Why Grammar Matters: A Place To Discuss Matters Of Grammar

[jennblevins]

Never mind. 

Edited April 4, 2018 by jennblevins

[Sandman87]

"I know, right?" has become the new "literally" for me.

A local ad for a funeral home advertises that they offer special assistance if a loved one dies in another state. "We'll make the arrangements so your loved one can be brought back and interned here." They're making dead people work for free? Sounds like they got their business plan from Phantasm.

 

On 4/3/2018 at 11:45 AM, fairffaxx said:

A local TV & on-line report tell us that the police found a body lying next to a bicycle on the shoulder of the highway & have concluded that "[the victim] then potentially flew from his bicycle and landed in the embankment".  If his flight is potential, he must still be on the bike, alive & well -- so, presumably, the reporter must have meant to say "presumably"?

Since the bicyclist moved from being up on the bike to ground level, they obviously converted potential energy into motion!

[legaleagle53]

1 hour ago, Sandman87 said:

"I know, right?" has become the new "literally" for me.

A local ad for a funeral home advertises that they offer special assistance if a loved one dies in another state. "We'll make the arrangements so your loved one can be brought back and interned here." They're making dead people work for free? Sounds like they got their business plan from Phantasm.

 

Since the bicyclist moved from being up on the bike to ground level, they obviously converted potential energy into motion!

I know, right?  :-P

[bilgistic]

59 minutes ago, Sandman87 said:

A local ad for a funeral home advertises that they offer special assistance if a loved one dies in another state. "We'll make the arrangements so your loved one can be brought back and interned here." They're making dead people work for free? Sounds like they got their business plan from Phantasm.

They are also trying to cash in on people not knowing that any funeral home will provide that service. My grandfather died in December 2000 in Florida while at his and my grandmother's "winter home" (a retirement RV park). The funeral home there coordinated with the one in their North Carolina town to have his body sent home for the services and burial. I learned that the body has to be embalmed and prepared before being sent home.

Next time you're on an airplane, think about the dead bodies in cargo!

[shapeshifter]

6 hours ago, Sandman87 said:

A local ad for a funeral home advertises that they offer special assistance if a loved one dies in another state. "We'll make the arrangements so your loved one can be brought back and interned here." They're making dead people work for free?

Hahahahah! Wait. Why am I laughing? This could work out well for me and any family members who can't afford the funeral home's services.

 

 

5 hours ago, bilgistic said:

Next time you're on an airplane, think about the dead bodies in cargo!

Ew! No! Although, embalmed bodies falling out of a plane cargo hold during turbulence or an emergency landing sounds like a scenario that might not have been previously used on any of the still popular procedural crime shows.

 

 

This week on Timeless, the science fiction show that The Smithsonian has praised for stimulating interest in history, two characters use the word "Calvary" when they should have said "cavalry."

Edited April 24, 2018 by shapeshifter
Typo

[xaxat]

2 hours ago, Sandman87 said:

A local ad for a funeral home advertises that they offer special assistance if a loved one dies in another state. "We'll make the arrangements so your loved one can be brought back and interned here." They're making dead people work for free? Sounds like they got their business plan from Phantasm.

Did they mean to say "interred", to deposit (a dead body) in the earth or in a tomb?

[Sandman87]

22 minutes ago, xaxat said:

Did they mean to say "interred", to deposit (a dead body) in the earth or in a tomb?

One would hope.

 

1 hour ago, bilgistic said:

Next time you're on an airplane, think about the dead bodies in cargo!

I usually prefer to stay in coach while I think about dead bodies. :)

Edited April 24, 2018 by Sandman87

[Moose135]

9 hours ago, bilgistic said:

Next time you're on an airplane, think about the dead bodies in cargo!

That's why they use the term "souls on board" to relate the number of passengers and crew...

[Sandman]

On 7/6/2016 at 8:36 AM, St. Claire said:

... there is one thing we call all agree upon- making a word plural by adding an apostrophe before the "s" is a floggable act.

God, I hate that. It's one thing that makes me instantly stop paying attention to the writer. There's nothing I need to hear from anyone who doesn't understand that the apostrophe does not indicate a plural.

[legaleagle53]

On 4/24/2018 at 8:44 AM, Sandman said:

God, I hate that. It's one thing that makes me instantly stop paying attention to the writer. There's nothing I need to hear from anyone who doesn't understand that the apostrophe does not indicate a plural.

Unless it's the plural genitive (the boys' shirts, the dogs' barking, the actors' studio, Presidents' Day). But for the plural nominative (boys, dogs, actors, presidents)? Using the apostrophe there is a no-no.

