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posted by: ScubaDiva (reply) post date: 04.28.04 (9:31 am) I've been a self-proclaimed grammar and spelling princess for years... Recently I corrected folks on A LOT vs. alot. Then there was the famous posting of "damnit" is not a word, and discussed the differences between Dammit! and Damn it. posted by: mblog (reply) post date: 04.28.04 (10:15 am) I took the test and it told me I was a grammar god. But I cheated. I gave the answers I thought it expected me to give. I tried to go back and change things, but it would not let me. It has an "anti cheat" tag in the code. I agree with the answers on about 80% of the questions. But on some of them, the author is being overly pedantic or just plain wrong. For example, one of the questions had to do with a "split infinitive." This bit of nonsense was introduced into grammar books a while ago, but has been discredited for at least half a century as arbitrary nonsense. It's true that Latin does not have split infinitives but that's because it does not have infinitives with two words. The idea to make English conform to Latin in that sense was arbitrary and was not based on established usage. Either Chris' or Chris's is acceptable usage. A published author should be consistent with his publisher's style guide, but having a general answer makes little sense. It's arbitrary. The question about punctuation and quotes had more to do with what country you live in than what is correct. Many grammarians consider the distinction between "which" and "that" to be arbitrary in many contexts. I'd have to give it to the author in this case, because it's awkward to use "which" in that statement without two commas. But it's less obvious in other cases. Considering "everybody" as singular is not always correct or consistent with modern usage. Furthermore, it's not always consistent with historical usage. If you go back to Shakespeare's time, you will find that this modern insistence on it being singular was not there. It also leads to very awkward statements when you insist it be singular and that subject and verb agree and cannot change in mid sentence. For example, "Everybody came to class today and he ate his lunch" seems more than a little twisted. It also introduces ambiguity. If I say that everybody was satisfied with his grade, it could mean that one student got a good grade, and all students were happy about it. It's far more useful to worry about establishing the antecedent than about which pronoun to use. Finally, some sentences that (or which :-) ) are grammatically correct are awkward. I'd rather say "I'm smarter than she is" than the equally correct "I'm smarter than she" or the common error "I'm smarter than her." If somebody knocks on my door, "I won't say "It is I." I'll say "It's mblog." I do tend to agree with his usage of the subjunctive, but in all fairness, many people do not distinguish between the subjunctive and the indicative these days, and many grammarians acknowledge that this distinction is dying out and do not object to the "misuse" of the indicative. But I think it makes sense in #18 to use the subjunctive. The problem with the subjunctive is that if I be overly pedantic, people will think I am using the wrong verb form. posted by: kennyrhit (reply) post date: 04.28.04 (11:01 am) mblog, I agree with you. In a linguistics class I had we learned about the Latin fetish that people had centuries ago to make English more like the 'perfect' language. Also, in class, we came to the conclusion that one's style of grammar should reflect the community in which one is speaking. Obviously, using proper English will seen pretensious around less the educated; and using poor grammar around business executives will sound ignorant. Many of the rules we think are proper English are not-they are completely arbitrary. i.e. using prepositions at the end of sentences. Thanks for enlightening others with your knowledge. I suggest reading the book "The Language Instinct" by Steven Pinker. He has many informational side notes that make the book more interesting that a normal English book. It does get dry for a few chapters, which you may want to skip. (go ahead!) |
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