As I’ve said before, I’m treating these memes as an opportunity to correct poor English, so even though memes in general have certain sloppy, well-known conventions like writing in sentence fragments or leaving off periods, I’ll be calling these things out here as a way of highlighting and correcting bad English in general. Because I love you and want you to learn.
So! What problems do you see? Scroll down for my opinion.
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Lack of period: The very first problem is in the text above the image. Where’s the damn period? End your statements and declarations with periods, please. There’s no shame in having a period. In fact, you might even start to like having periods; they can be bloody helpful. In saying this, I’m talking mostly about formal writing or even emails, which can be quite informal. If you’re texting on your phone, well, these days, “texting English” is practically its own language, so I’d never criticize anyone for dropping periods or using wird, shrtnd spllgs 2 get a pt acrss qckly. I’m guilty of taking shortcuts myself when I text.
The circled sentence has two problems. First, there’s once again a missing period. Second, we have what is called a comma splice. This is when you separate two independent clauses with just a comma instead of either (1) a comma-conjunction or (2) a semicolon—as would be proper. To understand these concepts, we need to back up and talk about (1) what clauses are and (2) different types of sentences.
(1) Clauses
A clause is a group of words with a subject (person or thing doing the action) and a related predicate (the verb-y, action-y/state-y part of the sentence). It can be as short as Fred exploded. In that clause (which is also a sentence), Fred is the subject and exploded is the predicate. In the sentence The students ate their teacher, the noun phrase The students is the subject, and ate their teacher is the predicate. This is a clause.
An independent clause is a complete thought that can stand on its own, which is why it’s called independent. The above example sentence is an independent clause. You can join two independent clauses together in a sentence with a comma plus a coordinating conjunction (the FANBOYS: for, and, nor, but, or, yet, so) or with a semicolon.
The cat had been crushed, for Phil had gotten heavy. (comma-for)
The cat had been crushed, and Phil realized he’d gotten heavy. (comma-and)
The cat had not been crushed, nor had Phil gotten heavy. (comma-nor) [Note how, with nor, there’s a word-order change for the subject and verb.]
The cat had been crushed, but Phil didn’t realize he’d gotten heavy. (comma-but)
The cat had been crushed, or Phil had sat on a Ziploc bag filled with raw meat. (comma-or)
The cat had not been crushed, yet Phil realized he’d gotten heavy. (comma-yet)
The cat had been crushed, so Phil realized he’d gotten heavy. (comma-so)
The cat had been crushed; Phil realized he’d gotten heavy. (semicolon)
If I had written
The cat had been crushed, Phil realized he’d gotten heavy. (comma-and)
—that would have been a comma splice. An error. A lot of famous writers do this, and their editors don’t have the stones to correct these authors’ prose.
JK Rowling:
Nobody in my family’s magic at all, it was ever such a surprise when I got my letter, but I was ever so pleased, of course, I mean, it’s the very best school of witchcraft there is, I’ve heard—I’ve learned all our course books by heart, of course, I just hope it will be enough—I’m Hermione Granger, by the way, who are you?
Just awful. I can kind of see why Rowling might write in this breathless way to express Hermione’s nerdy and earnest personality, but Rowling’s heptalogy offers dozens more examples of her comma-splicing tendencies. It’s a bad habit for her.
GRR Martin:
Khal Drogo has a thousand horses, tonight he looks for a different sort of mount.
Another comma splice, and Martin commits this sin often, too, like Rowling. Let’s fix these, shall we? One grammar blogger already fixed Rowling’s text quite well:
Nobody in my family’s magic at all, so it was ever such a surprise when I got my letter. I was ever so pleased, of course; I mean, it’s the very best school of witchcraft there is, I’ve heard. I’ve learned all our course books by heart, of course, but I just hope it will be enough. I’m Hermione Granger, by the way; who are you?
Thank you, Nitpicker’s Nook. I think Hermione’s breathlessness still comes through. Don’t be sloppy like Rowling just because you think your sloppiness better conveys mood or meaning. A lot of people use exceptions and edge cases in grammar rules to justify poor writing; it’s a lot like the devil citing scripture for his purpose. That way lies stupidity. And more sloppiness. Is there such a thing as creative license? Of course—ask James Joyce and his godawful, stream-of-consciousness prose (Tralala tralaladdy!). But such license needs to be used sparingly so as not to make one’s prose unreadable. And here’s my fix for Martin:
Khal Drogo has a thousand horses; tonight, he looks for a different sort of mount.
Improper punctuation is the bane of even the most famous among us. But let us slaughter and eat these sacred cows before moving on.
(2) Different Types of Sentences
As for sentence types, here are the main ones:
simple sentences
compound sentences
complex sentences
compound-complex sentences
Without going into too much detail, I can say that we worked with the first two types—simple and compound sentences—today. Simple sentences have only one clause. Compound sentences have two (or more) independent clauses. We didn’t get into complex or compound-complex sentences, which are a mix of independent and dependent (or subordinate) clauses.
I should mention, though, that simple sentences can have more than one subject and more than one predicate and still be just one clause.
Bill stared at the wood nymph. (simple sentence—1 actor, 1 action)
Ted stared at the wood nymph. (simple sentence—1 actor, 1 action)
Bill and Ted stared at the wood nymph. (simple sentence, compound subject—2 actors, 1 action)
Bill and Ted stared at the nymph and chewed their Doritos absently. (simple sentence, compound subject, compound predicate—2 actors, 2 actions)
The above are all simple sentences, i.e., they have only one clause. But
Gilbert whittled an arrow, and Melanie laid out the Claymore mines.
—that’s two clauses. Subject-verb, and subject-verb. (Gilbert whittled; Melanie laid out)
*If I stumble upon a meme that lets me talk about complex sentences, I’ll do so here in the free Substack. Otherwise, subscribe to the paid Substack, and I’ll talk about sentence types eventually. Short quizzes and such can be found in my paid Substack with each post, and there will soon be a site devoted exclusively to quizzing and testing. Patience. For the Jedi, it is time to eat as well.