writing style

Not exactly what I was thinking of....


BTW, DannyS - I DO agree with Linda that you're doing fine! Keep writing, and keep commenting!

Exactly my point, Danny. It doesn't matter - you can still use them in the right places, and you do.

And thanks for the appreciation. (Appreciation in the shape of bottles of port, sherry, Baileys Irish Cream and malt whisky sent to me, Pink and Flopsy, is always welcome too! *lol*)

If you really want to know what a past participle is, which I'm sure you don't, then send me a pop up.

Hmmm ... and you were thinking of ... what?

Knowing njrick, I bet he was thinking about his dangling participle

[asking innocently] So what's a dangling participle have to do with a pop-up

Get Dr Febs to remove the ghastly thing at once. What about split infinitives are they still frowned upon too? I must admit to being guilty of a few grammatical errors through ignorance. I am someone who uses instinct rather than knowledge when it comes to language. Instinct, like "gut feeling" cannot always be relied upon.

I don't think so. I believe it was originally frowned upon because some of the 'rules' of English grammar were based on Latin grammar, and of course you couldn't split a Latin infinitive since it was only one word, just as the infinitives in French and German, and probably many other languages.

So go ahead. If you want 'to boldly go' then don't let any old pedant stop you!

Thanks, it is better than going boldly!

DANGER - SERIOUS LANGUAGE GEEKINESS AHEAD! READ AT YOUR OW RISK.

Linda,

Interesting observation on English vs German. It drove me to Google translator with the result that German and Dutch seem to rely entirely on a suffix to mark the infinitive while the Scandinavian languages, Swedish, Danish, and Norwegian seem to be like English in marking the infinitive with a particle although the data from Norwegian was unclear in my 20 seconds or so of investigation.

I agree very much with this, though it may not be the next step so much as it was the first step. And the borrowing and imitating of usages and sentence structures happen, I think, largely unconsciously (except, obviously, where they don't) ... the more words and constructions you have stored in your mind, through years of reading, the more easily and confidently your own writing flows.