Grammar nazi...

[zissou'smom]

Originally Posted by CarolPetunia

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.

I don't feel disrespected!

You're a prescriptivist, and that's okay. It's just a different way of looking at things than any linguist has.

Usage panels describe the changes that have already occurred; they have no ability to cause them. And as you said, whether it's "correct" or not, people still do it. It is possible to influence the standard for formal, written language; but I'm not very concerned with that.

Changes like "all right" to "alright" are just orthography. There's no actual change in language there at all. It's still the same word, with the same meaning, the same usage, etc.

In other words... prescriptivism has a place in grading children's papers for correct spellings and usages so that they can learn the accepted ways of spelling and such. However, prescriptivists can't study language because you can't have preconceived notions of what you're studying. That would be like a biologist studying dolphins with the idea that there's no way a mammal can live in water, concluding that the dolphin therefore is "wrong", and publishing a paper that says dolphins shouldn't exist, rather than ever actually studying the dolphin.

You can't describe change if you're too busy trying to stop it.

 

[cata_mint]

Yosemite,
It took me so long to work out the word being censored.

 

[consumerkitty]

Has anyone ever been corrected for spelling a word correctly? I had someone tell me it's "definately" not "definitely".

 

[bonnie1965]

Originally Posted by cata_mint

Yosemite,
It took me so long to work out the word being censored.

I'm still not getting it?

 

[yosemite]

Originally Posted by ConsumerKitty

Has anyone ever been corrected for spelling a word correctly? I had someone tell me it's "definately" not "definitely".

I hope you made them look it up in a dictionary (in this case either Webster or Oxford

).

Originally Posted by Bonnie1965

I'm still not getting it?

The son of an unmarried lady plus "ized".

 

[carolpetunia]

I can't study language? Uhoh! I've been doing it all my life! Are they coming to get me?

How much subtlety of mind does it really take to grasp two seemingly opposed concepts at once? I can juggle the concepts of "mammal" and "breathing underwater" quite handily! So I reserve my right to study dolphins. And language. So there!

Hon, I just have to say... despite the impression you've gotten, I am not a "prescriptivist." I see many shades of grey. I have an open mind. I appreciate the fluidity of language, and I can do a great deal more with it than grade children's papers.

But if there are no rules, it's not a language -- it's a knife fight! (Reference: Paul Newman in Butch Cassidy & The Sundance Kid.

) You have to learn how to write by the rules, or you have no platform from which to begin departing from those rules in the name of creative license.

Maybe it's a good thing I chose not to go into academia, huh?

 

[ssmith0385]

Originally Posted by mrblanche

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.

Actually, I thought that "affect" meant "to produce an effect or change in" - as in "The extra carbohydrates affected my energy level." So wouldn't "affect these changes" be correct if she meant to cause an effect in the changes?

 

[carolpetunia]

It would if that were the intention, and therein lies a potential problem... but usually, people say they're going to "effect these changes" as in make them effective.

But you're right, if you wanted to say something was going to cause a change in the changes, you'd want to say it would affect the changes. In order to avoid being misunderstood, you'd probably want to word it differently -- to say it would "have an effect on the changes."

Makes your head spin sometimes!

 

[zissou'smom]

Originally Posted by CarolPetunia

I
How much subtlety of mind does it really take to grasp two seemingly opposed concepts at once? I can juggle the concepts of "mammal" and "breathing underwater" quite handily! So I reserve my right to study dolphins. And language. So there!

But if there are no rules, it's not a language -- it's a knife fight! (Reference: Paul Newman in Butch Cassidy & The Sundance Kid.

) You have to learn how to write by the rules, or you have no platform from which to begin departing from those rules in the name of creative license.

1) You've completely misunderstood the analogy I made. If you go into studying something with preconceived notions of what it should be like, you're going to miss what actually is. Science is about describing what is, not saying what shouldn't be because it's "wrong". I didn't mean that the idea of a dolphin was too complicated.

2) There are tons of rules; thus my distinction between grammatical and ungrammatical. It's true that if there were no rules then there would be no language. But the rules of language never need to be taught (and let me emphasis once again that I am talking about speech, not formal, written essays). People never say something that is ungrammatical to them naturally, except when they make a mistake.

If you're interested, this is one of the books we use in the intro classes here, it's novel-sized so not a huge endeavor, and explains what I'm talking about better than I can here.

 

[carolpetunia]

Yes, I think we're both misunderstanding each other, and I think it's because we have fundamentally opposing attitudes. Tomayto, tomahto, let's call the whole thing off and stick to cats!

 

[bella713]

I am a spelling bug, I always find mistakes in books...my grammar probably isn't the greatest though

The loose and lose thing drives me BUGGY, ALSO it's GRATEFUL...NOT GREATFUL

 

[mrblanche]

Originally Posted by SSmith0385

Actually, I thought that "affect" meant "to produce an effect or change in" - as in "The extra carbohydrates affected my energy level." So wouldn't "affect these changes" be correct if she meant to cause an effect in the changes?

It would...if that was what she wanted to say.

However, she wanted to say that they needed to cause the changes to occur immediately.

And no, she couldn't see the distinction, either.

 

[alleygirl]

These may have already been mentioned, but a few that really bug me are:

weather - whether

sense - since

definite - various misspellings