Why Grammar Matters: A Place To Discuss Matters Of Grammar

[Sandman87]

From tonight's news:

A reporter told us that he'd be bringing us more about the "festival festivities" later. That is some journalistic journalism right there.

The chief of a nearby fire department told us that historically the "whole part" of his town had suffered wildfire damage. Luckily I was sitting at my desk at the time, which made it convenient for me to bang my head against the desk a couple of times.

[DangerousMinds]

On 7/1/2016 at 3:41 AM, riley702 said:

That would be the MidWest. Suck on it.

Pen/pin sound the same to me, as do marry/merry/Mary. Caught and cot are different, as are Don and Dawn. And just to piss off the snobs, I say peony "piney" and call green bell peppers "mangoes". And yes, I'm intelligent, well-read and well-educated.

I live in the Midwest and would die before saying Q-pon.

[riley702]

Well then, we can't be friends.

Edited July 6, 2016 by riley702
a contrary comma

[shapeshifter]

19 hours ago, DangerousMinds said:

I live in the Midwest and would die before saying Q-pon.

 

3 hours ago, riley702 said:

Well, then, we can't be friends.

I will be friends with both of you and pronounce it coo-pon with DangerousMinds and then say Q-pon with riley702, while never having to think about it. So much for "think before you speak" lectures.

[St. Claire]

I love you all, coo-poners and cyoo-poners alike, and think there is one thing we call all agree upon- making a word plural by adding an apostrophe before the "s" is a floggable act.

[riley702]

Thank you guys for dragging this back on topic - to actual grammar issues instead of pronunciation. Love you both!

[St. Claire]

I had one of those "folks will need to see this to believe it" moments awhile back when watching the weather report on local news. I've long since learned to ignore missing apostrophes in news crawls and the like, but that moment actually made me twitchy.

Edited July 6, 2016 by St. Claire
insert picture

[Ohwell]

Yeah that's Gwen Tolbart from Fox 5 DC.  She probably had a hard time keeping a straight face.

[shapeshifter]

9 hours ago, St. Claire said:

I can't read this one without taking it literally and wondering what the temperture would be under those conditions.

[Rick Kitchen]

Less than hot?

[scriggle]

Last week on local news, while reporting about a highway worker who'd been struck by a car, the anchor told us he'd been "fatally killed."

[dargosmydaddy]

My news spoke of a three-year-old victim who had a three-year-old twin brother. You know, instead of a three-year-old with a six-year-old twin...

[3pwood]

On 7/6/2016 at 5:10 PM, scriggle said:

Last week on local news, while reporting about a highway worker who'd been struck by a car, the anchor told us he'd been "fatally killed."

Thank goodness that didn't happen in the local accident where, according to our radio announcer, a passenger was "minorly injured".

[SVNBob]

5 hours ago, 3pwood said:

Thank goodness that didn't happen in the local accident where, according to our radio announcer, a passenger was "minorly injured".

That one makes sense.  After all, there are minor injuries, like a sprained ankle, and major injuries, like a broken leg.

[proserpina65]

On ‎06‎/‎25‎/‎2016 at 2:46 PM, atomationage said:

Florida has a turnpike with tolls, and people drive so fast on it that the state troopers have turbo-charged racing cars to catch them.   I-4 and I-95 are called as such, but I don't think the newer I-75 is(This is coming from 20 years ago).  441 is just 441.  From Tampa to Miami, the Tamiami Trail is just called The Trail,(41, also  called Alligator Alley from Naples to Miami), confusing if you live in Orlando, where The Trail is Orange Blossom Trail (17/92/441).  

In Chicago, there are expressways and tollways.   The expressways are The Kennedy, The Eisenhower,  The Stevenson, The Dan Ryan, The Bishop Ford, and Lake Shore Drive, which older people call "The Outer Drive".   There is The Skyway, with a toll, now privately owned, and The Tri-State, also with tolls, which connects Indiana with Wisconsin thru Illinois.  The newer tollways are called The Reagan and The Jane Addams, but I have no idea which one is which.  

I live in Maryland, and we tend to even drop the "I" or "Route", as in 95 and 40 rather than I-95 and Route 40.

[Sandman87]

On Wednesday, July 06, 2016 at 5:36 AM, St. Claire said:

I love you all, coo-poners and cyoo-poners alike, and think there is one thing we call all agree upon- making a word plural by adding an apostrophe before the "s" is a floggable act.

There are just no valid excuse's for doing that.

