[pet peeve/rant] Grammar, people!!

[mythusmage]

Die and Dice

Your character could die if you use bad dice in combat.

And along those lines, a question for you all...

In those fantasy RPGs where a player must roll to see if his character's spell goes off or not, would you say that magic in those games is die cast?

 

[billd91]

I think it would be funnier if I knew what tune I was supposed to be singing it to!

(And, yes, I ended that sentence with a preposition. Woo hoo, the freedom!)

I think we're all wondering about the tune to it... but this should help
http://www.weebls-stuff.com/toons/21/

As for me, I don't worry about people's web grammar unless it's so bad that it makes the message too hard to read. This ain't brain surgery. It's just hacking off a message or two for a hobby passtime. It all seems so futile to rage against it.

To help put it in a little more perspective, check out Miracle #3 in this list:
http://wallofjokes.shacknet.nu/Religious/Miracles_Not_Mentioned_Bible.html

 

[Algolei]

Y'all spelt "gramma" wrong. Eric's gramma would surely berate you.

 

[rogueattorney]

Here's a few that kill me:

"Then" and "Than" (I had never seen anyone mix this up until the advent of the Internet. They're not even pronounced the same, at least in my part of the country.)
I like chocolate more thAn vanilla.
First, we'll go to the store. ThEn, we'll go home.

"Their", "There", and "They're"
It is their car. It belongs to them.
There it is.
They're coming over to dinner.

"Its" and "It's"
It's about time.
The dog wags its tail.

"Your" and "You're" (These aren't even pronounced the same in my neck of the woods.)
Your mother said to call her.
You're needed at the courthouse.

"To", "Too", and "Two"
Go to the bathroom.
I'm coming, too.
There are two dogs here.

These are the big ones. There are others: hour and our, know and no, etc.

Sorry, I just needed to vent. It's even worse when you see these in court documents, academic papers, etc.

R.A.

 

[Hand of Evil]

Me write bad.
Me not too smart.
Me feel hurt.
You be mean.
Me don't like you any more.
Me show you my typing finger now.
See, me write bad.



Hey, I have a disclaimer in my sig!

 

[RangerWickett]

I dislike when people spell "lose" as "loose." Also, as I posted earlier in a different thread, I think people use -body when -one would be more appropriate for the situation. If the tone is serious, you don't want to say, "The giant cats are about to attack. Nobody will survive." For the greatest level of ominous-ness, you want to say, "The giant cats are about to attack. No one will survive."

 

[barsoomcore]

I don't mind typos or the occasional error -- nobody's perfect.

But I will say (to be descriptive for a second instead of madly railing against the ways of the world) that when a person doesn't appear to have spent sufficient thought on their communication to even bother trying to structure it grammatically, I'm much less inclined to spend sufficient thought on it to understand it.

Well-structured communication indicates orderly thought. To some degree. Obviously it's possible to obfuscate (who can pass up a chance to use THAT word? Not me) with grammatically correct language, so there's other criteria for "well-structured" than just grammar, but correct grammar is an important component.

I blame post-modernism (there's very little I can't blame on post-modernism, if I put my mind to it). Particularly I mean poetry post Modernist. Eliot and Pound and so on -- these guys had proper grammar down, and when they did break it (which they did less often than you might think) it was to a purpose. Even Joyce knew what he was doing that way (and for me to say anything not denigrating about Joyce is a gesture of great generosity). But nowadays people think poetry is actually a license to ignore grammar (except for Anne Carson, who's a genius), and that spills into high-school English classes (we got encouraged to "express ourselves" a lot more than we got encouraged to "express ourselves in a logical manner"), and, obviously, civilization as we know it comes to an end.

But that happens every couple of years.

Still, I blame the post-modernists. Bastiches.

Go read Anne Carson. She's a poet.

 

[tarchon]

I've always been annoyed when people use "apocalypse" to mean "eschaton."

 

[DaveStebbins]

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

Correction made.

Yeah, but I got there first; on page one, even.

-Dave
showing off his semi-colon (incorrectly)

 

[mythusmage]

Yeah, but I got there first; on page one, even.

-Dave
showing off his semi-colon (incorrectly)

What is the most notable anatomical feature of truckers?

Their semi-colons.