Dear Bjorn-
Hello. I am not sure if you have read any of my posts yet. I have read many of yours. Please accept me as a well-meaning person who would like to help you.
You make many interesting points. Although I may not agree with you on many of them, I concede that they are usually thought-provoking. I welcome any posts that help me look at the world (including the English language) in a new way. You are also often very funny, and I appreciate that.
Unfortunately, your method of expressing yourself in writing interferes with my comprehension of what you have to say.
I would like to suggest that if you improved your grammar, sentence structure, punctuation, and capitalization, the other posters on this board would be happy to debate with you–not debate about you.
One of the most common criticisms of your posts that I have seen is that you often make statements that are illogical. Your seeming unwillingness to attempt to improve your writing lends credence to the notion that you, yourself, have difficulties with logic.
You have often expressed wonderment at the reluctance of the other posters to take you seriously. An example of this is that your “sarcasm, name-calling…” thread was moved immediately to the pit, even though you were making a sincere attempt to discuss sarcasm as a linguistic device and whether it has a place on a board devoted to fighting ignorance. You seem reluctant to accept what others have stated-that your largely incomprehensible writing makes it impossible to have a reasonable “Great Debate.”
You have expressed to Bucky, who so kindly offered to help you improve your written English, that you would be interested in some help.
Here are some preliminary pointers:
–In English, the pronoun that you use to refer to yourself is always capitalized. You say “I went to the store,” not “i went to the store.”
–In English, the first word of a sentence is capitalized. You say “The sky is blue,” not “the sky is blue.”
–Try not to use sentence fragments. “oh yes, the reason i wanted to keep this thread in the debates,” should be “Oh, yes. That is the reason I wanted to keep this thread in Great Debates.” (“Oh, yes.” is not a sentence fragment. It is considered an exclamation."
–Contractions should have apostrophes in them. “It is” is contracted to “it’s,” not “its.” “That is” is contracted to “that’s,” not “thats.” “Do not” is contracted to “don’t,” not “dont.” If you are unsure of your contractions, don’t use them. Or, to put it another way, do not use them. Although we English-speakers almost always use contractions in speech, we often do not use them in writing. In fact, contractions are considered incorrect in formal written English. This board generally uses informal written English, of course, but using the more formal construction is never incorrect.
Good luck, Bjorn, and I look forward to reading your improved posts.
–Green Bean
