10 th grade english; correct the grammar, syntax, & spelling of a freeper.

I keep hearing how oil dependent we are and how higher consumption is driving up prices... I hear how it is adversely affecting 75% of americans, It seems like if that was the case, 75% of americans would cut the amount they use! I know I cant be the only person in america that has drastically cut the amount of fuel I use over the past year. I want to know what everybody has done to use less fuel.

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1628544/posts

WHY DO YOU HATE THIS COUNTRY? LOL

"I would challenge you democtatic underground lurkers (or a freeper with a DU account) to post this over there and see what sort of repsonses come from the left..."

How could any DU lurkers survive there for more than two seconds? I once read something about how easy it was to get kicked off of there, so I tried it myself. I found the perfect opportunity, a thread about how proud some guy was of beating his liberal co-worker in an argument. Amidst all the nodding and chuckling, I interjected as "The Friendly Troll" (why hide it?), and opined about the need for rational discussion on both sides of the political spectrum. I was polite. Sarcastic in a joking kinda way. Reasonable. Didn't call anybody names.

Post got deleted within two minutes.

Wow.

(what is he doing, lying in wait for this kinda thing?)

I therefore cannot believe that anyone left-of-center could survive in there. Tell me if I'm wrong.

(Foidamore, if it's as easy for a right-of-center guy to get kicked out of here as long as he acts like something above Cro-Magnum level, this place ain't much better....)

Just curious about the pic in your post. My wife is quite into grizzlies. In fact, her license plate is "GRZZLY".

http://www.bear.org/Grizzly/GB_Home.html

Great site!

That's a healthy black bear!

He has spent his life studying bears. Guess what? Black bears are not really that dangerous.

I wouldn't want to step between a mother and her cubs though. :) We're going to Yellowstone in about 3 weeks. Been there many times, and seen tons of blacks and a couple handfulls of griz.

Disproved the black bear mother and cubs theory.

And rogue black bear are very rare.

I had a black bear follow our canoe as we were fishing in Ontario for about
30 minutes or so .... he/she just seemed amused by us. No danger but
we were about 20 feet from shore and the bear just followed along.
A red fox also came out of the woods too. It was neat but I have no idea
why the animals had "that behavior" on that day. Never seen anything like
it since.

he wrote it during recess just to impress Emmy-Lou out by the sandbox.

He uses Mom's car only when he goes out for porn. He lives in Mom's basement. He eats all of his meals with mom. Cooked on mom's stove. He surely doesn't bathe reqularly - that saves fuel. Yea to the fighting 101st Keyboarders!

I keep hearing how oil dependent we are and how higher consumption is driving up prices... I hear how it is adversely affecting 75% of americans, It seems like if that was the case, 75% of americans would cut the amount they use! I know I cant be the only person in america that has drastically cut the amount of fuel I use over the past year. I want to know what everybody has done to use less fuel.

1) I keep hearing how oil dependent we are and how higher consumption is driving up prices - A bit awkward, but nothing grammatically wrong

2) I hear how it is adversely affecting 75% of americans, Given the parallel structure of the previous sentence, the antecedent for the pronoun "it" here is ambiguous, but one would assume that the pronoun refers to "higher consumption" since that was the final element in the series. Inelegant? Sure. But not really that bad. Now, clearly "Americans" - as a proper noun - should be capitalized, and the final punctuation should be a period rather than a comma, but these could easily be typos, and it is a bit much to expect perfect, proofread documents on an internet message board, no?

3) It seems like if that was the case, 75% of americans would cut the amount they use! Obviously, the problem of capitalization at the beginning of the sentence, but this goes further to indicate that the final comma in the previous sentence was a typo. Sentences 2) and 3) would be comma-spliced. Again, "Americans" and continuing problems with antecedents (violation of the given-new contract, really), but overall, nothing major.

4) I know I cant be the only person in america that has drastically cut the amount of fuel I use over the past year. - Should use "who" instead of "that," since the Freeper is referring to a person (him or herself). Otherwise, a perfectly acceptable sentence, if inelegant.

5) I want to know what everybody has done to use less fuel. Nothing wrong with this sentence, structurally. Like the others, it is inelegant and lacks conciseness. It should probably read: "What have you done to reduce your fuel consumption?" but that's neither here nor there.

I find attacks on grammar and spelling online to be a bit silly. Such attacks mistake context: online contexts don't really call for grammatical precision - in the same way that oral discourse is very forgiving on grammatical issues. Online writing, many have argued, constitutes a kind of secondary orality, so attacks on grammar and spelling become tantamount to ad hominem arguments.

You wrote in part:

3) It seems like if that was the case, 75% of americans would cut the amount they use! Obviously, the problem of capitalization at the beginning of the sentence, but this goes further to indicate that the final comma in the previous sentence was a typo. Sentences 2) and 3) would be comma-spliced. Again, "Americans" and continuing problems with antecedents (violation of the given-new contract, really), but overall, nothing major.

The first clause in the freeper's sentence is intended as a counterfactual conditional, so it should be in the subjunctive mood ("if that were the case"). Also, I'm not sure whether "like" in that sentence is incorrect or merely inelegant, but I'd certainly prefer "It seems that if that were the case . . . ."

Given how few Americans can handle the subjunctive, we might have to bow to reality and go along with your assessment that bungling it is "nothing major."

My overall agreement with you is that the freeper post is well above the level that I expected based on the title of the thread. It wouldn't be hard to find posts over there that are far worse than this one.

But I think you're right that such mistakes are quite common, especially in oral discourse.