Surfaced? I never left.

http://leedrurydecesarescasting-roomcouch.blogspot.com/2009/06/antigrammargrinch-surfaces-again.html

This is laughable. Vinegartits confused the homophones “it’s” and “its” in her recent email to Linda Cobbe. I emailed the entire list to alert everyone to Vinegartits’s homophone illiteracy, and sent a cc to Vinegartits herself. Vinegartits tries to rip into my grammar and syntax, but fails miserably. Read this!

I wrote this:
Unfortunately, I don't think that she has the mental capacity to remember what she has filed or what she has asked for if she can't master simple English language concepts and is clearly illiterate.

Lee wrote:
>Antigrammargrinch expresses himself thusly [“thus” is already an adverb]:"... if she can't master simple English language concepts and is clearly illiterate." This locution should read "...if she can't master simple English (hyphenate for two words acting as a single adjective before a noun) language concepts, she is clearly illiterate."<

Those ellipses are misleading, Vinegartits. Your readers don’t know what has been elided. They would assume that “she is clearly illiterate” is the principal clause. I thought it was odd that I would have made such an error until I checked my email.

My principal clause is “Unfortunately, I don't think that she has the mental capacity to remember what she has filed or what she has asked for”. I added an adverbial subordinate clause of condition with a compound predicate.

My sentence reads thus:

Unfortunately, I don't think that she has the mental capacity to remember what she has filed or what she has asked for if she can't master simple English language concepts and [if she] is clearly illiterate.


You, Vinegartits, are changing the meaning of what I wrote. I wrote that you don’t have the mental capacity if you can’t master concepts and that you don’t have the mental capacity if you are clearly illiterate. I was not writing that you were illiterate because you can’t master the concepts; I was writing that you were illiterate as well that you can’t master the concepts.

So there’s nothing wrong with my grammar and syntax. It pains me that I construct a clear and correct sentence to explain myself and that I have to explain it to a lower-quartile dunderhead who can’t recognise homophones.

But I’ll try your advice. (I’ll include the rest of my sentence, though.)

Vinegartits thinks I should have written this:

Unfortunately, I don't think that she has the mental capacity to remember what she has filed or what she has asked for if she can't master simple English language concepts, she is clearly illiterate.

Have a long look. Have another long, hard look just to be sure.

That’s right. Lee Drury de Cesare, English teacher of 28 years with PBK membership and all her wonderful knowledge of grammar, wants to correct my syntax with a comma splice.

Boo, Vinegartits. No one likes your grammar bullying. You hassle enough people about their homophone errors and won’t stop emailing the same tired old cracks about “your” and “you’re”, but then you admonish me and say I need to move up from homophones. I could get sharper, but it would be wasted on comma-splicing dullards like you.

At no time did I suggest that you were senile, either.

>Meanwhile, Antigrammargrinch needs to move up to something a little more complicated in the English language than mangled homophones if he is going to joust on grammar's grown-up's turf<

The turf of grown-up of grammar? You meant “grown-ups”, didn’t you? “Grammar’s grown-ups’ turf”. Wow. How do you do it, you apostrophe-mangling airhead, in a sentence bidding me to move to something more complicated?

>if she can't master simple English (hyphenate for two words acting as a single adjective before a noun) language concepts<

If the compound adjective is a no-brainer and clear, the hyphen is not needed.