All Nonfiction
- Bullying
- Books
- Academic
- Author Interviews
- Celebrity interviews
- College Articles
- College Essays
- Educator of the Year
- Heroes
- Interviews
- Memoir
- Personal Experience
- Sports
- Travel & Culture
All Opinions
- Bullying
- Current Events / Politics
- Discrimination
- Drugs / Alcohol / Smoking
- Entertainment / Celebrities
- Environment
- Love / Relationships
- Movies / Music / TV
- Pop Culture / Trends
- School / College
- Social Issues / Civics
- Spirituality / Religion
- Sports / Hobbies
All Hot Topics
- Bullying
- Community Service
- Environment
- Health
- Letters to the Editor
- Pride & Prejudice
- What Matters
- Back
Summer Guide
- Program Links
- Program Reviews
- Back
College Guide
- College Links
- College Reviews
- College Essays
- College Articles
- Back
A Guide for the Grammatically Impaired (Sarcasm at It's Best)
Hello poor, ignorant reader. Let me guess. You are reading this because you are pathetic at grammar, and need someone extremely intelligent to explain it to you. You have come to the right place. I will try to dumb it down.
Capitalization: As a general rule, you should capitalize the start of every sentence, and names. The exceptions to this rule are multiple, however. If IMing or texting, capitalizing the beginning of a sentence can seem pretentious, and if you were as smart as I am, you would know nobody likes a pretentious person. Also, when IMing or texting, capitalizing a person’s name could imply you care for them more than the people you don’t capitalize, which could lead to unpleasant rumors the next day at school. If you prefer to appear aloof and rebellious, you really shouldn’t capitalize anything. But that is your choice. Something else you should remember about capitals is that capitalizing more than one letter in a row is either abbreviating or shouting. In some situations, it can even be interpreted as sarcasm. You really should take care to portray the correct tone. Finally, if you alternate capitalized letters and lowercase within a word, it makes your speech seem shallow, and overrides the point you were trying to make. Unless of course, the point you were trying to make is that you are a silly teenaged girl, which may be what you were going for in the first place.
Nouns: A noun is a person, place or thing. Use them when you occasionally break attention from yourself and want to talk about something worthwhile.
Adverbs and Adjectives: Adverbs and Adjectives modify verbs and nouns, respectively. They should describe, bring attention to or emphasize the noun or verb, and/or make it funny. A noun can also be used as an adverb or adjective, as long as it is preceded by “all” or “so”. For example, the following sentence would be acceptable. “I crept up on him all ninja.” Additionally, you can make up any word you want to be an adverb or adjective, as long as you are smart, pretty, popular, well liked, funny, or generally cool. Some guidelines for this are combining synonyms to serve your purpose, adding “ish” or “ly” to an existing word, putting your word in quotation marks, and/or explaining the meaning in parenthesis. Please do not attempt this if you are a nerd, a teacher’s pet, or an overall weirdo. It could be harmful to your school life.
Punctuation (within the sentence): When IMing or texting, commas should be avoided. Any break needed can and should be formed by a colon, a semicolon, or an emoticon. Emoticons are very helpful for breaking up a sentence while still conveying a thought, allowing you to blab on for longer without being faulted with a run-on sentence. However, when writing for school, use lots of commas, and avoid extremely long sentences as well as emoticons. Teachers like that.
Punctuation (at the end of a sentence): For your convenience, I have attached a list of punctuation marks you can use at the end of a sentence, as well as their meanings.
!: I am excited, mad, scared, or hyper.
.: I am making a statement, mad, or bored.
?: I am asking a question. Warning – it may be sarcastic or rhetorical. Practice recognizing the intention of the writer.
Emoticons can also be used as end marks, and they should convey the mood of the sentence.
Prepositional phrases: These can be used to tell a location, such as “I left my lip-gloss in my drawer.” In my drawer would be the prepositional phrase. They can be placed alone in a sentence, but if you are hoping to get a lot across in one sentence, because I’m sure you have oh so many important things to say, prepositions can be placed in parenthesis.
I’m sure this guide has changed your life for the better, but there is no need to drop to your knees and thank me profusely. It’s just what I do.
Professor Grammar
Similar Articles
JOIN THE DISCUSSION
This article has 22 comments.
