Azhong's Writing Practice.

[azhong]

(My writing practice with an inquiry: I am not confident in the bolded phrase. Thank you in advance for your help.)

I was fifteen then, leaving my family in the country for the first time and starting a brand-new life alone in a big city for my high school education.
“Are your parents farmers?” asked Bernard once, one of my classmate, who grew up amid high buildings and traffic lights so was curious about the life in a rural area.
“Yes,” I replied with a cunning smile. “We have a very snug farmstead. The road from our magnificent farmhouse to the train station is very pretty, running alone all the way shadowed by overhanging trees and with a bit of a wood now and again to drive through.”

[azhong]

An inquiry, please, with my thanks in advance.
What does the bolded phrase mean? Does it mean something different from or more than “as if it were a summer day”? I can understand “one day of summer in the year”.
…while the little birds sang as if it were the one day of summer in all the year.”

(And my two practice passages then.)
1)Overhanging branches of the trees bordered and shadowed the road. Meadows sloped away in the distance to horizon mists of pearl. The air was sweet with the breath of many apple orchards. Matthew and his sorrel mare jogged on comfortably.

2)The proposal submitted by Thomas Owen was scheduled for a decision this morning, but it was deferred earlier.
If the proposal passes, it will be a stumbling block for Ted Gottman to run for president, for Gottman will be superseded and somewhat lose his influence. Jenifer Brooker is then highly possible to be appointed in his stead and retrieve her power, which will naturally be a chance for her to turn the tables, a stepping stone on her political career.

[Linguaphile]

An inquiry, please, with my thanks in advance.
What does the bolded phrase mean? Does it mean something different from or more than “as if it were a summer day”? I can understand “one day of summer in the year”.
…while the little birds sang as if it were the one day of summer in all the year.”

It does basically just mean "as if it were as summer day", but with a bit of emphasis: they are really singing, as though this day were the only day of the year that would be so beautiful (like it was the first day of summer but also the last day of summer... their only opportunity to sing so happily).

(And my two practice passages then.)
1)Overhanging branches of the trees bordered and shadowed the road. Meadows sloped away in the distance to horizon mists of pearl. The air was sweet with the breath of many apple orchards. Matthew and his sorrel mare jogged on comfortably.

2)The proposal submitted by Thomas Owen was scheduled for a decision this morning, but it was deferred earlier.
If the proposal passes, it will be a stumbling block for Ted Gottman to run for president, for Gottman will be superseded and somewhat lose his influence. Jenifer Brooker is then highly possible to be appointed in his stead and retrieve her power, which will naturally be a chance for her to turn the tables, a stepping stone on her political career.

Your passages are pretty good. I'm not sure that I've heard of horses "jogging"; personally I would probably have used a different verb (maybe "trotted"?). There aren't many errors but it reminds me a bit of those computer programs that replace words with synonyms so that it is still grammatical but sounds a bit strange... technically, I guess that is actually what you are doing (using something as a model, replacing many of the words with synonyms).

[azhong]

Thank you for your explanation, Linguaphile. It is clear to me now.

Just FYI, the second passage is written by me. It started from a few unfamiliar words - supersede, defer, stead, appoint, etc - and then their example sentences I caught occasionally in the dictionaries. I guess this passage is more awkward.

As for the first passage, it is a re-narration basing on my reading passage below from Anne of Green Gables by L. M. Montgomery, as I did on the Harry Potter chapter before. I am playing Lego blocks.

MATTHEW Cuthbert and the sorrel mare jogged comfortably over the eight miles to Bright River. It was a pretty road, running along between snug farmsteads, with now and again a bit of balsamy fir wood to drive through or a hollow where wild plums hung out their filmy bloom. The air was sweet with the breath of many apple orchards and the meadows sloped away in the distance to horizon mists of pearl and purple; while the little birds sang as if it were the one day of summer in all the year.”

[azhong]

(My writing practice, see the quotation on Mar. 16)

[azhong]

*He had no money, thus he didn't eat breakfast.
(Ungrammatical, a run-on sentence, because "thus" is not a conjunction but a verb.)

