To administrators/moderators and such: Please move this thread to it's proper location if it is wrongly placed, but I consider this to be a good place since most of the "bad" threads are being posted here. I also searched for similar thread but could not find any, so I hope this is not a repost.
I see more and more on these forums using worse and worse English. Some I even consider to be written in languages unknown to mankind. Therefore I hereby present to you all:
The Dummies/Foreigners Guide to: Proper English
Index:
[1] Capital Letters
[2] Punctuation
[1] Capital Letters
In proper English language, capital letters are being used in the beginning of sentences as well as in nouns such as names of people and places, as well as the first word in a sentence.
For example, the name John would be spelled with a capital "j" since "j" is the first letter in the word John and John is the name of a person.
A capital can also be used in the middle of a sentence if it represents yourself, as in "I".
For example: "Did I talk to you?"
However, you do not say "Me" or "ME".
It may also be used in the middle of a sentence when you are talking about a constitution.
For example: "Did you go to church last sunday?"
This example indicates church as in the building.
"The pope is the head of the Church."
This sentence indicates the Church as the constitution.
To recap all of what we've learned in this lesson:
-Capital letters are used in the beginning of sentences
-Capital letters are used when naming people and places
-Capital letters are used when talking about yourself
-Capital letters are used when talking about a constitution
Here is a sentence using all of these newly learned rules:
"Was Paulus VI head of the Church in the 1960's or am I completly wrong?"
[2] Punctuation
Punctuation is very important because other wise, you sentences would just go on and on and on. To end a sentence you put a little dot called a period. The period looks like a regular dot, ".".
Another important punctuation mark is the question mark. The question mark looks like this: "?" and expresses a request or a wonder.
For example: Could you pass me the salt, please?
This sentence clearly marks a request.
To continue this lesson on punctuation marks, we'll add the exclamation mark. It looks like this: "!", and clearly marks something the author might want to scream or point out in the text.
For example: "What the f***!"
This sentence clearly marks that the author of this sentence wants to yell this at someone. In other cases, as i stated earlier, exclamation marks can be used to point out a part in a text.
For example: "He was naked!"
This sentence makrs out that the fact that he was naked is important to the meaning of the complete text.
The least used of all punctuation marks is the comma (","). When do I use the comma, you migth say. Well, the comma is most offtenly used when it links two sentences or clauses.
For example: "He was naked, I believe."
My English might not be the best around these forums but I'm trying to help alot of newcomers to spell/write correctly. This is also a shorter version of the guide i first intended to write, but I just didn't have the energy to complete it.
Might be some spelling and/or explaining mistakes but I'm still in school, learning.
Thank you for reading.
Kind Regards,