Random English Rules: Tricks and Tips to Stop Looking Like an Idiot

Let's face it. English is a random amalgamation of several languages, and that makes our grammar and spelling fucked. So let's go over basic grammar questions, and the rules to govern them.

Your v.s. you're. 

Here's the rule. Extrapolate.

Example sentence: Your cat stinks.

Is your correct, or should you're fit there? Remember 'you're' is 'you are.' So then, put 'you are' in place of the 'your.'

Example Sentence: You are cat stinks.

Doesn't work? Then 'your' is the way to go.

Another way to remember is ownage. Do you 'own' your cat? (some people would disagree, but let's just say yes.) Then your is the way to go.

In the sentence: "Your stupid"

Do you own the stupid? (Sometimes, yes.) Then 'you're' is the way to go.

Their vs There Vs they're.

For 'they're' the same rule applies as your vs you're.

If you can put 'they are' in there, and it makes sense, then they're is the word to use.

You also have to ask if 'they' own the object that comes after it. So, "Their car." If they own the car, then 'their' is the word to use.

As for there, you can remember it as a location, or you can just see:
They don't own it
They are doesn't work
So it's there.

Easy.

Our vs are: 

I'm not sure why this is a thing, since they don't even sound alike, but here.

If you are it, it's are. If you own it with someone else, it's 'our.'

Then vs than

Then is usually a statement about time.

"I went to the store, THEN I went home."

Than is usually comparative. "The store was much colder THAN the outside."

So ask yourself, was the store cooler, then the outside happened? No? Then use 'than.'

affect vs effect:

I learned this with a very simple statement.

After you AFFECT something it has an EFFECT.

That makes no sense on its own, I know.

Basically affect means you're taking responsibility for the action. You affect the lake by touching it. Or, you can say touching the water has an effect.

An affect is active. Something DID that. An effect is passive. You're saying it just happened.

An effect will always follow an affect.

Who vs whom:

This works by re-arranging the sentence.

"Did you hear who she is going out with?"

Now, replace 'who' with he/she, and whom with 'him/her.'

So, if you re-arrange the sentence to say:

"She's going out with him" you can see that the above sentence really needs a 'whom.'

An Vs A 

This is all about pronunciation, so hear the words in your head.

"a apple" sounds awkward, so somebody decided it should be 'an apple.' So if you say it in your head, and 'a x' sounds awkward, change it to an.

Context Clues:

I'm going to interrupt the grammar lesson to talk about vocabulary. There are a few ways you can work out vocab for say, a multiple-choice test.

Remember roots, prefixes, and suffixes.

Don't worry, I'm going to explain what those words mean.

A 'root' is a word you can extrapolate (another big word, hang on) other words out of. For example:

Book- something you read
Bookcase- something you put books in
Bookish- Someone who really likes books

So if you know what the root word is, in this case, book, you have a better chance of guessing the answer.

A suffix is like: -ing, -ed, and -able.

This one can be a bit of a stretch for tests, but if you are in a bind, try glancing at the suffixes. "ing" goes with verbs, or words that say you're doing something. "ed" tends to go with past-tense things, or descriptors, so words that say something about something else. -able suggests action, but in a positive way.

If the word is used in a sentence, you might be able to guess what it means by substitution, or looking at the words and sentences around it. For example, 'extrapolate' up above means 'to expand on.' Which I did. I expanded on the word 'book' to get 'bookcase' and 'bookish.'

Here's another one.

"I'm not saying you all need to go to college. There are valuable jobs people need to do that don't need college. Mechanics, for example? I really respect mechanics. I can't even begin to emulate what they do. Mechanics need skill."

So, what's 'emulate' mean?

Well, in the above paragraph, I say I respect mechanics, and they need skills. If I can't even begin something about them, it might well be: copy, pretend to, or start to learn.

You've tried all of this, and you're still lost. This might be a trick that only works for me, but it's better than randomly guessing: 'feel' out the word.

Words can feel good, mean, negative, or positive.

For example: acerbic. Sound it out. With the hard 'c' sound at the end, starting with an 'ac' sound at the beginning suggests a rather bitter, harsh word. And indeed, someone who is acerbic tends to be bitter and harsh.

"Flourishing." The 'f' sound may sound harsh, but feel the word, how it seems to flow with the breeze peacefully. It's a good word.

Anything with 'con' in it is a negative word. (Even the conscience is usually telling you NOT to do something.)

