There must be some people reading this, and other forums, who would like to contribute but feel embarrassed that they are not literate enough. I think this is not good. that you should be excluded by that, so I want to correct that with a literacy correspondence course, right here, right now, by me. Me and you are going to sort this thing out right now, so tune in.

Of course you are probably able to do a bit, but you just don't have that confidence, because you don't want to make a fool of yourself, be looked upon lowly. Well, I can tell you this, firstly it is not your fault, and people on this site, as I have read, are too intelligent to mark down someone who just needs to get literate.

All of the people here posting, writing, are thinking in a certain way, mostly second nature, so they don't give it conscious effort, but they all do it. They THINK about the sense they are making. This is what you have to do, to THINK ABOUT THE SENSE OF YOUR WORDS.

You are trying to communicate your meaning, and make it easy for people to understand you.

Let's start with commas. If we wanted to tell someone that we would pay them the money we owed them, we would write: 'I will pay you the money I owe you'. But we might want to be more specific than this and tell them when, too, so we would write, 'I will pay you the money I owe you, tomorrow'. You see we added a clause (tomorrow), and we added it on using a comma. We might want to add more clauses, so we would use more commas. So we might then say, 'I will pay you the money I owe you, tomorrow, if I get paid on time'.

Do you get the picture about clauses and using commas to cut in and put it in.

This helps you be specific, helps you communicate what you want to communicate.

There is more to commas, but we will cover this later, but for now think about adding clauses. You will do this in your normal speech.

Hi Red, I do not know what you mean, please clarify. Are you trying to be 'clever', or to help?

Spelling. Well the computer helps by letting you know something is wrong, but most people have developed a memory, over time, of how words are spelled. For instance, when they want to write the word heart, they say it in their head as hEart. They have to remember the E, so they say it in their head, as they write, a 'I love you with all my hE-a-art. They have to remember that the word has a silent E.

A more 'advanced' difficult word is 'rhythm'. This has to be remembered by all people when writing. Another case could be the word 'success'. They have to remember the spelling because the way they say it does not give the spelling. I always, for instance, associate 'successfully' with 'necessary', because one word, though sounding the same, has one 'c,' whereas the other has two 'c's. This is how peoples' brains are working as they write, as they do it.

Another example ids 'vacuum'. We have to remember this, that it is one 'c' and two 'u's.

So it really is a question of practice, but the catch-22 is that if you can't write you don't practice. You will have to overcome this, and realize that it is to be commended. Remember, it is not your fault, not any shame on you, just respect to you for tackling this thing, and you certainly will get the hang of it as you write, as you practice. Accept the learning curve.

I was going to post Tom-tom Club, 'What are Words Worth', a bit too cheesy, but then saw 'Genius of Love', so had to play that...........of course. https://youtu.be/gTLPQ9h659A

A bullshit answer. I knew it. You had to answer, of course, to try and save yourself, as I challenged you, but you have not got out of it, just made it worse and showed yourself for the coward you seem to be. Come on, man, put your hand up and confess, 'I tried to be clever, but had to retreat when you asked me to say clearly what I ment because it would have showed me to be a berk'.

THE HYPHEN. This is when two words are brought together to make one word, and it is a good example of how to make words make the sense you mean. For instance, when writing a cheque, if the amount was, say, for example, £56, then you would have to write the amount , and you would write it as fifty-six pounds. I you wrote it as fifty six pounds (no hyphen to join both words) then that would mean that you wanted to pay someone fifty lots of six pounds (50 x £6) which is £300 pounds.

Then again, say it was £51 pounds, then you would not need to hyphenate the two words to bring them into one words (a compound word) because to write fifty one pounds literally means fifty lots of one pound.

So, say you wanted to call someone a snot-nosed git, then you would have to use a hyphen or it would mean a snot faced git, ie a snot, well yes some snot, then faced, well faced what……..it just makes more sense to say snot-faced.

Say you wanted to write that someone was hard-thinking, then if it wasn’t hyphenated it would read as they were hard, and then that they was thinking.

I hope you can see how you have to think about the sense that you are making.

All people who are writing are having to think about it in this way, and many do not understand the hyphen, BroadswordsWC in particular.

I have got to the point where I use a hyphen even if it isn’t literally necessary, I think, but I put the hyphen in anyway because it makes more sense, that I know the reader will understand better what I mean if I hyphenate it. And this is the main concern, making sense, saying accurately what you want to say, even if you have to break the rules.