This is grammatical; "thus" is an adverb but can have a conjunctive sense.

I found the sentence this morning, where Ms. Rowling used ”then” but not “and then”. So, now I agree you are correct, dEhiN: this usage of "then" and "thus" is acceptable. Thank you.
My conjecture: It’s a clear run-on sentence, and thus it is acceptable. "Then" and "thus" are not conjunctions but adverbs according to the dictionary, which I'll still follow, on the other hand. Or I'll get a mass confused.

The two men halted at a heavy wooden door leading into the next room, hesitated for the space of a heartbeat, then Snape turned the bronze handle.

[azhong]

(My writing practice.)
A regular errand after my leaving home was to do the laundry on my own, and where I lived there was no washing machine but just a rectangular sink and a dehydrator in the small laundry room for all the floormates. Despite a high school boy, I enjoyed hand washing my clothes after my own fashion, singing under my breath meanwhile. The light physical labor unwound me and made me relaxed; thus I immersed more in my singing as if I had been a TV star performing with my pure, god-blessed voice. Suddenly my roommate Wang showed up at the door, smiling.
“Hey. Your horrible yells could be already heard all the floor.”

[azhong]

(My writing practice.)
“It looks cloudy,” I said.
“Yes,“ said Bernard.
“It looks as if it is going to rain.“
“Yes. It looks like that a heavy rain is falling. “
“It looks to rain very soon. “
“Wrong,” said Bernard. ” ‘Look’ is a sense verb. It can’t be succeeded by an infinitive verb. ’Seem’ can. “
Practicing English, us and other boys straggled along. The school was over. It was a sunny afternoon, the sun high and the sky bright.
“It seems to rain at any moment. It seems cloudy. It seems as if it’s going to rain.“
“All seem correct.“
We passed through the school gate and turned right, onto the sidewalk of red bricks that led to the main street, where the bus stop stood. The school bags hanging over our shoulders were heavy, but our steps were easy. It was still just a bit aftet four p.m. and seemed early for a teenage boy to go home.

[azhong]

(My practice passage with a query: is it grammatical to leave out the bolded uses? Thank you in advance for your reply.)

Internet, an invisible net as its name hints, was invented by us humans and has been being woven better and better on the course of our daily life. It shows us its tremendous, practical benefits; it then tempts us to become its smart supervisors, indulges us, close friends, and finally captures us, miserable addicts.

Public phones and telephones are almost superseded by cell phones, and cell phones are functioning no more as merely conducting a distant conversation. This portable equipment hatched by the frontier tech, which we should thank, is so much powerful that it seems a modern magical oil lamp and each of us, an Aladdin in the folk tale, who owns the power to summon the genie just by rubbing the lamp – Thank the modern technology more that we even give no laborious rubs but just listless touches and then our most needs can be easily satisfied, and our lives, trapped, too.

[azhong]

1) Among the seven conjunctions – and, or, nor, but, yet, so, for – none of them has the connotation of time sequence. That might be why “and then” appeared very often in the occasion of story-telling, or some writers merely use “then”, functioning as a pseudo-conjunction so forming a run-on sentence.

The two men halted at a heavy wooden door leading into the next room, hesitated for the space of a heartbeat, then Snape turned the bronze handle. (from chapter 1, Harry potter 7.)

2) Following my recent attention to the conjunctions, the sentence caught my eye with its “so that”:

The speaker was seated directly in front of the fireplace, so that it was difficult, at first, for the new arrivals to make out more than his silhouette. (from chapter 1, Harry potter 7.)

I think the "so" here should be an adverb and leads a modifier; it is not a conjunction. When expressed again with my imperfect English, it might mean something like:

The speaker was seated directly in front of the fireplace, so contrasting in brightness that it was difficult, at first, for the new arrivals to make out more than his silhouette.

Furthermore, I find it can be replaced just by a conjunction “so”, since it’s a causality:

The speaker was seated directly in front of the fireplace, so it was difficult, at first, for the new arrivals to make out more than his silhouette.

3) The marked comma is more a less a pretense of a colon “:” or a hyphen“-“, I guess, according to what dEhiN told me?

