RocknessMonster steps out of his South Philly row-home donning a black trench coat and puffing on a wood-tipped cigar. He is respectfully greeted by the local vendors as he makes his way down the street. Passerbys are wary of him. They know the line of work he is in. Rockness's eyes scan the street corners for enemies and rivals. He sees some connected guys as well as some Made ones, but nobody he has any reason to fear. Despite his affiliation with Cosa Nostra, he is not heavy with any other mobsters or faction of mobsters at the moment. They are seemingly just as aware of his presence as he is of theirs. It comes with the territory he supposes.

Up ahead some plain-clothed police lurk by the mouth of an alleyway. Rockness's keen eye is trained enough to spot a sting operation when he sees one. He checks himself for drugs. He is carrying none. He has no warrents, and all his recent hits have been clean. No reason to be concerned about the undercover police up ahead. Besides, Rockness isn't out on the streets to commit any crimes. He has a street announcement to make.

He makes his way over to a bistro where a group of mobsters are congregating. 'This looks as good a spot as any to make my speech' he thinks to himself. He clears his throat and begins.

"I got something I'd like to address. Your probably used to seeing mobsters make attempts at street-speaking only to have there speeches criticized by..."

Suddenly, the undercovers from across the street leap into action. Rockness is tackled to the ground and handcuffed, one of the officer's knees pressing down hard on the back of his neck.

"Yo whats this all about? You cops ain't got nothing on me!"

"Shut up, shitbag! You're going to jail."

The cop flashes a badge and holds it in front of Rockness's face. Lifting his head from the pavement, he looks at the cop's credentials. It was worse than he originally feared. It is the Grammar Police.

"You're under arrest for public mis-pronunciation of words and flagrant grammatical errors, Rockness. You're coming downtown with us."

"This is bullcrap! I'm not commiting any crimes here!"

"Explain it to the judge." says the cop. "We put up with a lot of shit from you mobsters, but one thing these streets will never tolerate is a career criminal who doesn't speak with perfect diction."

Rockness looks up at the crowd of mobsters for support. A wave of relief sweeps over him as he sees one approach. His relief is short-lived.

"Rockness, you also mis-pronounced the word their. It's 'attempts at coming out to our streets and having THEIR speeches criticized', not 'there' speeches."

"How can you tell the difference? It's pronounced the same!" exclaims Rockness.

Another mobster chimes in. "Officer, he also said, 'Your probably used to'. There should be an apostrophe in the word. It's pronounced 'YOU'RE probably used to'.

"You fucking rat! How is that even detectable in verbal dialect? You idiots don't have anything better to do then correct my spelling?"

"Spelling?" chuckles a witty mobster nearby as he points at Rockness and laughs. "Looks like somebody has caught an old-fashioned case of OOC-ITIS!!!!!!"

The crowd erupts with laughter at the expense of RocknessMonster. It is seemingly the first time they have heard this hilarious reference.

"Oh by the way," says another nit-picker It's 'nothing better to do THAN correct spelling and grammar', not 'THEN'. There's another charge to add to your list, officers!"

"Bunch of no good snitches! I'm out here trying to make a point about something and I can't even finish because these goddam Grammar police are..."

"Hey Rockness," interupts another mobster. "You say your hits were clean. Why are you out in the streets discussing murder? Haven't you ever heard of Omerta?"

"I wasn't discussing my hits! That was the narrative for fuck's sake!"

"Narrative???" calls out a different voice from the crowd. "What's wrong Rockness? Got OOC-itis or something?"

This remark illicits even more laughter from the crowd, as it is even funnier the second time it is said.

The grammar police drag Rockness by the handcuffs and toss him into the back of their squad car. The crowd grows, doubling and then tripling in size. They hurl molotov cocktails, dictionaries, and English textbooks at the car as it tries to weave through the angry and now massive crowd of mobsters, all eagar to chime in with their own repetitive two-cents. Back at the precinct, Rockness decides to become a government informant to avoid the death penalty and agrees to testify about an illegal bootleg operation guilty of manufacturing run-on sentances out of an abandoned warehouse downtown. He is placed in Witness Protection, far Outside the realm of the Mafia and forced to spend his days debating whether or not vanilla ice cream is better chocolate, forever exiled from the Streets he almost ruined with his poor public-speaking skills and error-ridden dialogue. A young aspiring Mafioso, contemplating making a speech of his own, watches from afar.

"Screw that." he says discouraged by the incident he just witnessed. He tosses his speech notes in a nearby trash can and heads down the street in the opposite direction to do petty crimes instead.

Train gets up off the local bench

Subliminal! I like it.

Now "they're" is how you reach the masses.

Brilliant.  I love the way the police hauled the guy off.  I can't believe he was allowed to live with all those grammatical issues.  I hope somebody can find him in the witness protection program and rub him out. 

