The number of quantity

@JTT,

There was nothing to discuss, I just pointed out your error.

And if I ever wanted to discuss my language, why do you think I would choose you to discuss it with? You have disqualified yourself.

2 Replies

@McTag,

Quote:

There was nothing to discuss, I just pointed out your error.

You lying piece of ****. I told you there was no error, more than once and still you go off on your silly tangents.

You, McTag, are simply picking over my posts looking for a picayune "problem". It would be helpful if these actually had some merit. It would also be helpful if you, the "language expert" could address the issues that YOU raise.

1 Reply

@McTag,

Quote:

why do you think I would choose you to discuss it with?

Because you might learn something. That won't happen if you continue in your silly ways with your tea clatch and their usage manuals.

Quote:

You have disqualified yourself.

That's your decision. You have shown yourself incapable of discussing language issues what with your tangents.

1 Reply

@JTT,

Quote:

You lying piece of ****. I told you there was no error

Error there certainly was. Only a small one, admittedly, which you have compounded with your amazing antics and choice of expression.

Here it is, already explained to you:

Quote:

As long as we're picking nits, criteria is a plural whose singular is criterion.
So the pronoun should be plural, yes?

2 Replies

@JTT,

Quote:

You have shown yourself incapable of discussing language issues what with your tangents.

Syntax?

Tut, tut.

0 Replies

@McTag,

Quote:

As long as we're picking nits, criteria is a plural whose singular is criterion.
So the pronoun should be plural, yes?

I told you you don't know your ass from your elbow and here you illustrate it once more.

This has been explained numerous times, to people who are as ignorant as you.

0 Replies

@McTag,

Quote:

Here it is, already explained to you:

After all the numerous prescriptions that you've advanced, after all the silly notions on language that you've offered in language threads, you're pretty damn silly thinking that a McTag explanation holds any weight.

Perhaps you could explain 'may/can' again? That should provide some chuckles.

1 Reply

@JTT,

Noted, you evaded the point again.

1 Reply

@McTag,

I was much too hasty in my last reply. There was no McTag explanation. There never is. There is just McTag repeatedly mouthing his silly prescriptions.

Quote:

you evaded the point again.

Not at all. Evasion is your long suit, McTag. I told you you were full of ****, which you are. And as is so typical you've provided nothing to back your silly little notion.

Now you've got Izzy doing the same thing.

2 Replies

@JTT,

Noted, you continue to ignore the point. This got tedious a long time ago, and so I will stop responding to your trademark insults, unless you can come up with something real and interesting.

1 Reply

@McTag,

Quote:

Noted, you continue to ignore the point.

The point was your point, McTag, and you have ignored it since you first advanced another silly prescription that you have stolen from one of your little style manuals.

0 Replies

@JTT,

Quote:

which you are. And as is so typical you've provided nothing to back your silly little notion.

Oh no I'm not.
And the point was so simple, a child could have understood it.
But not a disingenuous twerp, at least, not enough apparently to acknowledge it honestly.
Are you going to loosen up anytime soon, or are you going to continue to be a useless, ugly blot on the fair landscape of A2K?

2 Replies

@McTag,

Yes, McTag, you are completely full of ****. So much so that you can't address any of the points you raise. You full of tangents and diversions but nothing on the language issues.

Quote:

And the point was so simple,

Your "point" was simplistic, and wrong to boot. Chickenshit that you are you are unable to address YOUR point. That tells everyone how incompetent you are wrt language.

Quote:

a useless, ugly blot on the fair landscape of A2K

A good description of you, one of the leaders of that long running vacuous thread on English peeves. And still you continue with your silly vacuous peeves.

0 Replies

@McTag,

Quote:

As long as we're picking nits, criteria is a plural whose singular is criterion.

So the pronoun should be plural, yes?

================

http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/criterion

Usage Discussion of CRITERION
The plural criteria has been used as a singular for over half a century <let me now return to the third criteria — R. M. Nixon> <that really is the criteria — Bert Lance>. Many of our examples, like the two foregoing, are taken from speech. But singular criteria is not uncommon in edited prose, and its use both in speech and writing seems to be increasing. Only time will tell whether it will reach the unquestioned acceptability of agenda.

1 Reply

@McTag,

McTag wrote:

Quote:
which you are. And as is so typical you've provided nothing to back your silly little notion.

