What are your pet peeves re English usage?

Quote:

When you get to the junction you'll run into a cluster of people who [say/says] you should proceed west.

Unless the cluster of people is chanting like a Greek chorus with well-rehearsed directions, I'd ignore them and forget them and never mention them at all.

If they are truly speaking as a cluster, then the singular verb would apply.

If they are speaking as individuals, I'd discard "cluster" and make the individualism clear.

0 Replies

JTT wrote:

Noddy24 wrote:
I'm of the "cluster...that marks" school.

So just to clarify, Noddy, what would your choice be here?

When you get to the junction you'll run into a cluster of people who [say/says] you should proceed west.

People who say, or cluster which says.

Noddy's got it.

0 Replies

Similarly, the government says/say.

0 Replies

I wasn't sure where to post this....imaginative stuff from the late lamented Miles Kington.

http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/columnists/miles-kington/miles-kington-remembered-mind-your-language-or-the-word-squad-will-have-kittens-803134.html

0 Replies

McTag--

Thanks for the link. I particularly appreciate the notion of retiring "sporting behavior".

0 Replies

Saw this picture this morning and the caption.

http://cache.daylife.com/imageserve/09dsdFcdga42n/610x.jpg

AP Photo: Sen. John McCain, center, and his wife Cindy, right, greets NASCAR driver Dale Earnhardt Jr,... "Greets?" That does not agree as in subject and verb.

0 Replies

Letty--

The world is going to hell in a handbasket with a busted bottom.

0 Replies

Absolutely, Noddy. I also found out that the spelling of a conflagration is "fiery" and not"firey". Where's that hand basket. Razz

0 Replies

Letty--

Once Grandmother announces she's feeling a little peckish and needs a little snackie, Little Red Riding Hood attempts to defend herself with her handbasket....

....alas. The woodcutter saved the girl but not the basket.

0 Replies

I joined a Facebook group today called I judge you when you use poor grammar. They have a T shirt with the sentence written round a picture of GWB.

0 Replies

Have we ever discussed "Democrat" as an adjective here? "The Democrat platform", "the Democrat leadership", "Democrat posters on A2K" .... Our Republicanic correspondends seem to be using this coinage all the time, or at least routinely. What's up with that?

0 Replies

Thomas wrote:

Have we ever discussed "Democrat" as an adjective here? "The Democrat platform", "the Democrat leadership", "Democrat posters on A2K" .... Our Republicanic correspondends seem to be using this coinage all the time, or at least routinely. What's up with that?

Said with enough venom or sarcasm they hope it will begin to sound like "liberal" and then "pinko commie faggot".

But it's a noun, the adjective being "democratic", but with fewer syllables it sounds more pithy I suppose..

0 Replies

Perhaps!

In speech, one cannot tell the difference between a democratic platform and a Democratic platform, a democratic poster and a Democratic poster.

Democrat solves this problem and what one uses in speech falls naturally into what one writes, especially at the casual level of a forum.

Words don't get their parts of speech designation from some committee, which, after much study, finds that there is a gap in language that needs filling.

There are not many ways for new words to enter the language; by far the most common one is from the people who use language. They invent new words daily and Democrat (adj) could simply be another new word.

Thomas, did you read my new posting in the thread,

Should there be a gender-neutral form of he or she pronouns?

http://www.able2know.org/forums/viewtopic.php?t=68416&start=40

It points up that you can use the grammar portion of your Chicago Manual of Style as firestarter without fretting that you've lost anything.

Imagine, a university publication that has been around that long, and, which has acquired some measure of respectability for defining citation use, and they ask Bryan Garner to write the grammar portion.

0 Replies

JTT wrote:

Democrat solves this problem and what one uses in speech falls naturally into what one writes, especially at the casual level of a forum.

The problem with this argument is that it's an equally good argument for similar differentiation around the word "Republican". We aren't observing any such differentiation in practical usage.

JTT wrote:

Thomas, did you read my new posting in the thread,

Should there be a gender-neutral form of he or she pronouns?

No, not yet. Will do, though.

Edit: Now I did read it. So some language maven on some blog doesn't like Garner's approach to grammar. So what?

0 Replies

Thomas wrote:

JTT wrote:
Democrat solves this problem and what one uses in speech falls naturally into what one writes, especially at the casual level of a forum.

The problem with this argument is that it's an equally good argument for similar differentiation around the word "Republican". We aren't observing any such differentiation in practical usage.

Is there an equivalent small 'r' Republican word like 'democratic'?

JTT wrote:
Thomas, did you read my new posting in the thread,

Should there be a gender-neutral form of he or she pronouns?

No, not yet. Will do, though.

Edit: Now I did read it. So some language maven on some blog doesn't like Garner's approach to grammar. So what?

Not a language maven, Thomas. Language mavens are of the prescriptivist set. Professor Pullum is one of the authors of The Cambridge Grammar of the English Language.

No one likes Garner's approach to grammar except like-minded prescriptivists who can't seem to garner any arguments supporting their positions.

0 Replies

JTT wrote:

Is there an equivalent small 'r' Republican word like 'democratic'?

No, there isn't.

JTT wrote:

No one likes Garner's approach to grammar except like-minded prescriptivists who can't seem to garner any arguments supporting their positions.

I'll grant you, for the sake of the argument, that Garner is a prescriptivist. Still, I don't see how this disqualifies him from writing a chapter in the Chicago Manual of Style. People read the Manual precisely because they're unsure about their writing. They want a prescription about it from an authority they trust. Why would a prescriptionist be the wrong author for writing the prescriptions that readers bought the book for?

0 Replies

Thomas wrote:

JTT wrote:
Is there an equivalent small 'r' Republican word like 'democratic'?

No, there isn't.

Sure there is, and it's republican. For example, the first clause of Article IV, Section 4 of the United States Constitution reads:

The United States shall guarantee to every state in this union a republican form of government . . .

If you were to substitute the word "democratic" for the word "republican" in that clause, it would still scan the same, and have the same "value" as regards meaning.

0 Replies

Thomas wrote:

JTT wrote:
No one likes Garner's approach to grammar except like-minded prescriptivists who can't seem to garner any arguments supporting their positions.

I'll grant you, for the sake of the argument, that Garner is a prescriptivist. Still, I don't see how this disqualifies him from writing a chapter in the Chicago Manual of Style. People read the Manual precisely because they're unsure about their writing. They want a prescription about it from an authority they trust. Why would a prescriptionist be the wrong author for writing the prescriptions that readers bought the book for?

It disqualifies him, Thomas, because prescriptions do not describe how language works. Garner isn't an authority on language because he hasn't bothered to spend the time doing the science. All he has done is memorized old grammar books, the ones that have the "rules" that were faulty from the day they were written.

0 Replies

Setanta wrote:

Thomas wrote:
JTT wrote:
Is there an equivalent small 'r' Republican word like 'democratic'?

No, there isn't.

Sure there is, and it's republican. For example, the first clause of Article IV, Section 4 of the United States Constitution reads:

The United States shall guarantee to every state in this union a republican form of government . . .

If you were to substitute the word "democratic" for the word "republican" in that clause, it would still scan the same, and have the same "value" as regards meaning.

You're absolutely right, Set, for that limited application. What I meant was that 'republican' isn't a word that's used in everyday language in the same way that 'democratic' is or at least I can't think of any.

0 Replies

What is it about adjectives which makes them "limited?"

0 Replies

What are your pet peeves re English usage?

Related Topics

Quick Links

My Account

able2know