As they drew nearer, however, his face shone through the gloom, hairless, snakelike, with slits for nostrils and gleaming red eyes whose pupils were vertical.

Thank you in advance for your opinions.

[azhong]

(My writing practice.)

He started wiping the table, stooping and playing to his strength by moving his hand back and forth, the rag carefully dealing with every corner of the desktop. After finishing that, he squatted down and wiped the legs of the table.
Having been well cleaned over, the polished table gleamed so brightly that it seemed brand new. So were his eyes, with triumph. He went out for a walk with his old mother then. It was a comfortable late afternoon in the early spring. The setting sun emitted a warm orange glow, which dyed the western sky and adorned the happiness of the two faces.

[azhong]

(My writing practice.)
Matthew was always timid while interacting with unfamiliar women, with a feeling of being secretly laughed at by the mysterious creatures. He might have been quite right if his ungainly appearance was considered: his stooping shoulder, his long iron-grey hair, his full, soft brown beard, and especially his dressing as oddly as a scarecrow. Matthew was none other than a farmer and more capable of chatting with men and animals. When he had to show up before women, he acted thus as unobtrusively as possible in his bearing and demeanor.

[Linguaphile]

the polished table gleamed so brightly that it seemed brand new. So were his eyes, with triumph.

You need parallelism here; use the same verb tense in both sentences.
Either say this:
The polished table gleamed so brightly that it seemed brand new. So did his eyes, with triumph.
Or say this:
The polished table was gleaming so brightly that it seemed brand new. So were his eyes, with triumph.

[azhong]

A query, please. Thank you in advance for your reply. Where is the position for now with the most emphasis? Also, I guess S5 and S6 are unnatural?

S1) We now have several people planted within the Department of Magical Transport. (From Harry Potter 7)
S2) We have several people planted within the Department of Magical Transport now. (natural.)
S3) Now we have several people planted within the Department of Magical Transport. (natural.)
S4) We have now several people planted within the Department of Magical Transport.
S5) We have several people now planted within the Department of Magical Transport.
S6) We have several people planted now within the Department of Magical Transport.

[azhong]

(Two passages of my writing practice.)
1) Jogging along at a steady speed, Marilla rounded the street corner and then gave a shudder: a huge snake was twining on the sidewalk. She would’ve almost screamed out but finding it padlocked in the cage in time. The snake was alive and moving slowly, its neck the thickness of a man’s leg. Marilla dreaded all snakes as most people did. There was no sign of its owner around; the other creatures in sight on the empty street at such an early hour of the morning were only a line of sparrows leaping on the wire. She wondered what it was that made the disgusting animal left here. The most appropriate action she could figure out was to call the police, which she would’ve done but happening not to bring the cell phone with her.

2) Tom lived somewhere in the wilds of Western Canada; his life was somewhat primitive but never wild. Much of western Canada was wilderness with woods and swamps; Animals could produce their offspring in the wild then. The traffic to visit Tom was tiresome, and your vacation there was by no means a type that you could easily glide over. But there would be a tremendous bonus if you went: you could go hanging gliding; Tom had a hang-glider.

[Linguaphile]

A query, please. Thank you in advance for your reply. Where is the position for now with the most emphasis? Also, I guess S5 and S6 are unnatural?

S1) We now have several people planted within the Department of Magical Transport. (From Harry Potter 7)
S2) We have several people planted within the Department of Magical Transport now. (natural.)
S3) Now we have several people planted within the Department of Magical Transport. (natural.)
S4) We have now several people planted within the Department of Magical Transport.
S5) We have several people now planted within the Department of Magical Transport.
S6) We have several people planted now within the Department of Magical Transport.

It's actually S4 which sounds the most unnatural to me. The others are fine.

a huge snake was twining on the sidewalk

"Twining" doesn't sound right here. For a snake I would say slithering (if moving in any direction) or coiling (if making circular shapes).

She would’ve almost screamed out but finding it padlocked in the cage in time.

She almost would've screamed out but found it padlocked in the cage in time.
This is still a slightly confusing sentence, even with the change. Do you mean that she realized in time (before screaming) that it was padlocked in a cage? In that case I'd say this:
She almost screamed out, but realized just in time that it was padlocked in the cage.

