Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by Strega on October 14, 2012 at 4:27pm

Oh come on, Blaine!  Just because some of us go into strange paroxysms of delight over the sweetness of correct conjunctions and adept grammatical acrobatics doesn't mean we don't care about all the posts - its kind of like weird folk going into a frenzy over the nature and quality of the frame around a painting - the beauty of the actual artwork is not in question... we just gloat about the crenulation of the framework because we can!

If anyone is daunted by this pedanticism, all I can say is that nothing good is achieved through fear.  Go on, give it a go - what's the worst that can happen, that isn't instantly resolvable by clicking the little red X in the top right hand corner?

I don't wanna go to hell!

• ▶ Reply

Permalink Reply by Strega on October 15, 2012 at 8:05am

Yes, I really talk like that.  But to get it dead on, you have to do it in an English accent :)

• ▶ Reply

Permalink Reply by SteveInCO on October 16, 2012 at 9:32am

Just watch out for the spell checkers marked "UK."  They misspell all kinds of stuff.  For example, they toss in all sorts of extra 'u's, change 'z' to 's' on occasion, and try to make you end certain words in 're' instead of 'er.' Most crazily they spell 'jail' as 'gaol.' 

Must be a manufacturing defect or something.

• ▶ Reply

Permalink Reply by Strega on October 16, 2012 at 9:46pm

Seriously, I could never sit down and play scrabble with either of you - just saying...

• ▶ Reply

Permalink Reply by Suzanne Olson-Hyde on October 16, 2012 at 11:22pm

What would I do without a spell checker, especially when these Yanks come along and question English spelling - loads of spelling differences - I use the English spelling, as it actually came first, and the Americans decided it was too hard, so lets drop out some letters. Kids in Australia have been bought up with American spelling and pronunciation, and I fear it is a losing battle, with American spelling being so prolific.

But then again, Australians drop the last letter of most words - not a good look, or sound for that matter.

With jail or gaol - both are right, apparently, I luv my dictionary.

My kids were speaking American from a very early age, as they watched Sesame Street - Zebra or Zeebra, mmm :) and when dropping out letters, my kids, it was like a duck to water - much easier. Language changes constantly - new words and new spelling all the time. She'll be apples, mate.

• ▶ Reply

Permalink Reply by Strega on October 15, 2012 at 9:26pm

Well this is cool! I'm responding to you on my Blackberry from a conference in NJ! Quite the traveler. Look forward to touching base when I get home tomorrow night. Have a great day.

• ▶ Reply

Permalink Reply by Marc Poulin on October 14, 2012 at 6:33pm

As long as your thoughts and comments aren't about how great religion is, we pretty much can't think of you as stupid. 

• ▶ Reply

Permalink Reply by David Conrad on October 14, 2012 at 6:36pm

While I am of the opinion that we should all try to write as well as we can, and that some posters here do not try as hard as they could and should, I also believe that our inability to write as well as we might like should not inhibit us from posting.  So post at your pleasure.

• ▶ Reply

Permalink Reply by Obfuskation on October 14, 2012 at 7:29pm

Welcome to the site Peggy.  :)

• ▶ Reply

Permalink Reply by SteveInCO on October 14, 2012 at 9:21pm

You know, the thread you are thinking of was about truly egregious goofs like Hippocrates (an ancient Greek who studied medicine) for hypocrites (people who say one thing and do another), or writing that is so bad it's hard to read.  Of course when "grammar nazism" becomes the topic we start picking on each others' mistakes a lot, in large part because some people who are overly sensitive on the issue in either direction start to take their jabs at the other.

Given what you've shown us, I don't think you have to worry about the gripe in that post applying to you.

• ▶ Reply

Permalink Reply by SteveInCO on October 16, 2012 at 10:10am

Oh believe me when someone is spending a lot of time scolding me for ignorance or some mental inadequacy, but their sentences won't even parse, or it's obvious they don't know how to form a plural, or even care, I will bludgeon them for it.  (I have in mind someone who used to be here, who would write rambling posts titled things like "Why are atheist so racist?" When called on his consistent failure to form plurals, he tried to claim typing was physically painful due to a disability--yet such pain didn't keep him from typing endless rambling screeds about how we were all racist and didn't even know it.)

I listened to a podcast a while ago that was a sort of "send me your questions and I will answer them" format.  The lady running it got one about what to do if your professor was an "intellectual inferior."  She read the question on the air _precisely_ as written and it became obvious by the end of the first sentence who the inferior was.  Yes she reamed the questioner, hard, and deservedly so.  It's really bad form to call someone your intellectual inferior while simultaneously showing that you cannot express your own thoughts with any sort of coherency..

In other words while I am not a "grammar Nazi" my patience can be tried when I see truly awful writing, willful ignorance and reverse grammar snobbery from people determined to make a virtue out of ignorance.

Now someone reading this might wonder about the case of a foreign student of English.  Well what I have said up to now applies to native English speakers.  I have found that people learning the language generally appreciate a polite correction, that's how one learns a language.  The problem is, there's no way to do so privately here without first friending them, which takes time.  So the correction would have to be public or old news by the time they read it.  And I (and others) might not go public because 1) doing so can derail a thread because 2) someone will come along and accuse me of being a "grammar Nazi"

• ▶ Reply

Permalink Reply by Doug Reardon on October 14, 2012 at 10:02pm

Don'y let the grammar nazis get in your way.

• ▶ Reply

• ‹ Previous
• 1
• 2
• 3
• 4
• 5
• …
• 7
• Next ›
• Page