The most dangerous sentence I've ever written

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.

Tags: blog, checklist, correction, embarrasing, funny, ideas, story, topic, writing

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Mod Comment by Ario on April 25, 2012 at 13:51: @ Asma

Thank Asma :)

Comment by Asm@ on April 25, 2012 at 13:14: Great blog Ario :)

Mod Comment by Ario on April 25, 2012 at 3:57: @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.

Comment by Anau on April 24, 2012 at 11:34: Nice blog Ario...^_*

I will more careful with words.....Thank for your sharing...

Mod Comment by Ario on April 24, 2012 at 10:42: @Narendra

Thank Narendra. Well, I changed the word into pulp, to make it more clear :)

Comment by Narendra shukla on April 24, 2012 at 6:30: Nice blog Ario, It happens with almost every learner :-)......I think the appropriate word should have been "grated"...........Thanks for sharing it with us.

Mod Comment by Ario on April 23, 2012 at 0:35: @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.

Comment by Ali on April 22, 2012 at 13:48: 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.

Mod Comment by Anele on April 22, 2012 at 9:03: You are right.........grating the eyes sounds a bit cruel and gory. Anyone who read that line might probably raise his eyebrow in confusion.

Well..........you are following the right path this time. Isn't it great to learn English this way, Ario? By the way, I like the title of your blog........it sounds very alarming, hahaha!