Off-Season Grammar Weight Room

Who and whom are both pronouns. Pronouns are defined as a noun that is used in substitution of another noun. Think “him” as opposed to “Stafford,” think “she” as opposed to “Pamela Anderson.”

To understand the real difference between who and whom is to understand a simple, but often misunderstood piece of syntax called subject vs. object. When someone says to you, “Him’s just goin to the store,” what do you think? Naturally, you think that person is from the south. Or a dirty Bears fan. But do you get why it’s not correct?

Him is the objective form of “he”. When you break down the sentence, there’s always subjective nouns and objective nouns. Subjective nouns are the nouns that the sentence are speaking of. For instance: “I love you.” I am the subject of the sentence, because I am doing something. You are the object of this sentence, because I am loving you. (Doot doot doot’n’doo dooooo.)

For the same reason you would never write “me love you,” you shouldn’t be writing “to who it may concern.” Rather, it is “to whom it may concern,” because the understood subject of that sentence is “this is”, and the object is “to whom.”

An easy trick to remember the difference between who/whom is to substitute it with another pronoun, he/him.

“Who is going to the movie?” – He is going to the movie. Correct
“Whom is going to the movie?” – Him is going to the movie. Incorrect

“Who are you buying that for?” – Are you buying that for he? Incorrect.
“For whom are you buying that?” – Are you buying that for him? Correct.

Hopefully this helps everyone understand the difference between objective and subjective nouns. It applies to more than just who/whom, it’s also very applicable to me/I (I being subjective, me being objective) amongst others.

All pronouns (it being a pronoun) have a possessive form that doesn’t include an apostrophe.

Who becomes whose, not who’s.
He/him becomes his, not he’s or him’s.
She/her becomes hers not she’s or her’s.
Their becomes theirs, not their’s.

Etc.

Is not a sentence. Child please!

I apologize for my errors from time to time. I use a lap top, watch games and multi-task too frequently. After I post I often notice a mistake,but rather than make a new post,I let it go unless it is egregious.I am sure that is acceptable.Your point ’ But for those of you who do it on purpose to seem cool and edgy? It’s neither cool nor edgy to be ignorant. And it never will be. ’, gives way to thought. I find it hard to believe that one can create over 65 blogs,make almost 7500 posts, and still make simple everyday mistakes in simple word usage and God forbid the spelling. I hope the seeds you have sewn take root and result in a harvest of easily understood commments and opinions.

Unfortunately the people who are the hardest to understand won’t take the time to read this entire post. I tend to skip a lot of the posts that have the most errors not just because they are difficult to understand but because I feel if someone can’t take the time to write something readable, maybe they didn’t put much thought into the ideas they are trying to get across. And there is nothing more frustrating than spending five minutes decipering a post only to find out it is half-baked gibberish. I know this is a conversational medium so perfect grammar isn’t the goal, communication is. It’s like mumbling when you talk to someone, it’s inconsiderate.

our worst offender,but he posts all day long.He reads and responds to several thousand posts.How can you not pick up better spelling, and proper usage of homonyms? I worked over 20 years in the prison system with guys from the "ghetto"or “hood” that learned to write legibly.I think there are ‘exterior’ motives in play here.

and the class I got the BEST naps

I DON’T SELL WEED GUYS. JUST SO YOU KNOW.

 is if you read that many posts and blogs,you see the correct usage or the common words and themes constantly. Why would you choose to constantly choose the wrong word or spelling? I understand ‘guard’ ending up ‘gaurd’,it is common on these blogs.Also the i before e routine is extremely burdonsome.

But I try not to judge anyone on hear four using improper grammar. This is a sports blog and I don’t expect everywon to speak well but I want people two respect differing opinions and each other even if their not as educated as I’m.

abbreviations for names and teams,I even get the "ur’ , ‘cuz’ ,and other shortcuts for common phraseology,but totally misspelling words and making totally incongruent statements is unacceptable in my opinion.If I want you to respect my opinions, I should strive to present them in a readily understandable format.

This leads me to believe that we have very little chance of actually attaining the lofty goal of the original poster. If so many feel so strongly about recommending it, then that can only mean that this is too dire a situation to ever hope to fix. I commend you on your efforts though good sir. You go fight that good fight and keep on fighting until the end. Me, well I will just have to go look for some mock drafts to read, more interesting. Thanks for the napping material though. I am sure this will be the best night of sleep I have had in ages. =D

can’t help but wish for easier understanding and more clarity in some of our regular posters.

a few,not some.

it is not you,you are almost a legend.