What is a sentence? 

I'm not going to talk about nouns, adverbs, adjectives, and so on. They're boring. The truth is, sentences can be pretty much whatever you want them to be.

What?

The above paragraph was a sentence, with a single word. It doesn't have all the parts a sentence theoretically requires, of course, but it gets the point across, especially if you add tone. Perhaps you're saying it abashedly like you got caught. Or you're saying it in confusion, like you genuinely want to know. Perhaps you're saying it sarcastically like you feel someone is judging you who shouldn't be.

"What?" is a sentence that conveys a single idea. The context of that idea will be created in the sentences before and after it. However, 'what?' is officially a fragment, which just means a sentence that doesn't have all the pieces.

Fragments shouldn't be frowned upon. They can be very useful. They can speed up a story, give a sense of urgency, or suggest someone is thinking quickly or not very well. I prefer fragments to sentences that have so many commas, dashes, and colons to fill two pages. Speaking of those:

Now, punctuation time. 

The funnest part.

Here's a good trick to learn: between the point when the sentence starts and a comma, period, or dash ends it, the sentence should make sense on its own. Like the 'what' above, it has to convey a solid idea.

There is of course, exceptions, because English hates you.

If you have a piece of the sentence that can be removed, like this bit here, without the sentence losing anything then you can have a comma before the sentence is completed.

Now, you might be wondering what a dash is, or a colon is, or a semi-colon is, or a double-dash, and how to use it. (Probably not.)

The truth is: a colon ( : ) a dash ( - ) and a double dash (-- words --) and a comma ( , ) are fairly interchangeable. You can pretty much use them in place of each-other. The exclusion is that colons are largely used to start lists, and double dashes are usually some sort of statement that doesn't quite relate to the sentence at hand,.

Now, the period ( . ) vs the semicolon ( ; ). I know, all you see is boobs, but let's pull our minds out of the gutter for a minute.

Both a period and a semi-colon work fairly the same way; the difference is that a semi-colon tells you the two sentences are closely related. It's like a period is just your friend while a semi-colon is your significant other.

When do you capitalize?

You capitalize after a . a ? and a !. That's it for punctuation. I know I want to--and may well have-- capitalized things after a semi-colon or a colon, but that's not how things work.

You also capitalize names, and places that have a specific name. You wouldn't capitalize the subway, but if a specific subway bus was known as the 'bus of death' you would capitalize it to have: Bus of Death.

Words like 'of' and 'the' usually don't get capitalized in titles, unless they're the first word.

You also can capitalize something that is acting like a human that shouldn't be. For example, the giving tree. The whole time, that tree could have been a Tree. Not because it was a super-important tree, but because it wasn't acting like a tree.

Where do possessive marks go?

Normally I'd go on this whole thing about how it depends, but it's like the argument academia had when I was growing up about 'parent's' vs 'parents' ' vs 'parents's'. The public has decided 'parents' ' is correct.

So, while it is supposed to matter how much of the sentence is quotes, I'm just going to say: all quotes should go outside punctuation. I have never read a book that has put them anywhere else.

What length is a paragraph? 

I'm sure your teachers gave you an arbitrary (made up) number of sentences you needed. The truth is a paragraph is as long as you need to get your idea across. If it is only one sentence you needed then you only need one sentence.

Spelling: 

Seriously, everything is typed these days. If Word hasn't figured it out, your web browser might (if it isn't internet explorer) and if that can't figure it out, google it. Google is a miracle worker in trying to figure out what the hell you want.

Hypocrisy: 

I know I misused some of the things I just taught you. The truth is that I know these rules and I'm just starting to use them too. Especially the one about commas only coming after the sentence was already a complete thought. That one's been a bitch for me.

Video Game Reviews: The Batman Arkham Series

The truth is, I haven't been watching many tv shows lately. I'm running out of ones I'll watch willingly on Netflix (Revolution is taunting me, telling me to pick it up again and mock it), and I've largely been playing video games.

So let's talk about video games.

I was not a big batman fan. Didn't see any of the movies, didn't see the tv shows, and I didn't see the big deal about The Dark Knight. (I saw it once and was quite 'meh' about it.)

I bought these games because, together, they were 8 bucks, and I could throw away that money on something I might like.

And I LOVED it.

Let's start with Asylum:

I knew something was up from the beginning, even though I had seen no trailers for the game. (Did you know games have trailers? I find that odd.) So I was fairly unsurprised when The Joker pulled his trick. Wouldn't have a game if he didn't get away, right?

