinate clause," "gerund," and "verbal participle."
Through reading Eats, Shoots & Leaves and now Elements, I am realizing that grammar isn't as inflexible as I used to think. Its finer points often hinge on personal preference. And after all, the original rules were created by people: they're not carved in stone. All of this makes me feel a little more confident in my interpretations of the correctness of language.
Goal for today: assemble at least a rough syllabus for one of my classes. (Probably Basic Comp.) Hold me to it, someone – please?
I slept shamefully late this morning. When I did awaken, I grabbed Eats, Shoots & Leaves and finished reading it. Then I got up, ate breakfast, and sat down at the piano since I hardly had time to do so yesterday. Since then I've been reading Strunk & White's The Elements of Style. Yeah, not exactly pleasure reading...But I have this gnawing feeling that every good English teacher should have read it from cover to cover at least once. So that is what I intend to do. Whether or not it will improve my style and grammar, I am not entirely certain. Grammar to me is so much a matter of what "sounds right" and "looks right." Conciseness is key. I've always thought this viewpoint must be one of ignorance and a failure to properly learn the hard-and-fast rules – or a failure to know what to call them. I've never been adept in spouting terms like "subordinate clause," "gerund," and "verbal participle."
Through reading Eats, Shoots & Leaves and now Elements, I am realizing that grammar isn't as inflexible as I used to think. Its finer points often hinge on personal preference. And after all, the original rules were created by people: they're not carved in stone. All of this makes me feel a little more confident in my interpretations of the correctness of language.
Goal for today: assemble at least a rough syllabus for one of my classes. (Probably Basic Comp.) Hold me to it, someone – please?
