[pet peeve/rant] Grammar, people!!

[tarchon]

"Everyone should, of course, be aware of this already..."

Sorry, Hyp. You're not getting me on that one.

The commas are not required there. They'd be needed if the expression significantly "interrupted" the sentence (to use Strunk and White's expression) or if it were parenthetical, but the latter clearly doesn't apply and the former is largely a matter of authorial opinion, which Hypersmurf has clearly rendered.

 

[Mouseferatu]

And finally, I don't think a rant where people say, "Come on, do it right!" is going to make anyone go "Gosh, that certainly clarifies their vs. they're vs. there and your vs. you're! Thank goodness I read that rant!" But then I think rants are an ineffective means of communicating anything. You're preaching to the choir while simultaneously attacking those you wish would change and making them defensive. Not effective!

Oh, I don't expect to change any minds. Mostly just venting.

 

[Mouseferatu]

I see your point on less/fewer, but dice/die is so arbitrary to begin with. Why not dice/douse, as in mice/mouse, or lice/louse?

Well, yeah, the specific nature of the plural is arbitrary. But the problem I'm addressing has people dropping the singular entirely, and that's the part that I think is actually a communication issue.

 

[Mouseferatu]

This isn't you feeling really contrary??

Nope. This is me feeling moderately contrary. Nobody on these boards has ever seen me really contrary.

 

[EricNoah]

Oh, I don't expect to change any minds. Mostly just venting.

Ah ha, mission accomplished then! I kinda figured.

But it's funny -- I started going back through some of my old library school papers from the mid 90s -- at that time the Internet was shiny and new for me and I was still wrapping my brain around how it was going to change me and my profession. Here's a description of my first forray into an internet discussion group. Keep in mind that the obvious conclusions drawn were brand new as far as I was concerned.

The first part of my self-study involved my signing on to or observing various Internet discussion groups that were specifically geared toward school media specialists. I was not surprised to learn that there were such narrowly-defined groups out there; heck, if you can join TAOGM-L ("The Art of Game Mastering" -- a discussion group for people who referee role-playing games) or post news to alt.carl.maldens.nose (the name says it all), surely a well-defined profession like school media would have at least a few different forums for discussion.

Internet discussion groups, ideally, exist to facilitate communication between folks with similar interests and problems. This discussion is not at all like sitting around a table with everyone in the group. It's more like playing phone tag and always getting the other person's answering machine. You leave a message and hope someone will get back to you. If someone with some initiative, time, and the right information gets your message, you'll get a response.

This one-way communication is a little tricky. The sender of a message can't see body language or field questions from the audience, and so has to do extra work for the message to communicate as clearly as with two-way communication. This is true whether the message is a question ("Do you allow students to eat lunch in the LMC?") or an answer ("Yes, but with certain restrictions").

The other restriction is that Internet communication is written, not spoken. Some of the nuances of spoken language (such as voice inflection) are lost in the process of typing a message. What looks perfectly harmless to one person can seem menacing or ironic to another. You might put something in ALL CAPS to emphasize it, but your reader might interpret that as shouting. Making the written word sound like the spoken word is difficult, but many people learn to type in a "chatty" style that sounds like a conversation instead of a lecture.

It's that "chatty" bit that I think I've been harping on. That line between writing and speaking started getting blurry for me even back then.

 

[NiTessine]

"Less" vs. "fewer." These are not interchangable, people. If you can count them, you have fewer. If you can't, you have less. I have less water. I have fewer cups of water. I'm spending less money (as money is not a unit of measurement), but fewer dollars. This is the line for 12 items or fewer.

Hmm. This I did not know... Must be because I spent the majority of my English classes sleeping or planning adventures or designing player characters... Thanks.

 

[Henry]

My personal favorites are degrees of miscommunication brought on by mondegreens...

"For all intensive purposes"... (For all intents and purposes)
"Would of known"... (Would've known)
"doggy-dog world"... (Dog-eat-dog world)
"She'll be mist"... (She'll be missed)

I have seen MANY of these throughout the posts at ENWorld, and rather than try and correct them, I'll sometimes just use them correctly in my reply.

 

[Mouseferatu]

*Looks at NiTessine's post, then glances meaningfully at Eric*

 

[EricNoah]

Hey -- I'm dreaming D&D while I'm teaching! It goes both ways!

 

[mythusmage]

Everyone should, of course, be aware of this already...

-Hyp.

Correction made.