And to answer the question posed...chocolate is better than vanilla, but neither is as good as bubble gum. 

Sam Carollo watches as the young mobster, discouraged by the arrest of the RocknessMobster, tosses his speech in the bin and hurries off after an old lady. Taking the discarded speech from the bin Sam looks it over. "Why the RocknessMonster rocks my world." Carollo looks around before striking a match against the bin and lighting the speech aflame. He says a silent "thank you" to the gods of timely intervention and hurries off toward his HQ.

An excellent point here, Rockness.  And well made.  I myself am an editor, by trade.  I am one who can be very particular with words, and I have had to learn to force myself to hold my tongue at times on the minor dialectic errors.  It simply takes time away from the point: the context of the conversation.

As always, old friend, you have found a creative way to bring light to your subject of interest.  Your street family's street appearances continue to please.

This is a tough one for me... I can see both sides of the coin and it's kinda sad for me to accept certain concessions one has to make for the sake of "keeping peace" and not seeming like a petty, arrogant, nit-picker.

I'm sure I won't be able to finish my comments here without the voice of my alter-ego taking over at some point, therefore making me suffer from a bit of public OOC-itis, so I apologize about that.

When I stand here listening to people speaking, I couldn't care less about their grammar since I know we're not teachers or scholars; we're criminals. However, when I watch the actions occurring at the same time (OOC: read the narrative) then my brain becomes terribly picky and expects flawlessness. After all, the entity doing the narration is NOT a criminal and SHOULD have a minimum level of education to distiguish between there/their/they're, they SHOULD know that it is said "I could HAVE" and not "I could OF", etc, etc, etc.

(In case my point wasn't clear, forgive me for going completely OOC: I would expect the writer to know grammar because it's at the very least a High School student the one doing the writing. If you want to RP a guy that has little education, that's even better, for literary purposes, but when you make grammar mistakes in the narrative, you are only showing your ignorance of the language.)

Maybe public ridiculing is not the best long term solution, but I'm not sure if we're doing our best effort if we just let it slide as if nothing happened.

Well RocknessMonster, your bloodline has always given great speeches in the past, and I am glad to see it didn't stop with you. Full of humor, as always!

For the topic of the discussion, I have to disagree with Mr Focker. You see, even when the events are narrated, the narrator shouldn't be despised just because his grammar isn't correct. As long as it is not utterly horrible and hurting my ears, and as long as it is understandable, I don't see the problem.

Because, Mr Focker, maybe you have had the chance to have been raised in America, or maybe you were born in the old continent, but in Great Britain or Ireland, but some of us didn't get the chance to go to English lessons, and I find it rather arrogant to assume that all of us, petty criminals or fine tacticians, went to English school since our 3 years old. Maybe some of us have other origins, have learned other languages before having the chance to discover English, and therefore have more difficulties to express ourselves than you have.

I Have to say tetra that is very true.After all everyone knows what assuming done...

These people surely have the right to pick things up as they go along maybe give them some slack it is rather new to some if this is their first experience to RP,learn by their errors and so on...

Tetra, you miss my point, at least to a certain extent. I don't expect a *criminal* to know any grammar at all, so your comment about the petty criminal or tactician is off the mark. I am talking about the *narrator* that I KNOW to live in what you call "America", I mean, since America is the name of a continent, not a country...

Besides, many people often come waving the "immigrant" flag when most of the times we are talking about people who were indeed born in an English speaking country. Again, I am not referring to the *criminal*, the real person that we meet here in the streets, I'm referring to the alter-ego, that one that we can see when we stop by OOC Avenue and that are more often than not, born in an English speaking country. *That* is the one I expect to know the basic grammar.

I don't really see the point of referring to America to a continent and not a country, as it has absolutely nothing to do with anything. But thank you for the geography lesson, I really wasn't aware that the USA was the only English speaking country on the continent.

Anyway, I didn't miss your point at all. Speaking OOC, you want the narrative parts to be flawless, but how would you know if the person writing the speech was born in an English speaking country or not? You would be forced to assume it, and criticize him/her according to your assumptions.

This debate has risen far beyond my level of intelligence, but I will bring it back down a little bit to note one more point that I've been thinking about lately.

I don't really care about grammar.  That's not to say it doesn't irk me when I see they're when they mean their, or I see then when they mean than, but I understand that some of the nuances of the language are missed by many.  Oh well.  (To say that our education system is failing is an understatement.)  I get beyond my own issues, and try to understand the content or the context.  If I can't understand, then I move on.  Sometimes without a word, sometimes with a comment.

I hear the argument - this is the mafia, not an english class.  I love that comment because it's stupid.  In defense of an argument that we shouldn't worry about grammar, some cite to the fact that this is the mafia.

