A Conversation for Project: An Introduction to Programming
Style, spelling and grammar
Amy the Ant - High Manzanilla of the Church of the Stuffed Olive Started conversation Jun 23, 2001
I have started this new thread so that we can keep points about the style, spelling and grammar separate from the other stuff.
Style, spelling and grammar
Amy the Ant - High Manzanilla of the Church of the Stuffed Olive Posted Jun 23, 2001
A few points on style based on my experience as a Scout and as an academic.
The sub-editor will change anything we write in the first person to the third person. To make this easier for everyone concerned, we should go through our writing now and rewrite all sentences that have the pronouns "I" or "we" in them.
It is my opinion that superfluous interjections such as "Now" and "Well" at the beginnings of sentences are unnecessary and detract from the overall crispness of the work. I have a similar opinion of the use "actually" and "basically" in formal written English. I suggest that we remove such words at this stage to simplify the editing process.
Brackets weaken writing by giving the impression that the author is uncertain or has disorganised thoughts. Can we reduce the number of brackets in use, please?
Amy the Ant
Style, spelling and grammar
Researcher PSG Posted Jun 23, 2001
The third person comment is fine.
However, I think we need to adopt an informal conversational style otherwise we will be Alienating a large portion of our aimed audience who would be freaked by an acedemic style. This is why I intentinally wrote it like that to try and in a non-techy way explain something which otherwise would be severly intimidating.
Researcher PSG
Style, spelling and grammar
Amy the Ant - High Manzanilla of the Church of the Stuffed Olive Posted Jun 23, 2001
I agree that we should not alienate our readers. However, a friendly style can be maintained without starting quite so many sentences with "Now".
Style, spelling and grammar
Researcher PSG Posted Jun 23, 2001
Possibly, but they shouldn't all be excised.
Style, spelling and grammar
Amy the Ant - High Manzanilla of the Church of the Stuffed Olive Posted Jun 23, 2001
Do your best to remove as many as you can.
Style, spelling and grammar
Amy the Ant - High Manzanilla of the Church of the Stuffed Olive Posted Jun 24, 2001
In the Introduction to Programming, the break after "...as it sounds." would be better as a full paragraph break.
In general, breaks are not used in Edited Guide Entries. Just review a few of the finished university projects.
Likewise you must decide whether the break before "So in order..." should be removed or upgraded to a full
The word "Alien" should be "alien". In general, your use of capital letters is not in accordance with the guidance given on this site.
You will not be surprised to hear that I would strongly urge you to remove the "So". You might think it is conversational but I think such meaningless interjections make the work look embarrassingly juvenile. Again, you won't find many in the Edited Projects.
I will make further comments on the rest when the content is more settled.
A spelling: easily not easly
In the content thread I have suggested that you reinstate the paragraph that you have attempted to split. However, I would point out that "These four steps are discussed in more detail below, also the effect of errors in such a plan are looked at." is a run-on sentence and, regrettably, ends in a preposition.
Style, spelling and grammar
Phreako Posted Jun 24, 2001
BAD SPELLERS OF THE WORLD UNTIE!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Style, spelling and grammar
Asteroid Lil - Offstage Presence Posted Jun 26, 2001
No no no... this is the Dyslexia Moor. You want the Speeling room, two doors down.
Key: Complain about this post
Style, spelling and grammar
- 1: Amy the Ant - High Manzanilla of the Church of the Stuffed Olive (Jun 23, 2001)
- 2: Amy the Ant - High Manzanilla of the Church of the Stuffed Olive (Jun 23, 2001)
- 3: Researcher PSG (Jun 23, 2001)
- 4: Amy the Ant - High Manzanilla of the Church of the Stuffed Olive (Jun 23, 2001)
- 5: Researcher PSG (Jun 23, 2001)
- 6: Amy the Ant - High Manzanilla of the Church of the Stuffed Olive (Jun 23, 2001)
- 7: Amy the Ant - High Manzanilla of the Church of the Stuffed Olive (Jun 24, 2001)
- 8: Phreako (Jun 24, 2001)
- 9: Asteroid Lil - Offstage Presence (Jun 26, 2001)
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