Oh no I'm not.
And the point was so simple, a child could have understood it.

It seems rude, and un-provoked, to be so disdainful
qua the minds of children. Did thay insult YOU??

David

1 Reply

@JTT,

It's no good quoting an American source to me, they're not reliable in my view.

-1 Replies

@OmSigDAVID,

It's really hilarious, Dave the snitch, for a "lawyer" to be operating from his stinky little hole, smothered as you are in ignorance. With your head up your butt, you can't even see that McTag was mistaken.

0 Replies

@McTag,

Quote:

It's no good quoting an American source to me, they're not reliable in my view.

Your view, to put it frankly, isn't worth a pile of dung, McTag.

The following, from Geoffrey Pullum, one of the co-authors of the Cambridge Grammar of the English Language.

Quote:

Where, then, can one get evidence of what decent writers really do, as opposed to what Strunk and White [and McTag] wrongly imagine decent writers do, given that they simply lie about it? The unhelpful answer would be that you read millions of words of fine prose and remember what you've seen. But there is a shortcut you can use to get to that evidence: get hold of a really good usage book. And the best usage book I know of right now is Merriam-Webster's Concise Dictionary of English Usage (ISBN: 0-87779-633-5). This book — I'll call it MWCDEU for short — is utterly wonderful. Detailed, but tight-packed, and great value (exactly 800 pages for $16.95 — roughly 2 cents per page plus the cost of a small regular coffee).

I own no stock in the Merriam-Webster company and get no commissions on sales. If they published a rubbishy book, I'd tell you. And if The Cambridge Grammar of the English Language were better for this purpose, I'd definitely say so; but it isn't — not if you want usage advice as opposed to systematic and detailed grammatical description. The Cambridge Grammar is big and somewhat technical, and doesn't cite literary examples, and it doesn't give advice. The book you need is MWCDEU. Throw your Strunk & White away, and hang the pages on a nail in the guest outhouse for emergency use. Or tear out the pages and use them as liner paper for the bottom of the parrot cage, if you have a parrot (change the paper at least weekly, and wash your hands afterwards). Then get hold of MWCDEU, and keep it away from the parrot (parrots are jealous birds and will tear up things they can see you value).

MWCDEU explains what actually occurs, shows you some of the evidence, tells you what some other usage books say, and then leaves you to make your own reasoned decision. It won't tell you either that you should split infinitives, or that you shouldn't. But it will give you a number of examples of writers who do, and point out that the construction has always occurred in English literature over the last six or seven centuries, and that nearly all careful usage books today agree it is entirely grammatical, and it will then leave you to decide.

In other words it treats you like a grown-up. Strunk and White treat you like the abused 9-year-old daughter of a pair of grumpy dads ("Omit needless words, damn you! And fetch my slippers. And bring his slippers too. Now fix our supper. And don't let us hear you beginning any sentences with however"). Don't put up with the abuse.

Posted by Geoffrey K. Pullum at January 15, 2005 01:25 PM

http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelog/archives/001803.html

1 Reply

@JTT,

Well that's convincing. I concede. Maybe there is an American publication which is reliable.
I note from what you wrote earlier, that "criteria" as a singular entity is a long way off the general acceptance of, say, "agenda" used in that sense. And long may it be so.
I disapprove of people buggering about with the language.

2 Replies

@McTag,

Quote:

I note from what you wrote earlier, that "criteria" as a singular entity is a long way off the general acceptance of, say, "agenda" used in that sense.

That's of no concern whatsoever to real language users, McTag. It's got nothing specifically to do with language. In fact, it's antithetical to the real rules of language.

Quote:

You wouldn't want to take the critics' hysteria at face value. A usage can be really, really irritating, but that's as far as it goes. You hear people saying that a misused "hopefully" or "literally" makes them want to put their shoe through the television screen, but nobody ever actually does that — what it really makes them want to do is tell you how they wanted to put a shoe through the television screen. It's all for display, like rhesus monkeys baring their teeth and pounding the ground with their palms.

http://www.npr.org/2012/05/30/153709651/the-word-hopefully-is-here-to-stay-hopefully

Quote:

I disapprove of people buggering about with the language.

Then why have you so long supported those who have truly buggered aout with the language, the ones who wrote and passed on lies about English?

1 Reply

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