Stop Confusion; Speak Clear English (Part III)

Introduction to the English Language series

This is the third and concluding part of this three part introduction for Stop Confusion; Speak Clear English

We will begin at where else but at the beginning

We will begin our quest for a greater command of the English language with the basics of English grammar, punctuation, usage, etc. From there, we will proceed to delve deeper and deeper into our subject. Uh, don’t worry, deeper and deeper, in this case, does not necessarily mean harder and harder.

There will be concepts offered from time to time in this series that will cause you some consternation. You will get through those little trials though and before you know it, you will be a learned speaker of the English language.

Believe me, if I did it, so can you. All you have to do is apply yourself.

Now to the real beginning, the acknowledgements.

Acknowledgements:

Some free online resource for grammar, style, and usage are Daily Writing Tips and The Purdue Online Writing Lab (OWL). The last named is a very robust website, the former is less so.

The best free online resources for anything having to do with English vocabulary are: Ask Oxford, which is the online version of the Compact Oxford English Dictionary (COED) and much more. The next is the American Heritage Dictionary (AHD); and the next best is; Merriam-Webster Dictionary (MWD). It remains, however, my go-to resource online because it offers the best interface and it offers audible pronunciation of the words defined. When a little more in-depth knowledge of a word is wanted,Thesaurus.com (a COED based resource) is a good thesaurus and dictionary, and more is good for that. So is The Free Dictionary. And, finally the Online Etymology Dictionary (Online ED), is good for those who already speak English fairly well want more in-depth knowledge of a word. There is no better online tool for the heritage of English words.

All of these online resources can easily be found. Simply Google them; that is, search for them through Google. Google is clearly the king of online search.

Some of the most important sources I used for grammar, style, and usage are not available online. The first two of these are both inexpensive. They are the rightly acclaimed The Elements of Style (TES), the original and the third edition and Warriner’s English Composition and Grammar (WECG). This last one is available only as a used book. Used books can be inexpensive, especially when purchased online. The Chicago Manual of Style (CMS) is in a class by itself as the arbiter of American style compositions.

No English dictionary is equal to The Oxford English Dictionary (OED). It is the arbiter of English words definition. Its 20 volume dictionary of the English language is astounding. Bartlett’s Roget’s Thesaurus (BRT) is the best thesaurus I have found.

And now I wish to acknowledge the best and most important of them all

I wish to take my hat off and bow in praise of a very special group of people: all the elementary, junior high, and high school English teachers who taught me and survived to tell about it. I am sure those teachers won themselves a far greater reward in heaven for having putting up with the insults and the dirty tricks pulled on them by us meanies. We were sometimes unbelievably dumb and we seemingly always had an uncanny meanness about us. How those teachers survived and continued to love us is one of the great mysteries of my life.

Here’s a little anecdote about one of those dirty tricks

I remember one elderly teacher in high school who drove a Model T Ford to school It was a nice, neat black one; a coupe sedan: I never saw a Model T in any color other than black and all those were coupe sedans, as far as I recall. And, yes, that English teacher’s car was even then an old car.

One day some of my fellow students picked up her Model T and sat it back down so that it sat crosswise in the narrow driveway that fed into the school parking area.

Bless her heart; that dear ole soul may have been a little late getting home that night. That driveway was a tight squeeze when you drove on it in the usual manner. I was unhappy then that I missed out on that dirty trick on what we all agreed was a mean, but excellent old teacher. In hindsight, I’m glad I missed out on that particular dirty trick.  That dear old soul wasn’t really mean at all; she was simply a demanding teacher. Demanding because she knew that she had to be demanding if she was to have any hope of getting excellence out of any of us rowdies.

All I can say about those ole time school teachers is I pray to God they got a special reward for enduring us meanies. Their sickeningly paltry pay checks were certainly not much of a reward, so I would say, they had something coming for all the silent suffering they had to endure from us and from those in the educational power structure they work under.

Can you believe it?

Soon after my return home from military service one of my former teachers, Mr. Leigh, who was by then a grammar school principal, offered me a job as a teacher. I turned that offer down on the spot, even though I had no prospects of another job of consequence. To reason immediately came to mind. The job didn’t pay enough and, considering my lack of education, I would have felt like I was stealing had I taken the job.

And now, welcome to the Stop Confusion; Speak Clear English series. Now, dive in and learn English. I did it before you and you can do it now. Believe me; it will be worth the effort.

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