Autobiographical Incident

Nona,

I'm not defending the word "gourmet"; I am merely defending my right to invent new words.

Julielai,

(I assume you mean "marked", not "market"?)

Yes, you assume correctly. Please note that I had corrected your prior post too, which had a few typos. You'll see an "edited" comment in your post without the date and time stamp. It was corrected last night. I easily understood your message, so I took the liberty of quickly correcting a couple typos. I could make a further comment, but I'll stop here.

MountainHiker

Julielai,

I am not sure where you want to take this conversation.

Let me state my position clearly.

You are more than welcome in the forum. Your participation is encouraged, especially when helping others learn English. Please keep in mind that many people reading this forum are learning English as a second language and non-standard English only serves to confuse them. From what I have seen, you do have a strong command of English and are capable of providing excellent assistance.

That said, if I find that you have zigged when you should have zagged, I am going to comment. This is not meant to be harsh. Rather, I am clarifying your post so that other people learning the language can more readily understand. When I goof, I am fully accepting of others, including you, correcting my errors. We can all continue to learn. No big deal.

The whole purpose of this forum is to create a community of people helping people. There are two strong guiding principles. One, the person who is providing advice should have a reasonable grasp of English. And two, everyone should contribute to a strong sense of community. The latter principle is most important.

I have zero desire to play typo tag with you. I find that wasteful.

I hope you find this message beneficial.

MountainHiker

Julielai,

As far as the socioeconomic aspects of your post are concerned, I have no opinion. I don't care if the person I am helping is rich or poor; black or white or yellow or purple or any other color. I don't care about their nationality nor their upbringing. I don’t care about the person is a he or she, short or tall, thin or fat. I don't care about their previous teachers or their prior experiences. I don't care about their past essays or their past marks. I don't care if they skipped school or were writing champions. None of this makes any difference to me.

All I care about in this forum is that people learn by putting forward a strong effort. While content is important, a student needs to learn the basics as well. Without the basic constructs, students are unable to express more complex thoughts in a coherent and easily understood fashion. And unfortunately, when we have gaffes in our writing, other people notice our gaffes and then tend to dismiss the rest of our message. Fair or not, that’s reality.

So I am going to continue to emphasize correctness. I am not going to skip over something that is overtly incorrect because most of us can decipher the author’s true intent. I am going to call it out and correct it. It’s important.

Judging by the reaction your post has received, you can see that correctness plays an important role. Inappropriate or incorrect words catch people’s attention.

So this isn’t just a different opinion or different point of view. Rather, this is about trying your best. If you know something is incorrect, then change it. I reject argument that content is more important than grammatical structure because the latter is just mechanics. They are both important and you need to do both well in order to communicate effectively.

MountainHiker

Julielai,

If you have a question about tenses, then by all means ask away.

You've expressed your point of view and I've expressed mine. Though I don't agree with your viewpoint on grammar versus content, I do think you put forward your arguments in a well written fashion. I think that is fair.

I know your position, and you know mine.

Peace!

MountainHiker