The Old English Teacher Again

I can't seem to stay out of the classroom. Here are a few cute examples illustrating common grammatical terms and all-too common sentence and punctuation errors.

Seven bar jokes involving grammar and punctuation, by Eric K. Auld
And twelve additional sentence errors of my own.

1. A comma splice walks into a bar, it has a drink and then leaves.
2. A dangling modifier walks into a bar. After finishing a drink, the bartender asks it to leave.
3. A question mark walks into a bar?
4. Two quotation marks “walk into” a bar.
5. A present participle and an infinitive walk into a bar, hoping to forget their troubles.
6. The bar was walked into by the passive voice.
7. Three intransitive verbs walk into a bar. They sit. They drink. They leave.
8. A split infinitive walks into a bar, asking the bartender to only serve him one drink.
9. A sentence-ending preposition walks into a bar, which was already serving the adverbs he was looking for.
10. A pronoun error walks into a bar, keeping an open space at the bar between he and an old colon.
11. An adverb error walks into a bar, feeling badly that his adjective buddy couldn’t join him.
12. Two exclamation marks walk into a bar and were greeted with loud cheers!!
13. A bad apostrophe walks into a bar and sluggs down it’s first two drinks.
14. A sentence fragment walks into a bar. Decides he doesn’t like the company and leaves.
15. A couple of disagreeable verbs walks into a bar and asks for a free drink.
16. A run-on sentence walks into a bar he demanded a free drink.
17. A misplaced modifier walks into a bar, wearing a straw hat on his head, which was obviously too small.
18. A spelling error walks into a bar, thinking a martini might be alright.
19. Three parallel structures walk into a bar (with one old gerund in the middle). They loved to drink together, loved telling jokes, and loved to remember good times from their past.

A short poem my good friend Anne sent me a long time ago, a poem that speaks to me personally now that I'm an old outrigger who too often sticks too close to shore:

"We rest here while we can, but hear the ocean calling in our dreams,
And we know by morning, the wind will fill our sails to test the seams,
The calm is on the water and part of us would linger by the shore,
For ships are safe in harbor, but that is not what ships are for."

A thought I had about my writing and trying to sell what I’ve written: “It was like dropping stones in a pool of oil—not even a ripple as they sank into the depths, nothing to indicate they’d ever been dropped. What a humbling experience it is to put words down on paper, words you’ve labored over, sighed over, pored over, sweat upon, wept upon, cursed, blessed, kissed. And when the child is finally born, the labors over, you think he’s so handsome. And onlookers turn away, with a look of disgust or sympathy, or a veiled smile, maybe a little chuckle behind masking fingers."

And here I am again, peddling my words. Books, anyone?