I like the post I’m not the best at grammer but I also can’t read a post or a response thats full of horrible spelling and all the words bunched together. I understand your not writing a book but at least make it readable, And for those who say if you don’t like the bad grammer don’t read it well then if you don’t like a post about bad grammer dont read it.

In my opinion, FanPosts should be held to a much higher standard than comments. Grammar, spelling, formatting, and fact checking should be at a reasonably high level so it is absolutely clear what is being communicated. I would compare it to a paper or report that you are presenting to a group of peers.

Comments are more off the cuff and spontaneous. I consider it more like a conversation at a bar or in front of the TV while the game is on. The quality of the discussion is inversely proportional to the refreshments consumed/inhaled and the passion level. I would like to see better quality comments, but not at the expense of slowing the discussion down to a crawl.

My biggest gripe about posts and comments are when people speak in absolutes or make statements about facts which are easily proved to be not true. It goes back to the original issue about how much time and care you put into your posts and comments.

Good post TX.

You will respect their authoritah!!

GR8T POST
i learned me some things

People curse, tell other members to go screw, post pictures to show other members what a jackass they think they are and a post about grammar gets 12 recs?

This is quite the conundrum.

Did you hear the one about the masochist who says hurt me and and the sadist who says no?

I encourage you to learn a bit about how language skills impact your ability to see and understand the world around you. There is a growing body of evidence indicating that poor language skills directly impact your ability to learn complex concepts and will severely limit how far you can reach in life.

You can complain about this not being a subject of importance on a football site, but that is a dodge for a larger problem. It is also well known that language skills are pervasive. That means that when you are willing to be lazy about your language skills in one place, like this site, then it is highly likely you use the same terrible English everywhere else. Claiming this is a football site and you don’t need good English is just ignoring the larger problem that you have.

I am not saying this to be a pan in the ass. Certainly it is your right to decide how you will shape yourself. But if you choose to accept such poor English skills then you might as well say that you are willing to live on the bottom end of the economy your entire life. It is your choice. But don’t ever make the mistake of thinking that everybody else does not make value judgments of you based on your ability to write.

I try to make my posts interesting and coherent to read, and I’m relatively successful. I like to think it’s led to a better reception of my FanPosts and comments most of the time I’ve been a regular on PoD.

I don’t stand on either side of the grammar debate, seeing as I take care of mine… If you don’t want your input read, write it in a manner that’s arduous and hard to understand. Whether its a language barrier or just laziness, you’re the one who can affect or change those habits. If you don’t feel like it, cool.

I don’t think this post was really necessary, but I wouldn’t weep if everyone started writing coherently. As it stands, I’ve never faced that in all my years of internet usage, so I won’t hold my breath.

It’s all good though. Good post. Being more knowledgeable is NEVER, EVER a bad thing. And people who get bent out of shape over it are usually just being defensive. No offense guys.

I do tend to read through posts that are more clearly thought out , I’ll read others if I can get through them, which makes me appreciate this effort.
However, at the same time, I talk with people from all walks of life, and being a sports blog, I find some of it conversational, and thus rather casual.

Is all of the people using really really proper terms in this thread, because everyone wants to sound smart.

It’s like bizarro-PoD

For Sean: Just what kind of blog do you want this to be and how many readers do you want to reach?

For the members: Is there anything wrong with striving to be better at something? Sorry, a second question too! Do you care about being on the front page?

In light of that here is some interesting stuff I found.

http://blog.case.edu/singham/2005/04/27/the_reading_level_of_this_blog

For the record I put in the Pride of Detroit at the site that rates the readability of another website. Here are the results.

Reading Level Results
Summary Value
Total sentences 825
Total words 4151
Average words per Sentence 5.03
Words with 1 Syllable 2647
Words with 2 Syllables 916
Words with 3 Syllables 400
Words with 4 or more Syllables 188
Percentage of word with three or more syllables 14.17%
Average Syllables per Word 1.55
Gunning Fog Index 7.68
Flesch Reading Ease 70.66
Flesch-Kincaid Grade 4.65

The result is your Gunning-Fog index, which is a rough measure of how many years of schooling it would take someone to understand the content. The lower the number, the more understandable the content will be to your visitors. Results over seventeen are reported as seventeen, where seventeen is considered post-graduate level.