[backformore]

On ‎6‎/‎25‎/‎2016 at 1:46 PM, atomationage said:

In Chicago, there are expressways and tollways.   The expressways are The Kennedy, The Eisenhower,  The Stevenson, The Dan Ryan, The Bishop Ford, and Lake Shore Drive, which older people call "The Outer Drive".   There is The Skyway, with a toll, now privately owned, and The Tri-State, also with tolls, which connects Indiana with Wisconsin thru Illinois.  The newer tollways are called The Reagan and The Jane Addams, but I have no idea which one is which.  

Yes, and the expressways are also called 90, 190, 290 - damned if I know which is which.  The worst is when someone tells you to "take 90 to the Eisenhower"   Stay with numbers OR names, switching mid-direction is not allowed!   But the worst is when they built the Elgin-O'Hare Expressway  in the NW suburbs.  Yeah, it's named that, because the original intent was to link Elgin to O'Hare airport.   BUT -  the Elgin O'Hare did not reach O'Hare on the one end, nor Elgin on the other. Never did, never will.    So now, years later,  they finally decided to rename it the 390.   

[legaleagle53]

On 7/7/2016 at 11:25 PM, SVNBob said:

That one makes sense.  After all, there are minor injuries, like a sprained ankle, and major injuries, like a broken leg.

Except that there's no such word as "minorly."

[Quof]

But "majorly" is a word.

[3pwood]

2 hours ago, Quof said:

But "majorly" is a word.

Sort of -- according to dictionary.com, it's slang.  Whatever it is, it makes the speaker sound stupid & "minorly" makes him sound illiterate. 

[ABay]

This has bothered me since I heard Harmony use it on Angel but I just saw it again and GAH! The phrase is BY accident, not ON accident. On purpose. By accident.

[shapeshifter]

I just read this post on the IMDb board for Mr. Robot:

Quote

This show is literally Fight Club.

[riley702]

Gah!

[Rick Kitchen]

I didn't see this myself, but a poster in another forum said that they heard a reporter, talking about the Spanish bullfighter who was gored to death, saying that he was "fatally killed."

[Haleth]

18 hours ago, ABay said:

The phrase is BY accident, not ON accident.

That's another midwestern thing.

[scriggle]

11 hours ago, Rick Kitchen said:

I didn't see this myself, but a poster in another forum said that they heard a reporter, talking about the Spanish bullfighter who was gored to death, saying that he was "fatally killed."

Ugh! It's spreading! Like a virus or something.

[shapeshifter]

14 hours ago, Rick Kitchen said:

I didn't see this myself, but a poster in another forum said that they heard a reporter, talking about the Spanish bullfighter who was gored to death, saying that he was "fatally killed."

If it was a zombie bullfighter, would that be correct?

[Sandman87]

I suppose "fatally killed" could be correct if the bull killed him in a way that was inspired by F.A.T.A.L. (NSFW)

I refuse to speculate on exactly how that would occur, given the probable depraved nature of anyone who would use it for inspiration.

[Cobalt Stargazer]

I was watching the movie Friday Night Lights on HBO earlier, and during the final game one of the announcers said that a player was in 'unsurmounting pain'. I was like, man, no. Just no.

[DangerousMinds]

On 7/11/2016 at 8:17 AM, Haleth said:

That's another midwestern thing.

Not among the educated.

[ABay]

"Midwestern" also covers a lot of territory with a lot of regional variation. I lived in Ohio for 6 years and never heard anyone say "on accident".

[Cobalt Stargazer]

I thought 'on accident' was a British-ism, since I've seen it is English mystery novels and such.

[riley702]

Like "on queue" instead of "in line"? Or "in hospital" instead of "in the hospital"?

Edited July 14, 2016 by riley702

[atomationage]

Or Maths instead of Math.

[shapeshifter]

My sister has lived in Canada since the Vietnam War, and so she often uses words that have no meaning to me, which is fine, but now she's insisting our 87-year-old mother in an assisted care facility in Florida use the Canadian pronunciations words, for example, "physio" instead of "physical therapy." Maybe that's why my mother isn't getting physical therapy anymore? "When in Rome...," please!

Edited July 20, 2016 by shapeshifter

[Quof]

"Physio" isn't a Canadian pronunciation, it's an actual word. The practice is called "physiotherapy".  

[StatisticalOutlier]

On 6/18/2016 at 6:08 AM, candall said:

When I hear "between you and me," I feel my shoulders relax just a little bit. 

