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"Huh?"

With either, or, neither, nor, not, but, or or, the verb agrees with the nearer subject! And, but, or, nor, for, and yet are the subordinating conjunctions I know. The rule of the comma is simply (W.I.D.L.I.O.),: "When In Doubt, Leave It Out." AND NEVER WRITE "HAHA" IN ANY KIND OF COMMUNIQUE..."lol" IS still considered internet appropriate.

Man...how confusing! I HEARD this stuff, but what does it all MEAN? If you are a student, here's a piece of advise: Do not take grammar concurrently, (look it up), with any other subject! Learning to write is way too hard all by itself.

If you are an aspiring writer, or an adult who simply wants to author a better office memo...it can be done, but not without much hard work!

Just lookey here at what I mean.

With the riggers of daily life, student or adult, we have way too many other things whirling around in that vacuum we call a brain. Learning the intricate nuances of proper sentence construction ain't easy!

Tapping words around in a sentence, building paragraph upon paragraph, in order to achieve an edifice of effective communication takes some familiarity with the "tools of the trade!" While crafting one's style, it is very easy to confuse the meaning of such things as PUNCTUATION MARKS and GRAMMATICAL PHRASES with other stuff. Examples:

"DASH" It could be laundry soap.

"INDENT" What you got learning to back up the car.

"COMMA" A medical term for an extended state of unconsciousness.

"NOUN" Twelve o'clock. It's lunch time!

"CURSIVE" Putting cuss words in a story.

"COLON" Fairly self explanatory...

"OXYMORON" That new guy in class or the office that just flunked out of Oxford College.

"CAPITOLS" Those dastardly little cities in each state we can never remember.

"PROSE" Ladies "of the evening."

"PARAGRAPHS" Two different graphs on a page.

"SENTENCE" The length of "time for the crime" one serves in jail.

Now, just when you think you "got it down cold," you don't. Just for grins and giggles, I committed and left a few errors in punctuation and grammar in this article. Can you find them? I can do this because my college professors always said...

-"If one knows the rules, he may break them!"- (Prof. Janse, 1973).

Learn more about this author, Steve Jeffries.
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