English for dummies

I am appalled, I tell you, simply appalled at the degradation of the English language in the hands of these cell phone users and their penchant for messaging. I suspect if Shakespeare had used SMS English, then Hamlet would be saying “2 b r not 2 b dats da qstn”. So in this post, I intend to take on the tough questions on the usage of English so that we may all write, like…you know, better or whatever. So here goes…

Q. I always get, confused by: punctuation and use. them inappropriately ? I am especially, confused, by comma, Can you talk about, where they should appear,
Ans: Bad punctuation has been the; undoing ‘ of many, otherwise great, writers (one name immediately comes to mind). But to answer your specific question, the comma has a lot of potential to be used inappropriately, for example, let’s take a sentence “I love dancing with you around, this club stinks though” and now move the comma around “I love dancing, with you around this club stinks though”.

As you can clearly see, a misplaced comma can turn a person from being great to dance with, to someone who has not heard of soap.

Q. Ok, can you also talk about where a colon should appear ?
Ans: Unlike commas, that can appear in the middle of a sentence, a colon does not have positional liberty. A colon always appears at the end of your intestine.

Q. I have never been able to understand why English has silent alphabets in some words. Can you explain ?
Ans: For this we would have to turn to the traditional rivalry between the French and the British. In order to assert the sophistication of the French language, the French decided that what they write and how they pronounce it will have no relationship whatsoever. And so they coined words like au revoir (pronounced: “aaau rrr r”), croissant (pronounced “croaaa...I will have a burger instead, thank you”) and lingerie (pronounced: “Wow”). The British, not to be outdone, rose to the challenge and immediately added a ‘p’ to ‘pneumonia’. I agree that pneumonia is a lot less appealing than lingerie but I guess that’s the best that they could come up with. Well, that and the spice girls (pronounced: “Wow”).

Q. If I write “What the hell is your problem”, should I end it with a question mark since it is not exactly a question ?
Ans: The grammatically correct way to write it is “Eat mud, numskull.”

Q. Is Indian English good or bad for English ?
Ans: Indian English is India’s revenge against 300 years of British colonial rule. Our grammar may be atrocious but that and all we can manage. Some English people are simply simply telling that our English is bad because they are not understanding our accent. To such people, we are to be telling “pshut up”

So there folks, I hope you are much better off at English now than before. Remember, good writing begins with good English. Make sure ur grammar iz rite and ur speling iz corect, if u do dis, then u will bcom a gr8 riter.