Speaking of technical writing

[alias_sqbr]

I'm nearing the end of a Coursera on basic writing and it's been a weird experience as a native English speaker who's never thought much about English grammar before. I tend to find the rules and definitions either painfully obvious or incredibly difficult to get my head around, and trying to write with them in mind instead of just working off instinct is as difficult as trying to walk while paying attention to the precise movement of my muscles. It was much easier learning grammar in German since everything was new.

And then half the time during peer review I can tell them what the correct version of their sentence would be but not why.

I assumed, signing up, that "Crafting an Effective Writer" would get beyond crafting sentences and paragraphs and I'm not sure it's actually improved my writing but it was certainly an interesting experience. I was going to add "and now I know what a comma splice is!" except I've forgotten already.

Comments

[pedanther]

I know what a comma splice is, it's when you join two related sentences together with a comma instead of a semicolon.

[alias_sqbr]

Ah, I see :)

[hebethen]

Easier to remember what a comma splice is if you know what gene splicing is! Which I don't really suppose is a mathematiciany kind of thing, alas. And it unfortunately sounds a lot like "slice", which is the opposite of what it is.

[alias_sqbr]

Yeah I am only vaguely aware of gene splices. I'm more familiar with the Splice icey pole :)