Thread: Grammar!

Originally Posted by bazz cargo

I ran to him

or

I ran up to him?

As always these things come down to what you are trying to convey.

Example

and so I ran to him. (A tidy way to end a paragraph).

I ran up to him and kicked him in the last quarter. (The start of something).

To a degree they are interchangeable, but the differences can have a profound effect on the texture of what you are writing. This is a useful tool in dialogue. Making subtle differences between the way characters speak is a trick I am learning.

Thank you Bazz.
I did not think of dialogue then.
I tend to get muddled up with prepositions and it is almost impossible to avoid in phrasings like these.

or me, "ran to him" kind of gives me the mental image of a person running away from the viewer to a person in the distance. "Ran up to him" seems to bring the camera around to the action once the two are together.

Weird, perhaps, but that's how I see it.

How interesting.
I think my vision is slightely in the same lines as yours.
The first one I imagine the person running scattily towards someone, and the other running in an organised fashion hence the word 'up' as a kind of a straight line to follow as you run.

Dear Bazz
I was just thinking maybe some exercise on PARAPHRASING would be amasing.
I would like to try and recap soemthing in my own but have difficulties in doing so.
I am thinking a good exercise on this would be amasing.

I understand by it this:
When one paraphrases another author's writing one rewrites their argument using one own words, phrasing and interpreting it in one own way.

Sadly, now Nacian has been banned, I don't know if this answer will ever be useful. But.

Paraphrasing is useful when, a/ you wish to reduce an overly worded argument to a nutshell.
b/ when you wish to dodge a plagiarism accusation. c/ When you wish to take the mickey.