It sounds like we're all "on the same page".

I see what you did there.

Oh yeah this tilts me. Some friends of mine on a movie discussion board have shortened this to "That's Ed" and we write it all the time as a joke.

My understanding is that that the normal way to punctuate with respect to quotation marks in Britain, so it's not as if you're out on a perilously tenuous limb.

I do it too. No one except my spell checker has ever tried to "correct" me.

You guys should like this.

bin all ready posted not alot of "time" ago

The misuse of your/you're on here is quite shocking.

Funniest is when it happens in strategy posts. Some guys can calculate complicated odds in seconds yet don't know the difference.

I tend to put the punctuation inside the quotation marks. The only times I switch are when it's going to be really annoying or confusing. If it is just a comma, it will probably be going inside the end quotation mark.

Also, this has been mentioned in the thread before, but I really am disliking the following from my fellow English teachers, "Please put the page number next to the quote you write in your assignment."

I dislike the passive tense. The previous sentence is superior to: "The passive tense is disliked by me."

It's not passive tense, it's passive voice (as opposed to active voice). It has its place and is a matter of taste. Sometimes it can just lend a different cadence to the author's expression. I like "I was struck by a thought" rather than "A thought struck me". "I was robbed", rather than "Someone robbed me." You may disagree.

Every part of speech has its uses and there's often more than one way to skin a cat. Onomatopeia, litotes, even ablative absolutes...they can all come in handy at times.

If all I knew about a person was that she hated those phrases, I would think she was pretty cool and smart. Is this true?

Art teacher, pretty cool and smart. Good call.

Reading book reviews from my freshmen students. Here's a couple new malapropisms maybe?

"As a pose to going to the other school..."

"His up-in coming..."

Comic book fans: Anyone notice the similar mistake in Brian Michael Bendis's book Alias? The main character says "as supposed to" at one point. And no, it's not intentional or humorous, it's just a mistake.

I was shocked when I read that. Shocked that a good writer would type it, and even more shocked that Marvel Comics and its editors would let it slip through.

She said that!

I don't get this. Are there any American English usage guides that say it's acceptable to do otherwise?
Maybe I'm missing something. I'm really curious.

You do teach in the US, right?

Yeah, I don't understand why this rule, out of hundreds of punctuation and grammatical rules, is being singled out as a matter of taste that you can disregard.

That's what was said by her!

Will someone please help me here? Rate these sentences from from most correct to least correct, with 1 being most correct.
1. That must be awful; being wrong in the process of giving someone an English lesson.
2.That must be awful, being wrong in the process of giving someone an English lesson.
3.That must be awful: being wrong in the process of giving someone an English lesson.

I'm no expert, but my choice would be 2,3,1.

I don't like #1 because I was taught (and it seems a good rule of thumb) that each side of a semi-colon should be able to stand alone as a sentence. The semi-colon simply indicates the close connection between the two statements.

#2 feels most natural (to me...again, no expert) but the use of the colon in #3 doesn't look wrong to me...it just seems a little forced or unnatural. I usually think of a colon as a pointer to list or to a sentence fragment that serves as supporting evidence for the statement preceding it.

Having recently read a few books on grammar, I've backed off from the "right or wrong" mindset a bit. I now look at a sentence and see if it flows and conveys the thought the author is trying to get across. A main consideration is to avoid ambiguity and I don't think any of these sentences are ambiguous, but the semi-colon in #1 kind of acts like a roadblock to me as a I read it.

If a writer can get a clear message across to the reader in a manner that flows naturally, he has done his job. If someone else counts "points off" for using the wrong punctuation mark, that's really his problem.

2>>>>>>>>>>3>1

#1 is just outright wrong. #3 would be OK if it started with something like "Here's the most awful thing:"

Although #1 does have 2 spaces after the period, and everyone knows that you're supposed to have 2 spaces there, so that does help #1's case.

I also prefer #2. But I would probably write one of these:

"It must be awful to be wrong in the process of giving someone an English lesson"

"There's an awful irony in giving someone an English lesson using incorrect grammar."

My humble contribution:

"It must be awful to be wrong when giving someone an English lesson."

PJ-

I just couldn't bring myself to reading this entire thread; but, I'm pretty sure you know where I stand on these matters.

I like that second one, next time I want to write a cutting reply this is where I'm coming.

It only has one, but #2 and #3 have zero.