I'm the same. I learned all the grammar I know from tearing my hair out at learning German as an autodidact. I genuinely don't mind if people don't know grammar. If it's of no use to you, then fair play. I'm an English teacher, so I breath this stuff every day, but the list of things I don't care about in the slightest is massive. My problem only rears its head when people acknowledge the importance of grammar and then eschew it. It seems disingenuous to me to think of a lack of grammar knowledge as a problem, take up writing as a serious hobby, and then not care enough to learn. This doesn't necessarily go for learning all the technical names for all of English's sixteen or so tenses, and all the possible parts of a sentence, etc, because often all that matters is that you know the difference between its and it's. What gets me about this particular issue, the passive voice, is that it's interminably simple. I've taught eight year old Latvian kids who leapt into my every pause for breath with 'TIME FOR BREAK?' how to spot and produce it. It takes all of five minutes to explain it to an adult, and that's precisely why I cannot understand how it's such a point of contention amongst writers. For something with this much gospel written about it, you'd think what it actually is would be common knowledge.
Have you tried it as: four-hundred-meter long (with hyphens, which is actually grammatically correct according to the old-school rules I know)? I ran it through the Ginger spell checker, just to be sure.
I'd actually add another hyphen, between meter and long. Shows how old school I am! (My rationale is that otherwise we could be talking about a type of vessel called a long vessel, which happens to be a certain length. Add the hyphen and it's clear that the word "long" is linked to the measurement. Like, if this were a Viking thing, we could have a 20-metre long boat and a 20-metre boat, which wasn't a Viking Long Boat).
This is what I would go with. Having the hyphens removes ambiguity. For example, compare to (I know the sentence you gave only has one vessel, but I gave my example to illustrate a point.)
You're right. I was in a hurry this morning to get at my writing. This is my story and I'm sticking to it.
My writing would go through that software like goose shit through a tin horn, cause it would question if there were anything grammatically correct. Though I get this enough without having to have a program tell me this. I know it is not perfect grammar, but then again I am not trying to impress a hard ass English Professor either. If it were perfect then it wouldn't be interesting, but then again like all things I may very well be wrong. Mine ain't perfect but at least I can admit it. But at least it ain't hiding. Never trust someone that can't put their own work to task, while they tell you how to fix your own. Sorry to go off, but I just had to get it off my mind, been bugging me for a while now. And I apologize for having a small melt down.
It's been said by zombies that Brits use the passive voice rather a lot? Those darn zombies and their stereotyping.
@plothog You forgot: Such use can never be proven (by zombies) with any degree of certainty, but it is a stereotype that gets bandied about (by zombies). Such things should perhaps be considered (by zombies) when generalizing about grammatical use.
Hey, time for a break ain't too bad. I get children coming to my classes on the verge of tears because their mates are out in the playground playing football and they have to have my class instead Talk about motivation, huh. It's why I've had enough of these extra-curricular, after school "clubs". Kids come in late, ask if they could leave 30min into the lesson, make every excuse to go to the bathroom, are barely listening, leaves all their handouts and even work they've completed themselves on the table (or if I insist they don't leave it there, they throw it into the bin). That's how much they care to be there. They moan even when we're gonna play a game. They deliberately lose the game so they can sit out. So, I know taking these after school clubs on a freelance basis is way better for my baby than taking the actual part-time school job (the school one's only 2 days a week, but full days), but hell if I'm gonna stay to teach a bunch of ungrateful critters like those. I mean, kids in general don't like hard work, but there's a marked difference when they're there as part of their school day and when they're forced to be there by their parents after school. Rant over. Sorry for being off-topic