The most appropriate action she could figure out was to call the police, which she would’ve done but happening not to bring the cell phone with her.

Same verb tense issue as above:
...which she would've done but happened not to bring the cell phone with her.
Or (sounds a bit better to me):
...which she would have done had she not happened to not bring the cell phone with her.
Or (sounds even better to me):
...which she would have done had she not happened to forget to bring the cell phone with her.

Much of western Canada was wilderness with woods and swamps; Animals could produce their offspring in the wild then

After a semicolon, don't start with a capital letter (unless the next word is a proper name).
Much of western Canada was wilderness with woods and swamps; animals could produce their offspring in the wild then.
Or:
Much of western Canada was wilderness with woods and swamps. Animals could produce their offspring in the wild then.

you could go hanging gliding; Tom had a hang-glider.

"...go hang gliding", not "...go hanging gliding".

[azhong]

She almost screamed out, but realized just in time that it was padlocked in the cage.
...
...which she would have done had she not happened to forget to bring the cell phone with her.

Could you please keep an eye on my practice below?

She would have screamed out if she hadn’t realized it in time.
She would have screamed out had she not realized it in time.
She would have screamed out but (that) she realized it in time.
She would have screamed out but for her realization in time.
She almost screamed out but she realized it (just) in time. (not a hypothetical tone)

She would have called if she had not happened to forget to bring the cell phone with her.
She would have called had she not happened to forget to bring the cell phone with her.
She would have called but she happened to forget to bring the cell phone with her.

I can make it clearer by leaving out the "double negative" (I do not know how to name it correctly):

She would have called if she had brought the cell phone with her.

[azhong]

(My practice for today, re-writing and expanding a previous passage.)

I am now still impressed with and attracted to the unicorns described by Haruki Murakami, although my memory is somewhat vague because decades of years have passed since I last read the novel. The legendary beast, with a horn in the middle of its forehead, is usually described as being wild and dangerous. Those in Hard-Boiled Wonderland And The End Of The World, however, are nowhere near so threatening; instead, they act more like sheep, tame and quiet, flocking together. The doorkeeper grazes them on the meadow out of the high wall at day and summons them back in the wall again at nightfall, his horn sounding steadily in the air. Just like all the residents living in the wall that borders an area wherein they are comfortable but also caged, these unicorns also have a unique, poetic function, which I am not going to reveal. Regardless what color each beast might have had for its hair before autumn, all turns spotless blond in winter.

[azhong]

(My practice, with an query, please: what's the differences between with and without the marked comma before a particle modifier below? Thank you in advance.)
Being having a camping trip with his father, Sam, an eleven-year-old boy, went off alone this morning for his exploration in the wild of western Canada. He trudged along, heading in an easterly direction with his compass, through the woods and over the marshes cautiously. After an hour and a bit more, to his great surprise, he stumbled upon two enormous birds on a lake, a couple of wild Trumpeter Swans. The female swan was sitting on a huge nest, laying eggs; the cob was gliding around, guarding her. Sam hid himself behind a bush, sitting on a log there, and observed the huge creatures silently with his field glasses for an hour. Sam loved animals.

[azhong]

(My writing practice.)
One thing Tim occasionally did for fun on weekends was to have himself straggle along in an unfamiliar small town, a way he unwound his work stress. Dressing himself as unobtrusive as he could, he would roam in the crooked alleys, admiring the old buildings, every of which was usually accompanied with a small vegetable garden in front. He greeted and then chatted actively with the aged residents he stumbled upon, some near their houses, more at a temple square, a grocery store or a park, when he would deliberately practice his poor dialect to make them laugh. He took his random turn at each junction until he naturally got lost; then, instead of finding his direction by switching the cell phone on, he would more traditionally inquired a person he met, sometime more than one, not merely for confirming the previous answer. Despite a business head in the field of frontier technology with frequent international conference calls on weekdays, Tim liked to have himself immersed in the pleasure of explosion and shrouded by the simplicity of rural people as a balance when he didn’t stay abroad with his private airplane.