Thursday, August 16, 2007

Farewell, GrammarNotes

Hallelujah and praise the Lord. The project that has been occupying most of my time since late January is 98 percent over. I have to do a few passes of review for problems, but the hard work is over, and I couldn't be happier.

GrammarNotes is a huge collection (about 60 total) of powerpoint presentations on, you guessed it, grammar and its fundamentals. There are three levels of instruction, and most of the presentations are repeated through each level, with slight variations depending on the target age of the students. There are only so many times you can review a presentation on using semicolons before you lose the will to go on.

The worst part is that working on GrammarNotes affected my writing, and not for the best. I suddenly started analyzing my sentences, diagramming them and labeling phrases and clauses and appositives in my head. I would freeze up wondering whether I'd punctuated something correctly. Fortunately, now that I'm finished with the project, all those worries are drifting away. I can go back to being my usual ungrammatical self. Although I'll still use "who" and "whom" and "which" and "that" correctly. My mother drilled those lessons into my head to firmly for me to forget.


I cleaned my office out today, removing the piles of paper from copyediting that had accumulated since January. The papers filled an entire diaper box, which Campbell found very interesting.

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