During Obama's interview tonight about race and police, he said, "The one thing that all of us need to do, you and me, is to make sure that..."

I don't know if that "me" is even right, but I hear that forgotten little word so infrequently I don't care.

[shapeshifter]

23 minutes ago, StatisticalOutlier said:

During Obama's interview tonight about race and police, he said, "The one thing that all of us need to do, you and me, is to make sure that..."

I don't know if that "me" is even right, but I hear that forgotten little word so infrequently I don't care.

Obama seems to always use "standard" English. 
"...of us" is a preposition followed by an object. 
"Me" is an object; "I" is a subject.

[Sandman87]

During a show about Pompeii on the science channel tonight, I heard: "...and the current work of the scientists here means that a complete picture can now be told." How does one tell a picture? I have a mental image of someone yelling at the Mona Lisa and shaking their finger at it.

[shapeshifter]

16 minutes ago, Sandman87 said:

During a show about Pompeii on the science channel tonight, I heard: "...and the current work of the scientists here means that a complete picture can now be told." How does one tell a picture? I have a mental image of someone yelling at the Mona Lisa and shaking their finger at it.

Or maybe the science channel guy was taking the saying "a picture is worth a thousand words" literally. Heh.

[legaleagle53]

21 hours ago, StatisticalOutlier said:

During Obama's interview tonight about race and police, he said, "The one thing that all of us need to do, you and me, is to make sure that..."

I don't know if that "me" is even right, but I hear that forgotten little word so infrequently I don't care.

Unfortunately, it's not, but my objection to it isn't just the improper use of "me"; it's the fact that it's redundant to say "you and me" in the same sentence as "all of us," because "all of us" by definition includes "you and me."  Say either "The one thing that all of us need to do" or "The one thing that you and I need to do."  Don't use both structures in the same sentence.

Edited July 15, 2016 by legaleagle53

[StatisticalOutlier]

2 hours ago, legaleagle53 said:

Unfortunately, it's not, but my objection to it isn't just the improper use of "me"; it's the fact that it's redundant to say "you and me" in the same sentence as "all of us," because "all of us" by definition includes "you and me."  Say either "The one thing that all of us need to do" or "The one thing that you and I need to do."  Don't use both structures in the same sentence.

That's why I bolded the "and"--this was spoken and it had an emphasis that isn't apparent in writing.  I didn't think it came through in my post even with my bolding.

There was a fairly long pause both before and after the "you AND me," and I heard it as Obama specifically including himself in the "us," I suspect because he's the President and people might assume he gets to give the orders and doesn't necessarily have to act himself, but he was making it clear that he's in it with the rest of the citizenry.

[Archery]

It's not redundant; it's a parenthetical for emphasis. 

[DangerousMinds]

On 7/13/2016 at 2:03 PM, ABay said:

"Midwestern" also covers a lot of territory with a lot of regional variation. I lived in Ohio for 6 years and never heard anyone say "on accident".

Ohio here too.

[MaryPatShelby]

When my brother was little, way back in the dark ages of the mid-60's, he always said "on accident".  We thought that was so cute, and never corrected him.  (We didn't correct him when he said "Forn Clakes" either.)  Fast forward to the late 1990's, when I worked with a guy who said "on accident", and I thought "huh, interesting.  Same as Young Shelby when he was little."  Now everyone here in Wisconsin says it, and I wish I understood the transition from a toddler's misinterpretation of the language to accepted vernacular. 

[riley702]

Can eating "pusketti" (spaghetti) and "bean greens" be far behind? 

[Sandman87]

5 hours ago, MaryPatShelby said:

When my brother was little, way back in the dark ages of the mid-60's, he always said "on accident".  We thought that was so cute, and never corrected him...Now everyone here in Wisconsin says it...

It's good that you're willing to admit that it's all your fault.

[mojito]

I just heard someone on TV say, "I myself personally think...." Whenever I hear people say things like this ("fixin' to get ready" is another), I imagine the cartoon characters who run in place, kicking up dust in the process, before they actually start moving.

The things people say to sound intelligent.

Off-subject a bit. The four A words that I wish people would give a rest: Absolutely, Awesome, Actually, Amazing. (Yes, I used "actually" above, but it's different when I use it, of course.

I shake my head at, "supposably", "mischevious", "ideal" for "idea", and "whenever" instead of "when". 

[Cobalt Stargazer]

I love the smell of sarcasm at night:

It smells like victory.

[Archery]

Teacher:  Still not getting that pencil, though.