Grammar Improvement

Technically speaking, it's also incorrect to use a split infinitive, as in the phrase "to not end".

RetGuvvie98: "But, saying it that way, the phrase "in which" when it refers back to the immediately preceeding noun, pronoun, place or thing, -  (in this case, the word "topics" ) -- is redundant and superfluous as it adds nothing to the grammatical correctness of the phrase.  

     the phrase "Topics I posted" is sufficient, concise and non-redundant."

'Topics I Posted' implies that you started the topic in the first place, so the 'in which I posted' isn't redundant.

On another note, the Daily Puzzle's "Click the board to try and solve!" is pretty irritating. It should be "Click the board to try to solve'.

Not quite Sir.

      Topics I posted implies "to" or "in" without stating the "to" or "in".    That would be consistent with the grammar rules of English sentence structure.

Topics I initiated would be those topics I started.

and you are quite right, the word 'and' does not belong in the daily puzzle instructions.     It should be:   click to try to solve....  

I second the motion.

William Shakespeare. Study up.

I knew someone was going to pick out that mistake!

It is acceptable to point out poor grammar in a helpful manner. It is exciting to debug grammar issues, which shows some simularities in excitement level equal to chess-based thought activities. There are nuances in language and proper ways to express ideas dependent upon the audience one is addressing. I consider chess.com a friendly environment where language does not have to be of the scholarly style and offer that debugging others' language may not be appropriate and is a distraction from the original ideas presented. Would it not be best to focus on what is being said? In my opinion, correcting others negatively shows a lack of respect toward the recipient with an overarching desire to control others' actions.

 You are correct. 

Well, it's a slightly pedantic argument, but just to clarify my case: 'Topic' in this case refers to the general discussion. Therefore, if you post the discussion, you initiate it; otherwise, you are participating in the discussion, so I agree that for the purpose of avoiding ambiguity it's right to specify the 'in' or, in this case, the 'in which'.

Didn't read this whole thing (yeah, that's short for "I did not read this entire set of postings"), so somebody else may have already said this, but in my experience almost nobody understands what the word "only" means.  As in, "I only played one game" or "I only had two eggs" -- certainly very common structures.  Phrased in this manner, the only excludes everything other than "played" or "had" -- I had the two eggs, but nothing more.  Did not eat them, cook them, look at them, purchase them, digest them, ...  Clearly, the intention is to exclude numbers beyond two, so it should read "I had only two eggs".  Yet almost nobody speaks in this precise manner.  Another good one is "I could care less".  Common, yet entirely illogical if the idea is to convey that "I could NOT care less".  And then there is the convention (which I violated intentionally) of placing periods and commas inside quotation marks.  Why?  If what is quoted is merely a sentence fragment, then it does not come equipped with its own period or comma.  The punctuation is not part of the quotation, and logically, must therefore fall outside of the quotation marks.  Finally, leaving off the last comma in a list strikes me as lazy and inaccurate, even if it is now accepted in some circles.  Consider:

I like ham and eggs, peanut butter and jam, vodka and orange juice and ice cream and sprinkles.

Compare that to the much clearer

I like ham and eggs, peanut butter and jam, vodka and orange juice, and ice cream and sprinkles.

Without the final comma, and not considering the context, one is led to believe that you throw ice cream into your vodka.

All the examples you cited are correct. It's true that people generally don't speak in such a precise manner (although if they're trying to convey clearly a potentially complicated idea, then they'd do better to speak precisely). In writing, however, it's not that difficult to avoid blatant grammatical errors. If you can't write properly, you run the risk of coming across as being unintelligent.

As for the "I could care less" thing: I've never understood that. In England, we say "I couldn't care less" because otherwise it doesn't make sense. It's quite funny that when people say "I could care less", they're trying to be disdainful and dismissive, but they're actually saying that they do care.

While we're at it, have you ever seen titles, for example, in all caps, that contain an abbreviation?  For example, MY YEARS AT IBM.  But ibm is not a word, and IBM makes sense only as an abbreviation.  So it should be MY YEARS AT I.B.M.  Yet again, almost nobody does this.  As for ending a sentence with those words such as "in", I disagree with conventional windom.  "Topics I Posted in" strikes me as clear, unambiguous, and logical.  Though I am guilty at times of humoring the establishment and writing "Topics in Which I Have Posted", I always do so with a bit of annoyance.  The reason for doing so is entirely unclear to me.

Such grammatical 'rules' exist for the purposes of maximising logical clarity of expression. In more convoluted sentences, it helps to keep the prepositions next to the part of the sentence to which they refer, or modify. I agree, though, in most instances people are well capable of working out what's going on. However, while there can be cases of ambiguity when you put prepositions at the end of the sentence, I don't think that is possible if you correctly follow convention.

As an interesting point on this issue, Terry Eagleton, the famous literary critic and theorist, makes a point of putting prepositions at the end of the sentence whenever it doesn't obscure meaning. This is because it's more natural; and also from a slightly more high-minded socialist reasoning, it's less exclusive to write in precise, grammatically-correct-to-the-death prose. He wants to open up his discourse to as wide a readership as possible.

I agree with that!  On another note, so many times I have heard educated people (whose first language is English) say "I'm doing good".  As if pretending to be uneducated admits one to some special club, like a badge of honor.

You are so right!-bss10506

I don't get irritated that easily about petty things, such as a person's grammar; however the biggest grammatic error I've seen from these forums is the spelling of loser.  I see "looser" too much so I felt like saying it out loud. (Also, this could be mispunctuated)

 =)

... Trucking, cashed in have I gotten my chips. Keep Trucking, in the manner of the do-dah man. Together, more or less in line, just on keep trucking...

I love chess.com because I can learn chess and grammar. ha?

I notice they didn't change this in the last round of upgrades...

Topics I have posted in

Subject: I

Verb: have posted

Object: topics

Adverbial phrase: in ... (In? In what?)

The parsing above clearly demonstrates the grammatical inaccuracy of the sentence under review. The sentence is incomplete.