Grammar nazi...

[valanhb]

Here's another one that bothers the heck out of me, and I think it is partly an industry thing.

Which is correct? Numbers 1 through 10; Numbers 1 thru 10

According to Engineering standards, they always always use "thru" which I didn't even think was a real word. Drives me batty!

 

[mrblanche]

There are a number of such "style sheets" that are not according to grammar books, but they are designed to suit some special purpose and avoid some definite chances of misunderstanding.

 

[rubsluts'mommy]

Originally Posted by Pookie-poo

Partisan - I pronounce it par-ti-sen (with the 's' sounding like a soft 'z')

Originally Posted by mrblanche

I would pronounce it "par' tiz ǝn", but I have heard the last syllable accented and pronounced "zan."

Exactly!! And that's pretty much how I pronounce it... but this guy said it this way: par-TEE-zhiun. Kind of how you enunciate the ending of Parisian. It drove me nuts... I made some excuse a little while after that and got off the phone...

Originally Posted by valanhb

Here's another one that bothers the heck out of me, and I think it is partly an industry thing.

Which is correct? Numbers 1 through 10; Numbers 1 thru 10

According to Engineering standards, they always always use "thru" which I didn't even think was a real word. Drives me batty!

My dad is an Engineer (Civil, to be exact)... I'll have to ask him what he uses... but I can't find anything in my books... 'thru' has become accepted over the last century or so as a much less formal variant of Through... but to me, it's just plain lazy.

Amanda

 

[pjk5900]

I think the 'thru' thing is like spelling night, 'nite'
or til instead of till.


One that bothers me, not sure if someone already said this,

affect vs. effect

 

[urbantigers]

This is an entertaining thread

I try not to be a grammar nazi because my grammar isn't too hot. The way I write on a discussion forum is different to the way I write in other places. For example, I wouldn't ever start a sentence with the word 'and' in a report at work. But I do on on the internet (the same with 'but'!). I use colloquialisms more on message boards than I would elsewhere, mainly because I try to write as though I was chatting informally to someone rather than as though I am writing an essay or report. I tend to write as I would speak.

The only things that really bother me are very long paragraphs and poor punctuation, and really only if they make it difficult to read a post. I do have pet peeves though, e.g. use of 'I could care less' instead of 'I couldn't care less'. That annoys me because the former just doesn't make sense

 

[cata_mint]

So, on the whole I'm right then?

Since the -ium ending is generally the spelling used across the world, and only America and Canada use aluminum.
Naturally your American spellcheck would show aluminium as wrong.

But I don't mind really. I just prefer it because it makes scientific sense.
If I ever become a chemist and move to America I'm going to be in trouble!

Has anyone read Bill Bryson's excellent book Mother Tongue?

And I could never understand why people mix up affect and effect so easily, one will sound correct in a sentence and the other will not. Then I saw this xkcd comic
http://www.xkcd.com/326/
And now I have sympathy with people who find it difficult.

 

[mrblanche]

Originally Posted by pjk5900

I think the 'thru' thing is like spelling night, 'nite'
or til instead of till.


One that bothers me, not sure if someone already said this,

affect vs. effect

I worked for a while as a purchasing clerk at AAFES. My boss had me type a letter in which she misused affect/effect. It was something like, "We need to affect these changes immediately." I corrected it, and she brought the finished letter back to me to retype the way she wanted it. I explained the rule to her, told her why "effect" was correct, but she still made me type it with the wrong word.

 

[gailuvscats]

Originally Posted by rapunzel47

Well, you know, I just take that as a sign that s/he's putting more attention on IT stuff than on proper English, and since his/her proper use of the English language is not going to fix my computer problem, I think s/he has the right priorities -- even if reading such text does tie my stomach in knots.

Ties my stomach in knots as well, especially when you think it takes a half a second to hit the spell check icon.
It could give several messages, primarily that the person really doesn't give two hoots about anyone else, or that they are just dumb, or really really lazy. Or perhaps any number of other things. My point is, if you cannot spell, which is obvious in some cases, and you know spell check exists, why the heck would you not use it? It would be different if the guilty parties were not computer savy, then I can understand.

 

[joyzerelly]

while we're on the subject, please don't think I'm having a go here, because I'm not but:

Can anyone tell me why America has taken English words such as colour, favour, honour, behaviour and quite a few other words, and changed the spelling? Was it an individual, or maybe a university who decided our language wasn't good enough? (My computer is even underlining these words in red trying to tell they are wrong, how annoying!)

 

[zissou'smom]

Originally Posted by CarolPetunia

As I understand it, the very concept of establishing a single correct spelling is only a few hundred years old -- prior to that, it was a free-for-all!

The mind boggles!

Feeling a need to clarify something here: I am not opposed to changes in language. Changes which enhance expression or expand the language to reflect societal evolution are absolutely fine with me!

But changes which are nothing more than capitulation to ignorance and carelessness -- these simply diminish a language. That's why I get so irate about some of the decisions of these "usage panels." Hmph!

There's no such distinction to be made, except by your own judgement. What you consider "ignorance" or "carelessness" are someone else's societal evolution or enhancing of expression.

