[pet peeve/rant] Grammar, people!!

[RangerWickett]

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

Good one. I had to look it up, and I hadn't realized the difference. Well, to be honest, I hadn't known 'eschaton' was a word.

 

[barsoomcore]

Eschatons are immanetized. Apocalypsi are prevented by Vampire Slayers.

 

[BSF]

How do you know if there is a mistake if you don't read them?

I believe Barsoomcore is using "unread" to imply reading the resume or cover-letter to completion. In this case, if he notes an error, the document is immediately re-filed in the appropriate bin.

Grammar, Grammar, Grammar, Grammar,
Grammar, Grammar, Grammar, Grammar,
Grammar, Grammar, Grammar, Grammar,
SYNTAX! SYNTAX!!!
Grammar, Grammar, Grammar, Grammar,
Grammar, Grammar, Grammar, Grammar,
Grammar, Grammar, Grammar, Grammar,
GRAMMAR NAZI!

I see that Billd linked to the 'toon. Badgers!

I acknowledge the arguements regarding speed or conveying an idea in a post, or a chat or an IM. I just do not understand them. I am a slow typist. I barely broke 60 wpm in my typing class 20 years back. However, I still chat in a relatively efficient manner while using correct punctuation, capitalization and decent grammar. My grammar is not perfect, and it does degrade when I am in a hurry. Anybody that has read my Ceramic DM stories can agree upon that. In fact, I am sure Barsoomcore and Piratecat will readily agree with me on this. Nevertheless, I do try to keep my posts coherent and I occasionally have difficulty understanding why other people cannot make that effort.

I do understand that there are many folks that do not speak, or write, english as a first language. I readily accomodate errors in consideration for the fact that the poster may be multi-lingual while I am not. But the majority of posters on EN World should have a basic grasp of the english language and should be able to present thoughts and ideas in a coherent manner.

My posts are the first, and likely the only, impression I make on you. Why wouldn't I want to make a good first impression? Using capital letters and punctuation is not that difficult. Avoiding poor grammar is a little more difficult. However that difficulty should not give you license to avoid improving your grammar.

 

[reveal]

Try this sucker out:

http://eatsshootsandleaves.com/ESLquiz.html

 

[s/LaSH]

On the 'die-dice' thing, here's my (unfounded) theory:

Blame the dictionary makers. Until a few centuries ago, spelling was by no means standardised. When you made an english word plural, you ended it sibilantly. The word 'die', a polyhedron featuring numerically-labelled sides, could be pluralised as dies, dise, dice, or anything else that looked right.

When someone got the clever idea of making a book of words, a diction-ary, they didn't quite get this standardisation thing. 99.9% of words got standardised. But for some reason, whether laziness or just worrying about confusion with the verb 'to die', the plural of die (n.) became dice, not dies.

The pronunciation is the same, more or less; 'dice' seems to be more sibilant these days, although I suspect that's its dissociation from 'dies' in spelling causing a dissociation in pronunciation.

Someone should start a petition to correct the spelling to a standard form...

PS: I can type grammatically. I find it much harder not to do so. Perhaps this comes from reading rather than watching TV in my youth (not so long ago, really), and thus I am devoid of hope for the future of the language, when most reading comes from TXTmsgs and the Internet...

 

[talinthas]

to go back a handful of posts, 'then' and 'than' are pronounced identically in the californian dialect, and i've had troubles remembering which is which since i learned how to spell.

 

[Uzumaki]

I pronounce them differently, but most people I know don't. It's most likey because, in their heads, they're not differentiating.

I've always had a habit of correcting people on their grammar. A woman I work with tells me to "pull things taunt."

 

[tarchon]

to go back a handful of posts, 'then' and 'than' are pronounced identically in the californian dialect, and i've had troubles remembering which is which since i learned how to spell.

There are some dialects in which they're not distinct, but I haven't encountered that in Cali among Anglo native speakers (it's more rural and Southern and Hispanic). It's fairly common for second-language speakers not to be able to perceive or articulate the difference though (/æ/ is a fairly unusual vowel in international terms), and often second-generation speakers have trouble with it because their parents or ethnic communities don't make the distinction. Part of the reason that the distinction tends to get lost is that the vowel /æ/ ("hat","cat","than"... - note that this is the phoneme /æ/ - "than" and "cat" usually have different allophones, pronunciations) is often distinguished partly by nasalization, but the /n/ tends to nasalize preceding vowels (the extent of this is dialect dependent), so the contrast between short "en" and short "an" can become fairly subtle. It seems to me that dialects noted for strong nasalization (e.g. North Midlands, especially the western Great Lakes) have a greater tendency to preserve it.

Cot/caught is another vowel pair that may or may not be distinct, depending on dialect, and the merger is a common trait of Western dialects.

 

[Mark Chance]

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!)

Sentences can be ended with prepositions as long as the preposition's object is antecedent to the preposition and the meaning of the sentence is clear. Otherwise, ending sentences with prepositions is something up with which we should not put.

 

[Mouseferatu]

Sentences can be ended with prepositions as long as the preposition's object is antecedent to the preposition and the meaning of the sentence is clear. Otherwise, ending sentences with prepositions is something up with which we should not put.

My favorite example of which is:

"What did you bring that book I did not want to be read to out of up for?"

Say it aloud. It makes sense, despite being a formal grammatical nightmare.

That said, the whole "preposition at the end" bit is not something I have a problem with. It's a rule that has no grammatical purpose. It's a holdover from Latin, hasn't applied to spoken English in ages, and--most importantly, where my own criteria are concerned--has no bearing on meaning or understanding.

Hypocrisy? Perhaps, but I can live with that.