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Snarky: Likewise, a medium, multiple media. That gets on my tits too.

I was aware of that, yes.

*looks up emily's question*

Edit: Oh, I thought you meant you'd posted a question in here. I don't really know much technically about AGS. I'm sure someone else will be able to help you though.

Reverend Spooner, and yes. A spoonerism is taking the initial sounds of two words and swapping them around.

Other interesting nuances of English:

Mondegreens - misheard song lyrics. (for example, "she's got a chicken to ride")
Malapropisms - Words in a sentence replaced with other words that sound the same but mean something different. (for example: "If it's any consolidation, I'm not that great with English either.")

[Let the games commence!]

A burglar breaks into a lifeless building in the dead of night. His target: a priceless diamond.

To his dismay, when he makes his way further in, he finds that he accidentally broke into a pretzel factory! Oh no! That priceless diamond has evaded his grasp, and now he hears security guards fast approaching. What a pickle!

-------

Sometimes, the best laid plans just go completely up the creek without a paddle, and that's the topic of this fortnight's writing competition.

Write about someone ending up in a seemingly hopeless situation, and how they get themselves out of it (or not).

General rules:

• The length of the entry isn't important.
  
• All entries should be in by the 30th of July.
  
• Voting will start on the 31st of July and end on the 2nd of August.
  
• The winner will decide the topic of the next fortnightly writing competition.
  

No trophy unfortunately since my graphical skills are utter garbage.

Let the games commence!

The verbosity of the preceding statement appeals greatly to my inherent penchant for obfuscation of simple sentences.

How about "Few minds are as insane as mine." ?

Schway! New topic coming soon.

I vote for AtelierGames.

You probably did, Terran, I've got a memory like a sieve.

What that guy said.

BONUS LESSON: than/then
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I've seen many, many people stumble headlong into the pitfall that is than/then. I think it's mostly people whose mother tongue isn't English, but since the two words are so similar I'll take a little bit of time to explain what each one actually is, and what it's used for.

Than is used in comparison. For example "I have a better grasp of written English -than- you." In this case, I am saying that my grasp of written English is superior to yours. Than is mostly used in conjunction with two or more nouns/adjectives/verbs that are being compared, though there are exceptions. Rather than list them all, I'll simply put a subtle one in this very sentence. Did you spot it? A famous example in common proverbs would obviously be "better late than never" in which case I'm stating that being late is preferable to never turning up. This might all seem like old hat, but bear with me. (note that technically when we say "rather than X", it's a shortened way of saying "I would prefer to do X as opposed to not doing X" so it does follow the same rules, sort of)

Now to then. I most commonly see people using this in place of than, not so much the other way around. Then is used in statements involving time, pretty much, generally to declare the next item(s) in a list of actions that are being performed on an implicit or explicit timescale. To translate what I just said into English, some examples: "I'm going to go to the shops and then take a bath." this basically means that I'm going to take my bath after I've been to the shops. It can also be used as a qualifier: "If you did your homework then you can play video games." then in this case is pretty much superfluous and isn't actually needed, but technically it's grammatically correct to have it there. It can also be used in things like "Well then, I guess we'll stay home!", but in those cases the "then" is definitely superfluous and I'm not actually sure grammar cares whether it's there.

Hopefully I've shed some light on this problem. I'd rather confuse some people and possibly educate some others then suffer people constantly misusing these two words. Until next time!

I emphasise the VER myself, and pronounce it shoor.

Me neither. Generally speaking you never have two words next to each other in a sentence where the end of the first and the start of the second are vowels with the same pronunciation.

Yeah, it's mostly personal preference. Both pronunciations are fine IMO. It's also somewhat dependent on the context in which it's used. For example:

"Neither of us were there that day." I would pronounce nigh-ther.
"You weren't there that day? Me neither!" I would pronounce nee-ther.

I must protest. This looks like the studio of a normal sized wizard, yet I was led here under the pretence that I would in fact be looking at the studio of a small one! Explain this discrepancy!

It's frowned upon, yes, but there's nothing inherently wrong with doing it. It's really better to use a semicolon.

Although as an addendum to that, the comma can actually change the meaning of the sentence entirely. To wit:

"I have a dog that is funny." = "I have a dog, and he has a good sense of humour."

"I have a dog, that is funny." = "I have a dog. It is amusing that I have a dog." (though technically you can still mean the first meaning even with the comma. In spoken English the meaning is determined by your -pronunciation- of the word 'that'. If you're conveying the first meaning, you'll pronounce it "thaaat" while the second is more like "tht" or "thit". Who said English was simple? )

To make the second meaning even clearer in written English, you'd use a semicolon: "I have a dog; that is funny."

Though really to avoid confusion if you meant the first meaning you could just go ahead and say "I have a funny dog."

If English isn't that hard to understand, why do so many people have trouble with it?

"Your Honour, I think you'll find that the record CLEARLY shows the victim's cause of death as falling from a great height...into a tank of laser-sharks."

Yeah, I don't know where you learned that one Terran but it's just been pretty thoroughly disproven.

Yeah, it doesn't work for EVERY situation, obviously. It's just one of those general rules of English that gets subverted by everything else.

I'll add a corollary to it.

If you're talking about -yourself-, using first person pronouns, or he/she, then my was/were rule applies. Generally because in cases where you'd use "were" you're talking about hypothetical situations and not something based in reality. So obviously you're never going to start a sentence with "I were". Likewise, if using you, they or we, as you accurately pointed out, the next word would have to be were.

Of course this doesn't take into account dialect, since cockneys would absolutely say "you was late" or "you was on your way to the shops".