Irregardless of what you may believe its not a word. 
Grammar Nazi
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Well, in the "I can see" sentence, I would call "see" and "am" a compound verb structure after the subject "I" and hence would leave out the comma [that] you have in there.
I've gone too far, haven't I?
I believe "Should I have?" is a sentence as is "You should have.".
Irrespective of any other examples, may I place that amongst the lexicon of useless words?Irregardless of what you may believe its not a word.
Oh, wow.
My primary grammar problem is my misuse of the comma. A friend recently read something I wrote (not "I'd written"! Yay me!), said she liked it, but that she would not have used as many commas. I'm aware how disruptive trying to read through them can be and agreed with her that I need to work on that. She then said something which was very helpful, that when she's reading and comes to a comma, she hesitates. So, it's there to enforce a pause. I'm now trying to keep that in mind when using commas now.
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Not at all. As I said, editors rule
I love and adore mine.
Can you see me twitching?!
I was wondering if you spotted that, he did IT on purpose I bet. LOL
I wrote a book. Really, a novella. Friends and family loved it, even my version of Tabby, my wife, who's my most honest critic. But they all said it needed to be longer. So I made it longer and, in doing so, washed out its soul. But I didn't realize it at the time.Not at all. As I said, editors rule
Then a friend who's an editor, and I didn't even know that she was, offered to take a look at it. I gave her the new, unpreviewed, washed-out-soul version. A few days later, she bought me coffee and said, "The story has good bones." She said kind things the rest of the time, and it all added up to, "But the writing sucks."
I needed to hear it. Bless the editors. It must be nice to have a job where, to do well, you're forced to be honest.
He got me twice--irregardless and its!
You made me look this one up, Grandpa. Per Among vs. Amongst...(not that you said amongst is incorrect...)
You can use among and amongst interchangeably, but as Tania pointed out,among is more common in modern writing.
From Dr Grammar’s FAQs “Both are correct and mean the same, but among is more common.”
Some people try to distinguish between the two, but this really is a case when either word is valid. I’d recommend choosing whichever fits your piece of writing best: if you’re writing a fantasy story, or a piece of historical fiction, you might want:
- “As Tarquin stood amongst the great trees of the dark forest…”
- “If you’re among one of the biggest groups in society…”
- “Living among the Bush people taught me a lot…”
Did you ever show her the first one?
This made me think of another example of words that are commonly misused, i.e. who's and whose. Who's is a contraction for who is, whereas whose is the possessive case of who.
I think that when writing, the mind perceives those pauses and asides going by quicker than the reader will. So there's a disconnect there.
My general rule is to use commas for some short intro words ("well" but not "so"), for separating independent clauses joined by a coordinating conjunction, for setting off a dependent clause that precedes an independent one, to separate out a series (like this sentence), and to set off unnecessary clauses. And then I'll go through and take out some of the commas that separate out the unnecessary clauses, just to help improve flow.
i get tripped up on short introductory prepositional phrases. It's my Kryptonite. Well, that and generally sucky writing.
I did not. By the time we were talking, I had taken my 23,000-word page-turner story to a 55,000-word short book, was vaguely hoping it would be the Next Great American Novel, and that's what she saw.
You made me look!
And bless the writers who are willing to listen. I worked with one person who had a really good ear for dialogue, good grasp of grammar fundamentals, even a decent story idea, but she insisted on overwriting--describing events from several perspectives, using over-complex sentence structure, dredging the thesaurus to find the most obscure language for the simplest things. Apparently the goal was to sound 'smarter'; what those things actually did was to cover her own light under the proverbial bushel. It was frustrating, because she does have talent. Honest got me nowhere with her *sigh*
Until you put in "she," I was convinced that we'd had coffee.
I know that I continually revert in mind to my grammar school education, or what I perceive(d) it to be. Some things have changed, perhaps tons of them have. I'm unlearning a lot of things, I hope. One of them has to do with my assumptions about commas, or what might amount to the difference in comma terms with my past and present. I almost always want to use a comma after "So", as well as "Well", and whenever I sense a pause in my thinking when I'm writing. When I read what I've written, though, I don't like all of the commas (such as I just included around though), and it's a struggle to kill any of my babies.
Not incorrect. Just useless. It's just "among," with a little flatulence.