Research Question- English B (Help!)

[ndr]

So where do I start. Uhm what do you term this kind of sentence two sentences with different tone but brings the same meaning?

For example "Shut Up" and "Please keep quiet" I can't seem to get the correct term yikes!

I'm thinking of comparing the usage of the two ^^ between gender. Which gender tend to use the harsher version and sort. Is that acceptable?

or my other choice is to compare people's preferrance between two different tones of writing style of comic strips. basically it's just as the previous but this one I've to conduct a survey- provide them with two comic strips of diff tones and which one they prefer.

and the last one is a bit boring to my liking but i'll just ask for your opinions anyhow. thinking of investigating the main confusion when using punctuation marks. survey is to be done (again. hehe). example of questions for the questionnaire -

"On our next vacation, we plan to visit the following countries: England, France, Italy, and Greece."

"On our next vacation, we plan to visit the following countries; England, France, Italy, and Greece."

"On our next vacation, we plan to visit the following countries- England, France, Italy, and Greece."

Which is correct?

I reallllyyyy need opinions and suggestions. I feel so hopeless right now

Thank you in advance!

*edit: additional info section - it's "I don't know which to choose"

Edited June 8, 2009 by ndr

[Sandwich]

For the first one, it's just a question of politeness versus rudeness The difference is actually in tone, or I suppose you could also call it manner.

You can compare genders, although if you've read the EE guide (which you should have done) you'll notice that there's a reasonably similar question in which they compare word usage between people of different ages -- there's also a similar one in terms of using the polite form or polite version of a language. You can either see this as a good omen in that you're obviously along the right lines, or alternately worry that you're picking something extremely predictable.

The comic strips idea is interesting if you think you can get 4000 words out of it. It might be an idea to do something more specifically relating to comics, too, as otherwise you'd be disregarding an important aspect of comics in terms of the images, which're often more effective (indeed intended to be) than the words.

The best judge of what you want to do is probably going to be yourself and your supervisor more than people here Definitely check out the EE guide, though. CLICK