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Gram Post- Capitalization

In every paper I've gotten back so far this summer I have misused a capitalization at one point or another. So I decided, it would be fitting for my last grammar post to be about the proper use of Capitals. According to the Owl at Purdue, these are the rules regarding Capitalization.

*The first words of a sentence

*The pronoun "I"

*Proper nouns (the names of specific people, places, organizations, and sometimes things)

*Family relationships (when used as proper names)

*The names of God, specific deities, religious figures, and holy books
-Exception: Do not capitalize the non-specific use of the word "god."

*Titles preceding names, but not titles that follow names

*Directions that are names (North, South, East, and West when used as sections of the country, but not as compass directions)

*The days of the week, the months of the year, and holidays (but not the seasons used generally)
-Exception: Seasons are capitalized when used in a title

*The names of countries, nationalities, and specific languages

*The first word in a sentence that is a direct quote

*The major words in the titles of books, articles, and songs (but not short prepositions or the articles "the," "a," or "an," if they are not the first word of the title)

*Members of national, political, racial, social, civic, and athletic groups

*Periods and events (but not century numbers)

*Trademarks

*Words and abbreviations of specific names (but not names of things that came from specific things but are now general types)


The URL of the site I got these rules from is: http://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/592/01/

America the Beautiful

I really loved a lot of the thing D'souza has to say about America. I sometimes feel like we live in a country that hates itself but D'souza argues that it is because as a country we lack self-confidence. Part of that does lie in the fact that most American's are in pursuit of the greater good. We constantly question whether or not we are doing the right thing locally, nationally, and internationally.There are not many other countries that do that. D'souza says at one point "compulsion cannot produce virtue". That is so true, doing something because it is required is totally different than doing something because it is simply the right thing to do. With all that being said, I feel like D'souza stated a lot of personal opinion in this peice. I'm not sure if this was taken out of a larger text or what, but I felt like D'souza opened up a few cans of worms with some seemingly biased statements that could have been given some back up. There were little to know references to credible sources to back up a lot of his statements about the Muslim world. I do like how he differentiates between fundamentalist Islamic extremism and other, more liberal Muslims. One of the greatest pet peeves of my friend from Saudi Arabia is when people assume that all Muslims hate America. She is Muslim and she was born in the middle east. She loves her homeland and her faith but considers herself half American too. She loves America and everything it stands for and so do a lot of her friends and family. I hate when people assume that Muslims as a whole hate America and view us infidels with a mission to corrupt the world. That would be like saying all Mormons are like the Fundamentalist LDS, Or that all Christians are like the Amish. All in all, this was not my favorite reading, but I like the way D'souza makes me feel about America and I like the fact that he doesn't label the entire middle east as a bunch of America haters out to destroy all freedom.

Then and Than-Grammer post

I am horrible at knowing where to use then and where to use than. My English 101 professor constantly got on my case about but I still had never really taken the time to figure out the proper usage. Well here are the rules from a post on WSU link I found through google.

When comparing one thing with another you may find that one is more appealing “than” another. “Than” is the word you want when doing comparisons. But if you are talking about time, choose “then“: “First you separate the eggs; then you beat the whites.” Alexis is smarter than I, not “then I.”







URL: http://www.wsu.edu/~brians/errors/than.html

Im Black, You're White, Whos Innocent?

I think Shelby Steele brings an interesting perspective to the issue of race. I like how he elaborates the fact that racial tension is the result of by a power struggle. His Innocence Vs. Guilt idea was something I had not thought to much about but could relate to. I think that some of the ideas get a lost in his terminology at some points however. I think some of his examples were a little on the weak side, namely his reference to the Crosby show. I felt like he could have elaborated on his ideas and their correlation to the TV show a little clearer. Its true that the issue of race wasn't ever discussed on the show but the issue of race isn't brought up on any other sit-coms, and I wonder why the fact that the Crosby's would be any different, other than the fact that they were black. On the other hand, I found his personal experiences fascinating. I like the objective tone he seems to use. Hes really good at sticking to a middle ground without dismissing the fact that racism is still an issue. I liked his labeling of Jesse Jackson as a "challenger by instinct and Bargainer by political ambition."I thought it was a better example then the crosby show and gave me a better understanding of what each term meant. All in all I enjoyed the piece, I really enjoy reading about ideas that I haven t heard before. Steele's take on Racism and Class was unique and got me thinking.