restaurant users

What 's a womble ?

This entire thread is a monument to your inability to face up to facts.

This entire thread is a monument to your inability to face up to facts.

Now what facts am I not facing up to?

Paintings are hung, people are hanged. For someone who claims to know a lot about the English language you sure do make a lot of fuckups.

Thought about a new avatar at all?

OmSigDAVID wrote:

What 's a womble ?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Wombles

About 80,300 results (0.40 seconds)

Showing results for JTT is incredibly anal

The assertions about google results were so far devoid of soundness.

I don't give a monkeys what Webster's says, it's American.

This is going better than I thought. Why have you only posted this on two threads I've responded to?

I think you need to post this on all the threads I've been posting on.

When you do that, everyone will think you're way cool.


Go JTT!

but is it oxymoronic to use "you're way cool" and "JTT" in the same post??

I don't give a monkeys what Webster's says, it's American.

Where, then, can one get evidence of what decent writers really do, as opposed to what Strunk and White [and McTag, Izzy and Contrex] 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

So what you're saying, is that you're going to talk in a particular way because an American told you to.