[Sandman]

Well, yes -- but I would argue that the function of the apostrophe doesn't change; the -s suffix indicates plural, and the apostrophe changes its position in the case of the plural, but not its genitive function. (There may be an argument in favour of using an apostrophe with initialisms, but I think even there it's better without: "Knowing your ABCs" or "the CDs in my collection," or "Susan got straight As.")

[Milburn Stone]

2 minutes ago, Sandman said:

(There may be an argument in favour of using an apostrophe with initialisms, but I think even there it's better without: "Knowing your ABCs" or "the CDs in my collection," or "Susan got straight As.")

You've hit on one of my very few areas of grammar indecision. Half the time I use an apostrophe in these instances and the other half I don't, never knowing what's "right," going only on what "looks right" to me in a given sentence. Sometimes the decision is made for me by my wish to avoid confusion in the reader. For example, "as" is a word. If it began a sentence, it would be capitalized. If it began a sentence and the meaning was "top grade possible"--e.g., "As are what you earn when you study well"--then I'd have to go with the apostrophe and write "A's are what you earn when you study well." 

[Sandman]

I know what you mean, and avoiding confusion for the reader is the ultimate goal, but even in the example you give, "A's" just looks so wrong to me, I would recast the sentence, I think. But even I have to admit the exception here. One variant of the problem that really drives me up the wall is with words borrowed from foreign languages: I see "Maserati's" and even "taco's" as plural sometimes, and it makes me want to scream. (Not a borrowed word, but I've even seen "diamond's," believe it or not. That's just nuts.)

Edited April 26, 2018 by Sandman
But not nut's.

[xaxat]

"Literally!"

[dargosmydaddy]

On 4/26/2018 at 9:31 AM, Milburn Stone said:

On 4/26/2018 at 9:20 AM, Sandman said:

(There may be an argument in favour of using an apostrophe with initialisms, but I think even there it's better without: "Knowing your ABCs" or "the CDs in my collection," or "Susan got straight As.")

You've hit on one of my very few areas of grammar indecision. Half the time I use an apostrophe in these instances and the other half I don't, never knowing what's "right," going only on what "looks right" to me in a given sentence. Sometimes the decision is made for me by my wish to avoid confusion in the reader. For example, "as" is a word. If it began a sentence, it would be capitalized. If it began a sentence and the meaning was "top grade possible"--e.g., "As are what you earn when you study well"--then I'd have to go with the apostrophe and write "A's are what you earn when you study well." 

I teach high school English, and the grammar book we use does say that apostrophes should be used in the cases of "special plurals," such as making a letter or numeral plural. It is grammatically correct to write "I got all A's on my report card" or "When she writes, her i's look too much like 1's."

[shapeshifter]

7 hours ago, dargosmydaddy said:

I teach high school English, and the grammar book we use does say that apostrophes should be used in the cases of "special plurals," such as making a letter or numeral plural. It is grammatically correct to write "I got all A's on my report card" or "When she writes, her i's look too much like 1's."

Can you give a citation for the grammar book? 

The Chicago Manual of Style seems to support the use of the apostrophe to make a plural only for lower case letters:

Quote

Capital letters used as words, numerals used as nouns, and abbreviations usually form the plural by adding s. To aid comprehension, lowercase letters form the plural with an apostrophe and an s (compare “two as in llama” with “two a’s in llama”). . . .

the three Rs

x’s and y’s

But I find this exception to the rule unnecessarily confusing. Something like this would at least make sense linguistically:

When she writes, her i(s) look too much like 1(s).

The 17th edition of the Chicago Manual of Style just came out last year. That gives anyone who agrees with my variation quite a few years to lobby for a change. 

Of course, better still:

Whenever she writes the letter i, it looks like the number 1.

Edited May 13, 2018 by shapeshifter

[Milburn Stone]

4 hours ago, shapeshifter said:

Of course, better still:

Whenever she writes the letter i, it looks like the number 1.

This opens up a whole new question for me. When a word or letter is being cited not for its meaning but as a word or letter--as in your example--I often (but not always) think it ought to appear between quotation marks.

For instance, one would write

Llamas often get thirsty.

But

"Llamas" is spelled with two "l"'s.

No? (Note that after the "l" I had to put a quotation mark and an apostrophe because of the plural. Oy.)

[shapeshifter]

1 hour ago, Milburn Stone said:

This opens up a whole new question for me. When a word or letter is being cited not for its meaning but as a word or letter--as in your example--I often (but not always) think it ought to appear between quotation marks.

For instance, one would write

Llamas often get thirsty.

