this post was submitted on 03 Apr 2025
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[–] johannes@lemmy.jhjacobs.nl 2 points 1 week ago (13 children)

I must admit its been a while, but all these things where horrible last time i played with them.

[–] MouldyCat@feddit.uk 12 points 1 week ago (11 children)

It's a *lot* better these days. Here's how you could use it to improve the English in your comment:

Can you point out and characterise the grammar mistakes in the following sentence, with tips on how the writer could avoid similar mistakes in future - "I must admit its been a while, but all these things where horrible last time i played with them."

Sure — that sentence has a few grammar issues, each pointing to a common kind of slip. Here's the breakdown:

  1. "its been a while" → "it's been a while"

Mistake: "its" is a possessive pronoun (like his, her, their), while "it's" is the contraction of "it has". Fix: Use "it's" because the writer means "it has been a while".

Tip: When in doubt, try expanding “it’s” to “it is” or “it has” and see if the sentence still makes sense. If it doesn’t, you probably want "its".

  1. "where horrible" → "were horrible"

Mistake: "where" (a location) is confused with "were" (past tense of are). Fix: Use "were" to correctly form the past tense of "to be".

Tip: Say it aloud—“they were horrible” sounds natural, while “they where horrible” doesn’t. If it’s a verb (they were), you want "were".

  1. "i played" → "I played"

Mistake: Lowercase "i". Fix: Always capitalize "I" when it's a pronoun referring to oneself.

Tip: This is more about habit than logic—just train yourself to always type "I" in uppercase, even in casual writing.


Full corrected version: "I must admit it's been a while, but all these things were horrible last time I played with them."

[–] shaun@lemmy.world 5 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Pretty sure this use case was solved 3 decades back with spellcheck. Not sure why we need to burn good energy having an AI prompt with the same suggestions.

[–] MouldyCat@feddit.uk 4 points 1 week ago

Well spelling was solved even earlier than that, with rote-learning at school in combination with the very environmentally friendly technologies known as the paddle and cane. What was wrong with that way of doing things?? Is it progress? Or were things better in the old days?

In any case, all the words in the sentence in question are spelt correctly - the problem is grammar. Correctly determining if the grammar of a sentence is correct is a much harder problem than simply checking the spelling of words against a dictionary.

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