When Contractions Attack.

[Zeb_Carter]

The interesting thing, at least with fancier calculators, they render text and numeric characters with smoothed fonts, not the digital 8 shaped grid with its seven segments.

So at some point, even the joys of spelling BOOBIES on your calculator will become another thing that future kids won’t know what you’re talking about, and will be replaced by just downloading porn directly (and actually seeing boobies) on your calculator screen!

Man, kids today are soooo lucky!

Kids today are sooooo spoiled. Of course that is my opinion. Do I know a lot of kids? Yes. Two children and eight grandchildren and everyone of them is spoiled rotten, by none other than their grandmother and me. Well, except for the newest one, he is only six months old.

 

[Zeb_Carter]

I am reminded of Lt. Cmdr. Data.

Or Ziva David from NCIS... she rarely used contractions. Of course she was an actor from Peru playing a Jew from Israel who also spoke seven other languages besides Hebrew and English. I really have to give the lady credit.

 

[Enchantment_of_Nyx]

@jafo & ench-girl... (hey, SHE brought it up!). ;-)

There there... EDIT: oh crap. Should have said, they’re they’re.

I see what you did.

 

[jaF0]

Are you aware of the shortest sentence in the English language?


I am.

 

[jsmiam]

Are you aware of the shortest sentence in the English language?


I am.

Love it! Shortest joke:

Pretentious? Moi??

 

[Zeb_Carter]

I believe that "that that" is something that can be easily avoided. In fact, I've always been convinced that that "that that" problem can just be side-stepped The question that I see is whether the author who feels that that "that that" usage is preferable was attacked by an ellipse as a child. That, as I see it, is the question that that scenario poses.

The first thing I learned from a real life editor was to delete every extraneous 'that' in the story. Some writers and I'm one, don't realize how many times they use 'that' in a sentence. In most cases you can leave 'that' out.

 

[Son_of_Battles]

Are you aware of the shortest sentence in the English language?


I am.

Do you know what the longest sentence is?

I do.

 

[GroverLang]

C’est la vie!

The first thing I learned from a real life editor was to delete every extraneous 'that' in the story. Some writers and I'm one, don't realize how many times they use 'that' in a sentence. In most cases you can leave 'that' out.

It was pointed out to me by another writer the word “that” could be deleted from most sentences without harming the sentence. I then realised, as with many other writers, I was writing as I spoke and I think the habit can be difficult to break. As I write now I’m conscious of unnecessarily using the word and check as I go but when I edit the story I still find occasions when I’ve written the word.

 

[ElectricBlue]

The first thing I learned from a real life editor was to delete every extraneous 'that' in the story. Some writers and I'm one, don't realize how many times they use 'that' in a sentence. In most cases you can leave 'that' out.

The word combination "and then" is the first of my "find word" searches during edit - you need one or the other, never both.

 

[Enchantment_of_Nyx]

Do you know what the longest sentence is?

I do.

That took me a second. Clever.

 

[SimonDoom]

Do you know what the longest sentence is?

I do.

To which my response is,

Go!

 

[KeithD]

The first thing I learned from a real life editor was to delete every extraneous 'that' in the story. Some writers and I'm one, don't realize how many times they use 'that' in a sentence. In most cases you can leave 'that' out.

Yes to deleting "that" in a lot of cases. I've moved on to delete "now" in a lot of cases too.

 

[jaF0]

Now, that could be interesting.