Flesch Reading Ease: The result is an index number that rates the text on a 100-point scale. The higher the score, the easier it is to understand the document. Authors are encouraged to aim for a score of approximately 60 to 70.

The result is the Flesch-Kincaid grade level. Like the Gunning-Fog index, it is a rough measure of how many years of schooling it would take someone to understand the content. Negative results are reported as zero, and numbers over twelve are reported as twelve.

So now lets take a look at one of my last posts, one where I wrote a significant portion of my own stuff rather than provide a bunch of quotes and links.

http://www.prideofdetroit.com/2011/4/20/2121690/the-lions-2011-schedule-a-deeper-look

Gunning Fog Index 6.28
Flesch Reading Ease 80.60
Flesch-Kincaid Grade 3.46

Whew guess I am OK! I am not quite up to Sean’s level, but then I am not a college grad nor a Journalism (or English) major, so I feel all right about those numbers.

I was actually going to test some of what I felt were hard to read, or poorly written posts. I did not easily find any that were significantly lower than what I felt were decent standards.

I don’t know. All in all I feel that this site already is way above par when it comes to the quality of content written. I also feel like for the most part things are done well enough by the overwhelming majority of people here. I also think that everyone here could use various amounts of work, even Sean makes mistakes, but some obviously need more work than others.

For me personally, I want to strive to be better, so I don’t mind the criticism.

I know I took this a bit off of topic with reader level. But is that not what is ultimately the important thing? I mean are we really talking about grammar here on an English paper grading concept, or is the real gripe the readability of the content by the average member?

Maybe I am making an assumption here and I am in error. But I was thinking that there are two distinct classes of material here. Front Page stuff, which needs to be tip top shape and subject to the English teacher, and general user posts, which only need to be readable and comprehensible.

a rating on one of our “wall of text” comments.
The web site used to analyze this text was: http://www.online-utility.org/english/readability_test_and_improve.jsp

Number of characters (without spaces) : 305.00
Number of words : 77.00
Number of sentences : 3.00
Average number of characters per word : 3.96
Average number of syllables per word : 1.26
Average number of words per sentence: 25.67

Indication of the number of years of formal education that a person requires in order to easily understand the text on the first reading
Gunning Fog index : 10.79

Approximate representation of the U.S. grade level needed to comprehend the text :
Coleman Liau index : 6.36
Flesch Kincaid Grade level : 9.28
ARI (Automated Readability Index) : 10.06
SMOG : 6.16

Flesch Reading Ease : 74.21

What you can clearly see form this analysis is that poorly written text requires a much higher reading level to comprehend than well written prose. I submit that as further proof that the language incompetence of some posters places a higher burden on the rest of the PoD community to understand what they write.

In this example the reader would have to be at a 9th or 10th grade reading level in order to understand the post. According to the 1993 National Assessment of Adult Literacy the average reading level of an adult in America is between the eight and ninth grades. More recent studies indicate that the reading competency level is dropping. I don’t think that surprises anyone. The main point is that most adult Americans could not completely understand the post that was used for this example.

I just analyzed a few of my posts and I have been informed that I am too damned hard to understand. LOL

My Gunning fog index tends to be between 10 and 13.
My Fleisch-Kincaid grade level runs between 9 and 12

I think it is because I make my sentences too complex and need to break them up some.

I dunno how I missed this thread…it feels like an English class for 40 year olds…
I don’t really have a problem with the grammar with most of the posters here.

Anyone who is a fellow grammar stickler, feel free to mention any pet peeves that I neglected.

“defiantly” vs “definitely”

These are two different words with two completely different meanings. Some people may even say they have two “compliantly” different meanings, but that would not make sense.

Ndamukong Suh was defiantly the best player in the 2010 draft.

^incorrect — How exactly was he being “defiant”?

Ndamukong Suh was definitely the best player in the 2010 draft.

^correct

Even if this post is not directed at Det32, I feel as if he see’s it as being an attack on him. I don’t want him to feel like he has to post less because he is being attacked about his grammar. Even though some of his posts are difficult to read some times, I enjoy reading what he has to say. His responses are sometimes entertaining and I like his deviation from the norm of what alot of us are thinking. I am fairley new to POD, but I do read almost every post, and he puts in alot of time posting. Life in POD wouldn’t be the same without Det32.