Friday, September 16, 2005

Can you use an apostrophe correctly?

I thought I could until I took THIS QUIZ. It's only ten sentences and takes less than a few minutes to do. I scored an abysmal 63 percent. Shame on me. How did you do??

Pris

18 comments:

Berenice said...

I got 68 percent....and if I hadn't had its & it's dinned into me at Bag End (and I still got one of those wrong) I'd have done far worse. I fell down on the second its and the last two words of number 3 and all of number 5. B xx

Pris said...

I got allof the its , it's easily, too..it was the words such as childrens' vs children's that got me. grrrr.

Lee Herrick said...

84%. Ugh.

Lyle Daggett said...

I got 89%. The two answers the quiz said I got wrong were "two weeks notice" -- the quiz said there should be an apostrophe at the end of "weeks" -- and "five dollars worth" -- the quiz said there should be an apostrophe at the end of "dollars."

I disagree with the quiz on those two.

Lyle Daggett said...

You know, it might be interesting sometime to make a poem (I guess it would be a really really experimental post-modern avant-garde poem) out of some of the random groups of Word Verification letters in blog comment boxes.

ndsqalp kbvrrz brimmr
wunnhi toklaw oowenj gamucw
hjmsotl ppiacm... etc.

Pris said...

You all are putting me to shame, but Lyle, I had the same disagreement that you did about the apostrophe in some I was marked wrong on. So many times, one may be more than one usage, except in the contraction versus the possessive issue.

If you ever complete that poem, I'd like to see it lol
(dedicate it to spammers:-)...not a single spam message since using it, thank god!)

Pris said...

Gads..I just read my comment and it's gibbrish in some places. I'm just up and have NO brain.

Pris said...

I apparently can't spell gibberish either....ohhhhhh.

Unknown said...

This is scary- 63% also.

Unknown said...

Pris- check your email plse

Pris said...

Hi Ginger,
I know..and , to think, I know more about grammar than the majority of people I know. Apparently not enough. I just wrote you back. We lost power today for two hours and am just back online.

Berenice said...

Little known fact, one I've kept well hidden ;-) ...a large number of years ago, throughout my last five years in school, I'd set my heart on becoming a journalist. Then I went and failed one of the three exams I took to get into college in Cardiff. I passed the two involving journalism...and failed basic English grammar...eeeeeek.

I hang my head in shame to this day. And at the time I had already passed two English GCSE's (in the 1980's the English education system change from 'O' levels and CSE's to GCSE's, taken at or around the age of 16...I was in that first year after the change) and was also taking (and later passed) an English 'A' level.

I still wonder if schools really do teach the absolute basics...what everyone needs to learn. I have holes so big in my grammar knowledge that I can see right through them...and I don't consider myself particularly thick. B xx

Pris said...

Grammar and spelling were emphasized when I was going through school. If you made a grammatical error, even your geometry teacher corrected you. I've taught college courses where there were students who couldn't write a complete sentence-and one was grad school bound! I ran a treatment unit with Mental Health Techs who had their B.A.'s in Psychology working for me and the entries of three of them in their charts were so bad that I actually gave them grammar and spelling pointers. I could go on, but the state of education for some years now has declined, in my opinion.

666poetry-finchnot said...

63% for me too

blah / no wonder
i dis regard all punctuation

now / if i could only figure out
how to spel


lol

thanx for the quiz pris

~finchyx

Pris said...

Rae...hey stranger. Now I know where you've been all this time. Out learning grammar:-)

Finch, thank god, you didn't leave me hanging with the low score. thankyouthankyouthankyou.

Pris said...

I'm going to google him. The more poetry I read, the more I find I need to read more. My bedside bookcase and the magazine rack by the bed are toppling with poetry books now. I NEED MORE ROOM!

Novels I check out from the Library or buy on the penny deal, plus shipping from Amazon, then give those to the library when through or I'd have to build a separate house for my books:-)

Steven D. Schroeder said...

94% :-)

Pris said...

Oh gawd...I knew there'd be one person to come along and put us all to shame:-)