#grammar rant

I swear I'm not trying to be a grammar snob, in fact my own grammar is far from perfect, but I promise: just trying to use proper grammar will likely get more people to read what you write.

Using proper grammar will definitely reduce the amount of people who misinterpret what you are trying to say, at the very least.

And even if you feel lost with grammar right now, grammar is like any other skill. Just trying to do better will make you better at it, and doing better at grammar will make your ability to communicate soar with leaps and bounds. You can be understood with far less confusion, which can lead to better discussions and more meaningful interactions with others.

Aspect in Japanese — what it is, how it differs from English and Polish, and why knowing verb types matters for using ている and る correctly.

Tense, aspect, and mood — a quick orientation

These three categories often get conflated, but they do different things.

People usually get the basic structure right which is, [Proper Noun] hadn't [Verbed] [Noun], let alone [Noun]. The problem is that they they reverse the significance order.

Correct usage would be, for example, "Sue had never left her home town, let alone the country!" The first point encompasses the second and emphasizes just how out of the question that second point is.

So you don't say, "they hadn't left the bedroom, let alone the bed." You can easily leave the bed without leaving the bedroom. This swapped usage makes "let alone" out to mean "or even" but it's actually the opposite.

You know what really cracks me up?The number of people who are convinced that using a hyphen automatically means the writing “must be AI.” As if the hyphen just magically appeared in 2023 like some kind of digital cryptid. Newsflash: the hyphen has been around longer than any of us — and has been doing its little punctuation job quietly, politely, and without thanks since before electricity was…

There are those who say the em dash is overused.

That it's the mark of a lazy writer.

That it’s the telltale sign of AI-written content—because surely no real human would need to pause, to redirect, to breathe mid-thought—

But let me tell you something.

I have bled on keyboards.

I have turned silence into syntax.

And the em dash?

The em dash is where my breath lives.

It’s not a mistake. It’s not filler.

It’s texture. Rhythm. Voice.

It is the pause that matters.

The hinge between chaos and clarity.

It’s the whisper that says, “Wait—this part is important.”

I didn’t learn it from a machine.

I learned it from poetry.

From theater.

From trying to capture thoughts that didn’t fit neatly in a box labeled comma.

The em dash is not a crime.

It’s a lifeline.

It's not some glitch in the matrix—it's the fingerprint of thought.

Of sudden turns.

Of emotional pivots.

Of breath.

Commas serve a function.

Periods hold the line.

But the em dash?

The em dash lets the soul spill over the edge of the sentence.

And if my writing sometimes walks out of the room mid-sentence with a dramatic flourish—

Well, so be it. Let it.

I will not apologize for thinking in rhythms.

I will not amputate my breath to make an algorithm comfortable.

And I certainly won’t hand over my sentences to a faceless rulebook that doesn’t know the difference between a pause and a heartbeat.

Exhibit A: My Soul

You want proof this wasn’t written by a bot?

It’s in the grief I’ve threaded through metaphors.

In the joy hidden in a phrase that spirals gently off-course.

In the choice to write like I speak—halting, human, whole.

I didn’t choose the em dash because it’s trendy.

I chose it because sometimes, when you’re writing what matters, you need room to breathe.

And no, it’s not a crime.

Soooo I have a word, khaile (khai-leh), meaning good or beautiful. I’ve been rendering it at times as khailelye, which is a mouthful (example, ngankhe khailelye, good color, or simply purple.) This is pronounced nn-ghan-kheh khai-leh-lyuh. It may be easier to simply stick with khaile, but khailelye could be an irregular variant of good as an adjective. My problem with this is that I don’t want there to be 272,652 forms and conjugations to memorize when there could be just a handful. I know this is my language and I can make it how I want it, but I don’t want to make it super user unfriendly. I also have the short term memory of a teaspoon, so it’s as much for me as others. So...

GRAMMAR. 

Okay. Read my rant, pornbot followers!

Yea is pronounced 'yay.' It is used as a form of the word yes. Example: "In the governmenty governmental vote about government business, there were 55 yeas, and eight nays." that is kind of a shitty sample but it works. It's used a lot on the Bible and olden tyme type things. It's almost an abandoned word these days, except in fanfictions.

'Yeah' is pronounced, well, like yeah. THIS is the word you want to use in your fanfictions when someone is agreeing. Unless they are like, a shepard from ye olden tymes. "Are you sure you don't wanna use yea?" Sam asked the archangel, "Because I think you, a being millions of years old, are free to use it whenever you want without sounding like a douchebag."

"Yeah," Gabriel replied, "I don't want to sound like I'm kind of illiterate, though."

You take a breath. You breathe. The one what ends with the 'e' is the act. The one without is the object. Example: Gabriel took a breath. And with that one action confirming that he was indeed alive and had totally faked his death again, Sam found that he couldn't breathe.