NAGRAT or Nagrat?: The role of capital letters

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Kae_Wobofo 11 years ago

country who deeply cared about the mechanics of the English language any longer.
But kindly forget about Pres. Mahama, and help in re-training many of our Journalists[old and new], who can benefit tremendously from your imme ...
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country who deeply cared about the mechanics of the English language any longer.
But kindly forget about Pres. Mahama, and help in re-training many of our Journalists[old and new], who can benefit tremendously from your immense knowledge and experience in the use and form of proper English in communication.
P.K. 11 years ago

De explanation is complex for me. Come down a bit. Well done foryur piece of knowledge.

De explanation is complex for me. Come down a bit. Well done foryur piece of knowledge.
IDRIS PACAS 11 years ago

To those offended by seeing Pres JM as an example, I say 'sorry'.

Keep commenting! We're building a solid foundation for our students.

One Ghana, One People!

To those offended by seeing Pres JM as an example, I say 'sorry'.

Keep commenting! We're building a solid foundation for our students.

One Ghana, One People!
NEMESIS 11 years ago

It's completely unnecessary to apologise to these idiotic individuals, who feel appalled by seeing Pres JM as an example. The example is worth, for he's the number one person in Ghana. When something is bad, it's bad, it's as ...
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It's completely unnecessary to apologise to these idiotic individuals, who feel appalled by seeing Pres JM as an example. The example is worth, for he's the number one person in Ghana. When something is bad, it's bad, it's as simple as that. Even when JM and his bunch of corrupt ministers are stealing left, right and centre, these NDC crooks and sycophants want us to sing their praise. We listen to him every day, and we know he never stops mispronouncing the adjective form of the word 'august'.
Afriyie Adu -Amankwah 11 years ago

Well done. The material is a good recipe for public consumption.

Well done. The material is a good recipe for public consumption.
LONTO-BOY 11 years ago

Mr Idris Pacas, thanks for dedicating yourself educating the reading folk on Ghanaweb over the importance and rightly use of the English grammar. Oddly enough, one of the great failings of Ghana's education today is that most ...
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Mr Idris Pacas, thanks for dedicating yourself educating the reading folk on Ghanaweb over the importance and rightly use of the English grammar. Oddly enough, one of the great failings of Ghana's education today is that most teachers do not know the correct English grammar, spelling, punctuation and conventions of capitalization to help raise standards of English language in classroom and daily life.

Basic grammar rules state that every letter in an acronym should be capitalized regardless of what those words represent. Although acronyms are technically initialisms, that is, initial-letter abbreviations that are pronounced as letters rather than words. For example, FBI, GFA, NPP, NDC, CEO, NAGRAT, ECOWAS.

Personally, I find your articles very useful and educative.
Nii 11 years ago

You could have made your point without mentioning anyone's name. And to remind you too, his name is "President John Dramani Mahama", not "President John Dramani". If you are not willing to expend a little more energy to write ...
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You could have made your point without mentioning anyone's name. And to remind you too, his name is "President John Dramani Mahama", not "President John Dramani". If you are not willing to expend a little more energy to write people's name correctly or fully, why should it bother you when people don't want to expend a little more energy to write some abbreviations as all caps?
GEO 11 years ago

If Pres JM has been mispronouncing a word and his name is correctly cited, why kick against that? No politics here.

Go and teach him.

Very educative indeed.

If Pres JM has been mispronouncing a word and his name is correctly cited, why kick against that? No politics here.

Go and teach him.

Very educative indeed.
Odiyifo 11 years ago

You merely potrayed you Anti-Ndc attitude. You did not tell us how President Mahama misprononced the word august. What a lazy teacher! Your resort to NPP, AFAG, CPP and criticism of the President's pronounsation, and willing ...
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You merely potrayed you Anti-Ndc attitude. You did not tell us how President Mahama misprononced the word august. What a lazy teacher! Your resort to NPP, AFAG, CPP and criticism of the President's pronounsation, and willing to fight gov't shows you just came to do dirty politics. You could have presented your case without politics.
GEO 11 years ago

What is 'pronounsation'? Sorry your limited understanding of English is the cause.

It is stated that Pres JM mispronounces the adjective to be homophonous with the noun. This means he pronounces it as /or-gest/.

What is 'pronounsation'? Sorry your limited understanding of English is the cause.

It is stated that Pres JM mispronounces the adjective to be homophonous with the noun. This means he pronounces it as /or-gest/.

Kremkracker 11 years ago

NAGraT should be correct acronym for National Association of Graduate Teachers.

NAGraT should be correct acronym for National Association of Graduate Teachers.
chief 11 years ago

The writer must be a little bit sick in the head. Soon I saw words in his article like "academic ,academically, common sense" etc and I told myself this a proud idiot making noise not even to read president Mahama's name bein ...
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The writer must be a little bit sick in the head. Soon I saw words in his article like "academic ,academically, common sense" etc and I told myself this a proud idiot making noise not even to read president Mahama's name being cited as a casualty of mispronunciation. He is an arrogant idiot calling himself a teacher because what I know about good teachers, they educate and formalize themselves with a topic before they come to classroom. There is a saying that an empty barrel makes most noise. He himself is a casualty of capitalization right from the title of his article to what his empty head suggests for NAGRAT. To begin with, we don't write a title or headline or heading for an article as he himself has done here considering the upper case and lower case he is talking about. The title should have had all upper cases or make each first letter of a word an upper case. Therefore his title should have been- "NAGRAT or Nagrat": THE ROLE OF CAPITAL LETTERS. Or he should have also correctly written in this way- "NAGRAT or Nagrat": The Role of Capital Letters. Now note how he wrote his "role" "capital" and "letter" for the headline. And he is trying to educate others by even disgracing the president. Look at another funny thing from him "ATM machine", "HIV virus". Then we can have "NAGRAT teachers" "GES service". Omg.
IDRIS PACAS 11 years ago

The President advised us to use made-in-Ghana goods. So if I'm writing an article and the Pres offers the best example, using that example is simply a matter of complying with his directive.