Regardless, people don't set about to change language. That's just the nature of language. There are things that the prescriptivists foam at the mouth over now as being "correct" that prescriptivists not too long ago would have been irate over as being "wrong".

And what none of them understand is that there's no such thing as "wrong" when it comes to language. If it's grammatical, it's right. If it's ungrammatical, nobody uses it anyway. (Using the non-prescriptivist definition of grammatical, here).

 

[nanner]

Originally Posted by urbantigers

........ I do have pet peeves though, e.g. use of 'I could care less' instead of 'I couldn't care less'. That annoys me because the former just doesn't make sense

Me too!!!!! I've tried to explain to people why the former doesn't make any sense, and no one seems to get it!

 

[mrblanche]

As I mentioned, the French Academy keeps French from changing. They have very strict rules about new words, imported words, etc. French has a fairly small vocabulary compared to English, but it is much more precise.

As to the respelling of English words, I'm not sure when we lost the extra "u" in those words, but I personally think the difference is part of the charm of linquistics in general. Most American spellings are much more practical than English spellings (remember "tyre" and "kerb?").

It would be an interesting research to see how those spelling differences evolved. It's entirely possible that it was an error compounded by the similarity of the words. In other words, once one of the words was spelled a certain way, that spelling spread to other, similar words.

Even the French, who I mentioned above, are not immune to such silliness. One example would the word "doigt," which means "finger." The French Academy assumed it descended from the Latin "digit" and so put the g in as a reminder of that. It turns out they were wrong.

Or, to show the more practical side, to count in French above 69, you have to take off your shoes. Seventy is "sixty-ten." Eighty is "four twenties." Ninety is "four twenties ten."

But not in French-speaking Switzerland, which has single words for each of those.

But American English is much more homogeneous than the Queen's English. There is less difference between an Arkansan and a New Yorker than there is between two fairly close sections of London. I suspect, however, that even those differences are dying due to exposure to national TV and radio.

 

[zissou'smom]

Originally Posted by mrblanche

As I mentioned, the French Academy keeps French from changing. They have very strict rules about new words, imported words, etc. French has a fairly small vocabulary compared to English, but it is much more precise.

As to the respelling of English words, I'm not sure when we lost the extra "u" in those words, but I personally think the difference is part of the charm of linquistics in general. Most American spellings are much more practical than English spellings (remember "tyre" and "kerb?").

It would be an interesting research to see how those spelling differences evolved. It's entirely possible that it was an error compounded by the similarity of the words. In other words, once one of the words was spelled a certain way, that spelling spread to other, similar words.

Even the French, who I mentioned above, are not immune to such silliness. One example would the word "doigt," which means "finger." The French Academy assumed it descended from the Latin "digit" and so put the g in as a reminder of that. It turns out they were wrong.

Or, to show the more practical side, to count in French above 69, you have to take off your shoes. Seventy is "sixty-ten." Eighty is "four twenties." Ninety is "four twenties ten."

But not in French-speaking Switzerland, which has single words for each of those.

But American English is much more homogeneous than the Queen's English. There is less difference between an Arkansan and a New Yorker than there is between two fairly close sections of London. I suspect, however, that even those differences are dying due to exposure to national TV and radio.

True enough about dialectical differences; it's simply an accident of history. People from certain areas of Europe came over to the East coast here, and eventually spread pretty directly West. As a result, we only have three truly different dialect areas that look a lot like stripes, but with a whole lot of little variations http://polyglot.lss.wisc.edu/dare/dare.html

Most "American" spellings, you can thank Webster for. One of the main reasons for Noah Webster's composing a dictionary was to distance ourselves from England. Seriously, it's just political. These new spellings became standardized by McGuffey's readers and whatnot. It seems pretty unlikely until you think about the factors going into it; most people weren't literate, and the ones who were had political motivations to use the new spellings, and spellings weren't quite so standardized as they are now. If people understood what you meant, there wasn't much fuss. There's been a paradigmatic shift in that people now feel like written language is the "main" sort of language and speech is a representation of that, an idea that exists only in post-industrialized nations and only very very recently.

L'academie Francaise tries really hard to regulate French, and succeeds as much as they do largely because people are willing to listen to them and because it's a fairly small, contained population of people who have motivation to want to keep French "pure" (read: not full of English). But, you still see "le week-end" all over the place. Attempts to regulate people's speech fail every time, usually in whole, but sometimes in part like that.

And why do you say that "tire" and "curb" make more sense than "tyre" and "kerb"? They're both completely arbitrary representations of the same word, with the same number of letters. If anything, "k" makes more sense because "c" can make more than one sound before a vowel.

 

[laureen227]

Originally Posted by Zissou'sMom

And why do you say that "tire" and "curb" make more sense than "tyre" and "kerb"? They're both completely arbitrary representations of the same word, with the same number of letters. If anything, "k" makes more sense because "c" can make more than one sound before a vowel.

i agree that 'k' makes more sense for the /k/ sound... but 'c' makes the /k/ sound before a, o & u, & the /s/ sound before i & e [almost always - there are probably some exceptions, there always are

]. personally, i think we need to eliminate 'c' from the alphabet altogether... anyone else ever read that article/essay? the one that systematically eliminates/replaces the alphabet, then, as they're replaced/eliminated, the writing changes to the new version.
by the end of the article, it's quite hard to read!