I quickly discovered how much I enjoyed the combat. Sure, I could button-mash if I wanted. or I could be AWESOME.The combat was very intuitive, and you would usually flow from enemy to enemy without much trouble. (Once in a while the game slipped up, but I forgive it.)

Then I was introduced to stealth mode. The idea of slipping around unseen really gets me, and this game, unlike Skyrim, had very reactive NPCs to your behavior, especially during stealth. You pick the enemies one by one, silently, then watch the others go mad. Feel free to take your time, and watch them slowly lose it. (In one room, a boiler goes off in regular intervals, and if you get them worked up enough, they will begin shooting at it.)

In later rooms, where the Joker is alerted each time a henchman goes down, the Joker taunts his own lackeys with your skill. In fact, let's take a minute to talk about The Joker in Arkham Asylum.

He's hilarious. I know the dialogue can be a bit corny, but you hear him pretty much everywhere. His lines have enough variety you won't go nuts from repeats, and nearly every 'announcement' of his is damn funny.

The other villain you spend the game with is much more frustrating... and satisfying to take down. The Riddler has left easter eggs all around the place, and after finding 100% of them, you get to hear him get arrested. The best part of it is the bravado at first slowly giving way to desperation and breaking-the-forth-wall complaints. (He accuses you of cheating, looking up the locations of the eggs on the internet.)

The best easter eggs, by far, are the patient interviews. You get to see, well, hear, Harleen Quinzel turn into Harley Quinn as The Joker puts her under her spell. You get to see Zsasz break his psychiatrist down. You hear Crock remove the guard's hand, and Ivy put her psychiatrist under her spell.

This game must be a veritable treasure trove for long Batman fans, as most characters that aren't part of the plot are represented with The Riddler's riddles.

There are a few segments of the game I should also talk about:

Ivy's boss battle: God did I hate this battle. It's the only time in the game where I had no idea what to do. I eventually figured it out, but I did have some frustrating deaths at first.
Crock's Lair: The first time I played it, I was less than amused. The second time? I was terrified. Every step you made was magnified, and you were aware every step you made was one step closer to getting eaten. I was hoping it would end not due to boredom, but due to adrenaline.
Scarecrow's Scenes: It's not a controversial opinion to say these were awesome, and the third one was the best. I won't spoil anything, so that's all I'll say.

Now, Arkham City:

Arkham Asylum is moved to a walled-off section of the city, and Bruce Wayne gets put there. I'm going to discuss changes from Asylum to City, and give a positive, eeh, or negative.

Positive: The environment is multiplied. It's huge! You get to climb buildings, which is my favorite thing in games for some reason.

Meh: Playing Catwoman. I neither hated it, nor liked it. I mean, I appreciated the boobage, but I couldn't help wondering how the hell that stayed on. I did feel like it often ruined the pacing to keep jumping between the two view points.

Negative: Riddler's riddles got harder. I know that's an odd thing to complain about, but I felt like Riddler's riddles being something to encourage you to explore the environment was great. You got to see everything the GameDevs had to offer. But adding button challenges, and timed challenges ruined it for me. I prefer puzzles, not timed challenges. Timed challenges feel like a cheap difficulty upgrade. I did appreciate that the riddles being solved meant something now, but I was never going to attempt to finish that quest.

Side missions:

Zsasz: This one was randomly frustrating, but never in a way I got angry with it. I'd often just end up at a villain's lair, and the phone would ring. I was aware I could technically ignore it, but I wouldn't, and next thing I know, I'm trekking back to get where I was before the phone rang. The Riddler being behind this was pretty awesome, in my opinion, and the end was great.
The masked man: I wish it had led somewhere. I guess this was supposed to be lead-up, but I didn't really want to wait another game to find out what the fuck was going on.
Rescue the political prisoners: This made me feel more like batman than usual. Hear trouble, swoop in, save the day, then disappear.

I wish there had been Scarecrow-style mindfuckery in this game, but the Mad Hatter bit, and Ra's al Ghul did make up for it enough that I didn't throw any complaints.

The fact is, Batman hasn't let me down  before. Even if people say Origins sucks, I'm going to buy it. I want them to keep making these games, even if, as it is joked by one of the mooks: "Arkham Asylum, now Arkham City, what's next? Arkham Universe?"