Come the fall of... or Come fall of...??

And I was trying to be nice, pleasant, and reasonable.

If you did not spend so much effort in trying to find fault where none exists, and others "wrong" while you are "right", how much more pleasant at least this forum would be.

You only succeed in making yourself seem ridiculous. You do it so often I conclude that you are indeed ridiculous, if not deranged.

Personally I don't give a rat's ass whether anybody's grammar is correct because it's only the words and meaning that are important, not whether a comma or apostrophe is out of place..

Nevertheless, astutely-placed apostrophes there, Romeo. Have you met JTT?

So your artless little questions, of someone who thought you might care to know more about the subtleties of this wonderful language of ours, were actually intended as a trap?
I over-estimated you, badly.

As was I, as I am.



I was not trying to find fault, nor was I laying any trap. I was fully prepared to hear you explain your contention,

"I think "come the fall of..." sounds better in this case",

showing where the alternative would work. No situation came to mind for me, but that doesn't mean one doesn't/can't exist.

I simply asked,

"Do you think the other is a possibility?" and you replied, "Yes, it is". Then you seemed to become confused and directed things away from the question I asked.

If you want to retract, please do so. Nothing untoward will happen, you won't be branded as an idiot for we all advance notions about language that don't turn out to be accurate. Language is tough stuff.

We're in complete agreement, Romeo, for the vast majority of language situations.

You used two periods to mark your last sentence. That's a mistake.

Basically, if somebody writes ****, it's still **** even if he's got the punctuation and grammar perfectly correct..

Don't I know that! You've never seen the Pet Peeves of English threads.

You will be familiar with the word sophistry, or you can look it up. It accurately describes what you have written here.
I have worked you out- you are a lunatic with antisocial tendencies, who lurks behind a patronising veneer of academic familiarity.

Another McTag song and dance. What is it that prevents you from dealing honestly [or at all] with the notions you raise?

Care to describe the offending portions or are you going to stay with McTag's well known avoidance song and dance routine.

All of it is offensive, patronising twaddle. But OH so carefully presented. You don't scruple to employ smarm when it suits your book.

I gave you two choices and I'm not the least bit surprised to see that you have chosen the one where you can avoid defending the nonsense you raised.

Surely your opinions have some substance to them. Why do you go to such lengths to avoid discussing them.

It is not your role to give me choices. Who do you think you are? If you refer to any offering of mine as ludicrous, not only does it raise the question of why you think you have the right to be gratuitously offensive, but it places the onus on you as to why you think this is so.

That's not the point. The point is that you refuse to offer anything to support your contentions/opinions. You advance a point and then you can't even keep it straight as to what you have advanced



Just somebody who hates to see people like you advance notions about language that don't meet any test for rationality.

But again, the point is - why can't you ever provide anything of substance for your notions.



I didn't refer to your contention here as ludicrous, but I have to note that you scramble for any excuse to avoid discussing your contentions.

It is not offensive to discuss language issues. It is offensive that you advance things that you can provide no support for. You're becoming worse than you were in your time in the peeves threads.



You've got this badly ass backwards, McTag. You advance something, you defend it. Defending doesn't entail all manner of diversion in order to avoid the issue you raise, though I must admit you are highly adept at diversion.

Pointing up silly notions [no reference to the issues in this thread] is important in that it has a beneficial result in that fewer people are willing to continue to advance nonsense.

When you give language boobs, like Clary and others free rein, well, you saw the stupidity that was continually advanced in the peeves threads. Exposing these bits of nonsense means there are fewer people misled on language issues.

Is anyone else visualising Walther Matthau and Jack Lemmon?

Nosy Parker comes to mind.

Wasn't he the chauffeur on Thunderbirds?

Isn't nosy also spelt nosey?

It is, L.

With the Peeves thread, the hint as to what it's about is in the name. It was intended as bit of fun. That said, I doubt I would put anything on there which wasn't true.

As far as this present disagreement is concerned (btw have you noticed that every thread which JTT gets involved with ends in disagreement or worse) I expressed a preference, that's all. A choice. You can demand all you like for me to justify a preference, but surely you must suspect by now that your inquisitorial and patronising approach is both inappropriate and illogical.