spelling

Third Grade Writers

Recent letters to pen pals gives us these excerpts from the 3rd Grade of Gaston Grade School.

I enjoyed your letter. I’m lucky that my house is not a monster because it would eat my mom and dad and that would be scary.

And we are teaching Razer my dog not to bite.

What do you want for Christmas. I want a desk that is a bed and a deskbed. That is what it is called. I also want a spiny chair. I want that because I could do my homework on my desk and I can plug my computer in and do schoolwork at my desk.

Merry Christmas

F. 3rd Grade

There was a very interesting word that caught the attention of many people in the class recently, can you decipher the word?

cweshchens

Unknown. 3rd Grade

(The interesting spelling is the word “questions”!

Prompt: Corrections – Ones that Worked or Did Not

This weeks prompt was introduced via a story related by one of our members who had been traveling overseas. As she was about to embark on the long return flight home to the US, she sent a short text her family using her smartphone. We’ve likely all experienced doing battle with the auto-correct function while texting on our phones, as it attempts to interpret what it thinks we are trying to say.

In this case she texted her family that the “flight was delayed.” A short while later on the plane she noticed that the auto-correct function had changed her intended text from “flight was delayed” to “wife was cremated.” At this point she no longer had internet access and so was not able to send a correction to her likely bewildered family!

Write about intended or unintended corrections in your life either made or received by you.

People Always Lie

The following is used by permission, written by Writers in the Grove member, Paula Adams, and published in the Fullerton Observer.

To Jonathan:

I love your column in the Fullerton Observer, but I got a surprise bump in the first line of your mid-September column: “I look at the picture of the boy LAYING lifeless … ” What?!

I realize the lay/lie thing is a common error (except for foreigners who usually know more of our grammar than we do), but we expect the media to do better, which it usually does.

Anyway, you need a word with your proofreader: “Lay” in the present tense requires an object – unless you’re a laying hen. Thus, I lay the book aside, and in the words of that grammatically confusing prayer, ” … I lay me down to sleep.” Without the object, we lie down to sleep, Goldilocks is lying on the bed, cats lie napping in the sun, and we lie low when there’s trouble.

Of course, our beloved English language changes the rules in the past tense (sigh), but just remember:

When stretching out for a nap in the present tense, people lie.

PEOPLE ALWAYS LIE, (sigh again).

Sincerely,
Paula Adams

– – – –

Dear Paula:

Great letter. I’m not lying to you! May we print it? I’ll lay you 8 to 5 that the editor will like it. Cheers!

Jonathan