Yet, we here in the mafia can't take a bit of criticism about our grammar.  We're so tough that when somebody criticizes us we run into the shadows never to be seen again?  Seriously?  Not so tough then, are we?

So, points: I don't care about grammar.  And, I don't care about being made fun of because of grammar.  If you're ballsy enough to come to these streets, you should be ballsy enough to take some criticism, dust off, and keep going. 

I think it's an excellent point you have made Rockness, and very well laid out also.

Looking over his shoulder as the grammer police are still lurking about he says quickly

We have to remember that so many walks of life reach our shores, some covering several thousand miles just to get here. Not everyone speaks the same language and although they may try, things will come out wrong from time to time.

I'm as nit picky as anyone, but I am not a great street speaker, and can slur my words on occasion so would tend not to jump right on top of anyone struggling to put their point across in what we would deem a coherent manner.

I think we need to understand that what may be easy for some to pronounce may be difficult for others.In fact, even those that speak the same language may have different pronunciations on particular words, grammer for instance.

Dashes away before the cops get to him also, too much work to do to rot in jail.

Train looks on as the tough mob members argue with their English accents and flawless grammer

Train, in his Southern voice, addresses the crowd

Look here partna! I'm aint no sucka cuz I dont speak that jiba jaba these other suckaz round here be speakin. I'm from the otha side of the tracks and came on this side cuz I heard dem a-tie-yin chumps play good money for my xper-tease in the purse grabbin field.

Now all this language talk got me feelin like I aint wutz happen out here on dez streetz. Like I'm some jimbronee need speech class. Yeah I failed it. That bitch Ms. Matthews never did like me, dats why I went in her purse everyday. That's another story.

Now if I knew howda speak dat suberb grammer jive I wouldnt be knocking down dez old ladyz fo dey toat bag, ya dig! Some of you dudes in the wrong line of work.

Train lays on the ground because he knows the process when the grammer "police" approach. Use of "excessive force".

I would "prefer", not expect, the narrative to be flawless.

I pointed out my thoughts about the word "America" because most of "America" speaks Spanish so I find it funny and a bit ironic when in the middle of an argument about native languages. But that is just a personal pet peeve of mine and people from the US so feel free to ignore this comment.

And Tetra, I'd like to ask you, out of our "population" how many *narrators* you think were born in an English speaking country. I mean, I know that most of "us" are Italian or at least from Italian descent, but do you really think it's the same way with the ones that narrate our stories?

Like Paxton said, "To say that our education system is failing is an understatement", so maybe my ridiculous dream would be that this place could be a place that helped improve the very basics of the language.

By the way, just in case I'm about to be misinterpreted, it's not people like G-train who irk me. I don't care at all how people *talk*. It's just the narration I have an issue with.

An excellent speech Rockness and from the response received, well targetted.

To be quite honest I don`t give a rats ass how people come to the streets to put over their views, arguments or responses. As already stated, there should be understanding from everyone listening as to the content and its composition.

The need and indeed the dream of all individuals wishing to be part of, and accepted by our society, is no different whether they be an english language professor, or someone who has little knowledge of the english written or spoken language.

We all start our lives from humble beginnings. Some are more fortunate than others in the height of the first rung from the floor, but the dream is the same.

We are all bound by the laws and traditions of our society, honourable men and women whose lives are governed by our need to be part of the greater "family".

I for one have far more important things to do in my life than to go bursting other people`s "bubbles".

Mr Focker, I understood your point about America, I just wanted to point out that there was no need to say it in such a manner.

And I have absolutely no idea how many narrators were born and raised in an English speaking country, and to be honest, I couldn't care less. The thing is, some of our citizens find it funny to attack those who didn't have the chance to receive a good education. If you mispronounce a word or stutter, no matter what you say, you'll be ridiculed by some members of our community.

I think that's not the right way to help improve the basics of English language. If ten people jump on some poor fella who had the courage to come out on those streets and make a speech because he didn't pronounce some words right, do you really think he's gonna stop and say 'hey those guys are right!! I should go back to my grammar books and study.'
First he may not have the time to do so, second he may not feel like doing so cause he'd just think it's pointless as next time he might be ridiculed for some other pronunciation mistake, and third he may not even have an English grammar book.

And yes Mr Paxton, we should be tough enough to take criticisms, but some common sense is required as well. It's very easy to make fun of somebody on his grammar skills when they don't agree with him and it's actually the only point they can make. Criticism on the content is always better in my opinion.

Once again, I know for a fact that some people who come out in the streets weren't raised in an English speaking country. Some you may find easily Mr Focker, and some that are hiding behind some better language skills. But how can you know who is and who isn't? And then how can you know who to criticize in a sensible manner, as the guy who didn't make any effort to learn his own language correctly?