I got the idea to write this after I read Tara's blog:I don't Know What to Blog: Blog Topic Ideas. I'm going to tell you about the most dangerous sentence I've ever written. And the sentence would embarrass me if people had a chance to read it.
I have a blog on one of user generated content websites for almost a year now. My reason to have a blog on the website is as a direct test to my writing ability. It has wide range of readers from native English readers and non-native English readers. I want to know what they think about my writing. Whether it is awful or at least understandable.
It was my recent blog post and I wrote about home remedy for certain disease. And I wrote an instruction how to use the remedy like this:
Grate it until smooth, then take a bit of the grater on our eyes' areas.
When I was writing it, I had difficulty in finding certain words. I thought grate is a process and grater is the result or the pulp. Until I checked my Gmail and found a warning from the website's moderator. Let me quote the warning:
Interesting topic, however please correct the grammar/spelling of your Hub. For example this sentence could be dangerously misunderstood to mean to grate your eyes with the grater.
Traditional grater in my country
Then, I checked on Google about the words grate and grater immediately. Well, according to Dictionary.com, grate is a process to reduce something (especially food) to small shreds by rubbing it on a tool named grater.
So, in the instruction I suggested that people put a grater on their eyes. It was embarrassing and dangerous and while I'm writing this I really hope no one read the post before the moderator noticed the mistake.
It reminds me the writing checklist I read from Tara's pictures picture that I should make sure I really understand all words that I use in my writing.
Comments
@ Asma
Thank Asma :)
Great blog Ario :)
@Anau
Thank Anau. Yes, we should be more careful about the words we use. My mistake made my article was held for more than three days and I needed to correct it three times before it was published...lol.
Nice blog Ario...^_*
I will more careful with words.....Thank for your sharing...
@Narendra
Thank Narendra. Well, I changed the word into pulp, to make it more clear :)
Nice blog Ario, It happens with almost every learner :-)......I think the appropriate word should have been "grated"...........Thanks for sharing it with us.
@Anele
I'm glad that you liked the title of this blog post. I tried to make it like that intentionally. Yes, it's very great if we have guidelines to follow to improve our English. And I'm lucky I find it on MyEC.
@Ali
Thank for the example you gave. Yes, the situation that you mentioned can happen many times. I will try to remember this and try to write my blog post clearly.
That made me smile.
Even in England we can make similar mistakes. We can use the right words in the right order but they can mean different things.
An example would be: "This reader is terrible". If you didn't know the context you could think that I was insulting the person who was reading something (out loud for us to hear). Of course, in England, a "reader" could mean a book or another device for learning to read or for reading (Kindle, for example). So the comment "This reader is terrible" could have meant that the Kindle was not a device I enjoyed using to read, or the content of a book was not, in my opinion, any good.
We really do have to ensure that the audience of our writing is not left with doubts. This is the art of communication.
@ Ann
Thank for reading my blog twice :) I hope you like it :)
Very interesting ! I read your blog twice :))
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