Also, I'm a taxpayer. As part o ...
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The President advised us to use made-in-Ghana goods. So if I'm writing an article and the Pres offers the best example, using that example is simply a matter of complying with his directive.

Also, I'm a taxpayer. As part of my rights as a citizen, I'm equally demanding that the President pronounce words correctly. So, what's wrong with that?

To give you a better example, Winston Churchill was the only sitting British PM to receive the Nobel Prize for Literature. Yet, he mistakenly used it's for its and this error is the most cited grammatical mistake in lessons on contractions. Winston and his party never became offended because of that. The error only shows how infallible humans are. Again, what's your problem?

Ghanaweb is a place for learning and for entertainment.Don't personalize issues here. My loyalty to the Pres exceeds yours severalfold. This example has nothing to do with ridiculing him.

Let me educate this commenter a bit. This is his second sentence: Soon I saw words in his article like "academic ,academically, common sense" etc.

Common sense suggests that when you use any word that already implies that you're going to some examples, you don't attach 'etc' at the end again. His sentence contains 'like'; a better option would be 'such as'. In either case, the word 'etc' is redundant. Thus, his sentence should be 'Soon I saw words in his article like "academic ,academically and common sense".

Second, titles or headings can be written in three ways: sentence case, title case or uppercase. His limited knowledge prevented him from noting that no sensible journalists write headings in ALL CAPS again. He should have just gone back to see all the other articles before making that comment.

For the examples concerning HIV virus, and the rest, he should just 'google' online for more info.

Stay blessed!
chief 11 years ago

Made in Ghana goods but not Made in Ghana service said by the president. Is communication a good. Idiot

Sit there and beat about the bush just to defend your rubbish on Ghanaweb.

Talking about headline, yes any sensibl ...
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Made in Ghana goods but not Made in Ghana service said by the president. Is communication a good. Idiot

Sit there and beat about the bush just to defend your rubbish on Ghanaweb.

Talking about headline, yes any sensible journalist can use all upper case it is not out-moulded and sentence case never got any place as a headline, it is only used by people like you who got no brain of doing the right thing but just to defense your mediocrity.

You won't stop amusing me, looking at your condemnation of my sentence (which in any way is right) and your support for HIV virus, ATM machine etc, it means you condemn redundant and at same time you support it. You advised me to google online for more info. Do you know that the internet got more unreliable info than any sources of info because any idiot can write and publish anything there? Even based on you advice, all sources on google discard the use of redundant words except "Wikipedia" which partially suggests it can be used to emphasize words to children. Note: it says children. I doubt if you are really a teacher.
HMM! 11 years ago

Learn to write sense. What is 'out-moulded'?

What again is 'to defense' your mediocrity?

Learn to write sense. What is 'out-moulded'?

What again is 'to defense' your mediocrity?
KWASI IN EUROPE 11 years ago

It is easy to notice that the writer is not a trained teacher. Under capitalization, major words are capitalized. It should be NAGRAT and never Nagrat. Prepositions and conjunctions ( "of", "and" etc. )are usually neglected. ...
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It is easy to notice that the writer is not a trained teacher. Under capitalization, major words are capitalized. It should be NAGRAT and never Nagrat. Prepositions and conjunctions ( "of", "and" etc. )are usually neglected. Germans even go a little bit further by writing part of the words when capitalizing; eg. " LPartG" for "Lebenspartnerschaftsgesetz" ( Concubine Law). Don't be surprised, Germans have laws on everything. A recent law now permits them to get fresh bread on Sundays. As for ATM machine and HIV virus, I laughed a lot. It is like saying USA America.
JB Osei-Brown 11 years ago

I have been following your posts and I love them so keep the good work!

Hiowever in this posting, it is interesting to note that you have mentioned almost everything except the most deciding term and that is 'context' and ...
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I have been following your posts and I love them so keep the good work!

Hiowever in this posting, it is interesting to note that you have mentioned almost everything except the most deciding term and that is 'context' and also the use of the definite article 'The'.

For instance in many computer related literatur 'Ram' (instead of RAM) will be the short for random access memory, because the chances of 'Ram' (an animal) appearing in computer literacy can hardly be greater than 0.00% ! And if I see a Ram when some animal was killed at a festivela, I wont think the chife destroyed that 16GB thing in my computer!

Similary because a Gnat or gnat (an insect) has nothing to do with Gnat (when writing about that association well noted for strikes!), it will be clear enough to wrtie 'Gnat is on strike again'; 'Gnat is electing new executives' or better still 'The Gnat is on strike again'.

In short, dependin on context plus the use of definite and indefinite articles unambiguity can be clarified.

By the way, after struggling to get 2 in English at GCE (19-70-Something) I have not learnt English any longer, so excuse me for my mistakes.
JB Osei-Brown 11 years ago

festivela : festival

wont: won't

chife: chief

dependin: depending
And if I see a Ram: And if I read that a Ram or ram (whatever) ...

and many more!

festivela : festival

wont: won't

chife: chief

dependin: depending
And if I see a Ram: And if I read that a Ram or ram (whatever) ...

and many more!

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NAGRAT or Nagrat?: The role of capital letters

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