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English grammar

Discussion in 'Whatnots' started by Kenixkil, Oct 12, 2004.

  1. Kenixkil Gems: 10/31
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    I just took an English exam today, and one of the problems is a little weird. It says 'choose the incorrect one' and gives a list of sentences, and I chose "Roughly speaking, digital means using information recorded as a series of the numbers, zero and one." And it says that one's wrong. Shouldn't the comma go? Or am I being paranoid here?
     
    Kenixkil, Oct 12, 2004
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  2. Harbourboy

    Harbourboy Take thy form from off my door! Veteran Pillars of Eternity SP Immortalizer (for helping immortalize Sorcerer's Place in the game!)

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    Well, I would replace the comma with a colon if I had to keep the same words. But it's a clumsy sentence. You could get rid of the words "roughly", "speaking", "the", and "numbers" and the sentence would still convey the required information.

    "Digital refers to information recorded as a series of zeroes and ones."
     
    Harbourboy, Oct 12, 2004
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  3. Teufelchen Gems: 2/31
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    The comma should be there because 'roughly speaking' is not an essential part of the sentence.
     
    Teufelchen, Oct 12, 2004
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  4. Harbourboy

    Harbourboy Take thy form from off my door! Veteran Pillars of Eternity SP Immortalizer (for helping immortalize Sorcerer's Place in the game!)

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    The "roughly speaking" is in the same vein as the annoying habit people have these days of saying "basically" at the start of each sentence. This phrase is unnecessary and actually insulting to the person being spoken to (as in, you might be too dumb to understand if I didn't tell it to you 'basically').
     
    Harbourboy, Oct 12, 2004
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  5. Kenixkil Gems: 10/31
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    No, not that comma. The comma in front of zero.
     
    Kenixkil, Oct 12, 2004
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  6. Harbourboy

    Harbourboy Take thy form from off my door! Veteran Pillars of Eternity SP Immortalizer (for helping immortalize Sorcerer's Place in the game!)

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    The comma before the zero should either be a colon or nothing.
     
    Harbourboy, Oct 12, 2004
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  7. Kenixkil Gems: 10/31
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    Thanks!
     
    Kenixkil, Oct 12, 2004
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  8. Foradasthar Gems: 21/31
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    Yup. We never had this nasty questions back in highschool though. Makes me doubt wether I really earned that top score for it. :)

    Easy to spot now after a hundred books. I doubt it would've been the same then.
     
    Foradasthar, Oct 12, 2004
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  9. Carcaroth

    Carcaroth I call on the priests, saints and dancin' girls ★ SPS Account Holder

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    I missed out on English Grammar too. We had English Literature and English Language as two GCSE's. I guess "Language" was the version of grammar at the time.
    As I did all my essays on the computer with a spelling and grammar check (This is going back to the late 80's so home computers for word processing were uncommon, I think their use had been overlooked - fortunately my father was a computer lecturer) I more or less passed the Language by default.
     
    Carcaroth, Oct 12, 2004
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  10. Aldazar Gems: 24/31
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    English grammar? No, but I think my great-grammar was english.
     
    Aldazar, Oct 15, 2004
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