 

[yosemite]

Originally Posted by gailuvscats

Ties my stomach in knots as well, especially when you think it takes a half a second to hit the spell check icon.
It could give several messages, primarily that the person really doesn't give two hoots about anyone else, or that they are just dumb, or really really lazy. Or perhaps any number of other things. My point is, if you cannot spell, which is obvious in some cases, and you know spell check exists, why the heck would you not use it? It would be different if the guilty parties were not computer savy, then I can understand.

That won't help much if you've just used the wrong form of a word, i.e., there instead of their. Spellcheck is very limited in that regard.

I prefer the Oxford dictionary to the Webster dictionary. I consider the Webster dictionary to be a US dictionary only.

The British way of spelling was the Canadian way of spelling as well - I'm not certain if that is still the way things are but I sure hope so.

If you bring someone from France into Quebec they will have a difficult time understanding the language as Quebecois is quite different than France French, just as the New Brunswick French is different from Quebec French. BTW, New Brunswick is the only official bi-lingual Province in Canada. I grew up to signs in both languages and couldn't understand the big hoopla about posting bilingual signs in Ontario.

 

[jcat]

Originally Posted by mrblanche

But American English is much more homogeneous than the Queen's English. There is less difference between an Arkansan and a New Yorker than there is between two fairly close sections of London. I suspect, however, that even those differences are dying due to exposure to national TV and radio.

You've got that right! I really suspect that it's partly due to people in the "New World" being more willing to relocate. I have (had) South American colleagues who complain about the number of different dialects in Spain.

 

[kluchetta]

Originally Posted by nanner

Me too!!!!! I've tried to explain to people why the former doesn't make any sense, and no one seems to get it!

Me three!

That's bothered me since I was a child. Of course try explaining that to other children...

 

[joyzerelly]

Originally Posted by mrblanche

Most American spellings are much more practical than English spellings (remember "tyre" and "kerb?").

I don't agree, for a start, the american spellings of those words are just recycled english words.
TIRE - to become tired
CURB - curb your enthusiasm

I also think there are slight, perhaps microscopic pronounciation differences, I can hear them though maybe its my imagination. I agree that the spelling changes were an attempt to separate America from England. Pretty poor attempt though, why not develop a new language if its that important...

Originally Posted by mrblanche

But American English is much more homogeneous than the Queen's English. There is less difference between an Arkansan and a New Yorker than there is between two fairly close sections of London. I suspect, however, that even those differences are dying due to exposure to national TV and radio.

So far as the language differing from one area of London to the other, this is a regional difference, slang, and definitely not the Queen's English, which remains the Queen's English wherever you go. Unfortunately, a lot of people in England, mainly youth, are becoming Americanised in their language nowadays because of films and tv. It takes some effort, or just regular reading of English literature to maintain good English. Something which I myself regularly have to pick myself up on.

 

[carolpetunia]

Originally Posted by Zissou'sMom

There's no such distinction to be made, except by your own judgement. What you consider "ignorance" or "carelessness" are someone else's societal evolution or enhancing of expression.

With all due respect, I think there's a very clear distinction: for example, adding new terms to a language (e.g., the verb google) is fundamentally different from merely giving in on formerly unacceptable spellings (e.g., alright instead of all right). "Google" serves a function society has come to require, so that use makes sense... but dropping an L and a space out of "all right" surely cannot be said to enhance expression!

You said people don't set out to change language -- but in an official sense, that's exactly the role the usage panels serve. They can decide that a change has occurred and incorporate it into the dictionaries so that it becomes standard. But they can (and sometimes do) refuse to validate the sillier trends that come along... for which I am grateful! Heaven help us if some usage panel ever decides that it's acceptable to write 2 for to and 4 for for. We may not be able to keep people from doing it, but we don't have to make it officially correct!

Z, I know this is your field of expertise, and I sincerely admire that -- but I love the language so much that I can't help having some strong feelings of my own about these issues... and it's certainly not the only area in which I come into conflict with accepted standards.

Absolutely no disrespect is intended.

 

[yosemite]

Originally Posted by joyzerelly

I don't agree, for a start, the american spellings of those words are just recycled english words.
TIRE - to become tired
CURB - curb your enthusiasm

I also think there are slight, perhaps microscopic pronounciation differences, I can hear them though maybe its my imagination. I agree that the spelling changes were an attempt to separate America from England. Pretty poor attempt though, why not develop a new language if its that important...



So far as the language differing from one area of London to the other, this is a regional difference, slang, and definitely not the Queen's English, which remains the Queen's English wherever you go. Unfortunately, a lot of people in England, mainly youth, are becoming Americanised in their language nowadays because of films and tv. It takes some effort, or just regular reading of English literature to maintain good English. Something which I myself regularly have to pick myself up on.

Maybe it makes me a snob, but I don't think the English language should be so "

ized" as it is today. I've always corrected our daughter on her grammar and spelling and I proudly say that today she is much more well-spoken than most of her friends and she's thankful to me for that.