But

"Llamas" is spelled with two "l"'s.

No? (Note that after the "l" I had to put a quotation mark and an apostrophe because of the plural. Oy.)

I debated using the quote marks in the examples I included above, but I decided that in these instances they weren't necessary. However, I would probably advise a college student to use the quotes. 

The easiest rule is to reword the sentence to avoid confusion caused by punctuation, such as:
The word "llama" is spelled with a second "l" immediately after the first "l."

Or, without quotes:
The word llama is spelled with a second l immediately after the first l.

Or, without quotes, but with italics:
The word llama is spelled with a second l immediately after the first l.

Since it's Mothers Day (without an apostrophe), I'm tempted to ask my eldest daughter to check her AP (Associated Press) style guide for their rules on quoting "words as words" (https://www.grammarly.com/blog/quotation-marks/), but since she already sent me an afghan, I'll probably look it up at work in the library when I have time.

[Milburn Stone]

54 minutes ago, shapeshifter said:

Or, without quotes:
The word llama is spelled with a second l immediately after the first l.

Or,

The word llama is spelled with a double-l. 

Funny, just going from my gut, in that sentence I just typed, I don't feel at all the need for quotation marks around "double-l" (even though I do in this sentence I'm writing now), yet it makes me uncomfortable to see the word "llama" not surrounded by quotation marks. I can't explain that.

Happy Mothers Day.

Edited May 13, 2018 by Milburn Stone

[dargosmydaddy]

7 hours ago, shapeshifter said:

Can you give a citation for the grammar book? 

It's the Prentice Hall Writing Coach book for grade 9.

Incidentally, it also has a lesson on the use of quotes and italics...

3 hours ago, Milburn Stone said:

This opens up a whole new question for me. When a word or letter is being cited not for its meaning but as a word or letter--as in your example--I often (but not always) think it ought to appear between quotation marks.

...and you're supposed to use italics in those instances, not quotes.

To get this thread back on the topic of offenders in the media, I heard a commercial for a mold removal company the other day that mentioned how mold can contain "cancer-causing carcinogens" (as opposed to those non-cancerous carcinogens...).

[bilgistic]

The Singularity of Mother's Day

The Woman Who Invented Mother's Day Came to Hate It

Quote

There's a reason 'mother' is singular

Jarvis was very intentional about the name of her holiday. It's Mother's Day — as in one mom. The way Jarvis put it, Mother's Day is a day to honor "the best mother who ever lived, yours."

[Sandman]

Maybe the writer of the sentence about "cancer-causing carcinogens" thought that "carcinogen" has something do with cars? Like carburetors. (Duh!) Otherwise, I think that person did not know what "carcinogen" actually means. (Or maybe the story had a required word count?)

[shapeshifter]

55 minutes ago, Sandman said:

Maybe the writer of the sentence about "cancer-causing carcinogens" thought that "carcinogen" has something do with cars? Like carburetors. (Duh!) Otherwise, I think that person did not know what "carcinogen" actually means. (Or maybe the story had a required word count?)

My guess is the writer thought redundancy would serve to emphasize the cancer risk, or what @dargosmydaddy said—that there are carcinogens that don't cause cancer—which is not too far from the concept of "allowable parts per million" and the like.

[Sandman]

That's just it -- redundancy doesn't really serve an emphatic purpose -- in fact, its effect is usually to undercut the writer's meaning. And, by definition, there can't be non-carcinogenic carcinogens. (Pretty sure dargosmydaddy was indulging in irony.)

[xaxat]

5 hours ago, Sandman said:

Maybe the writer of the sentence about "cancer-causing carcinogens" thought that "carcinogen" has something do with cars? Like carburetors. (Duh!) Otherwise, I think that person did not know what "carcinogen" actually means. (Or maybe the story had a required word count?)

Or they could be addressing an audience that might not be familiar with the word. 

[Sandman]

1 minute ago, xaxat said:

Or they could be addressing an audience that might not be familiar with the word. 

Quite possible -- but a clearer phrasing would have avoided the impression of redundancy.

[Sandman87]

The local newscasters were in rare form tonight:

• They described people in the Bahamas as "Bohemians."
• They informed us that a road in China caved-in and collapsed.
• According to the weatherman, "the low humidity has been very dry."

[Pothunter]

On 3/22/2018 at 8:16 PM, Milburn Stone said:

So in other words, the Oxford Living Dictionary has succumbed to the Visigoths. :)

I have been reading Rex Stout, and this reminded me of Nero Wolfe's solution for defective dictionaries in the book titled Gambit :) One of the "intolerably offensive" mistakes is the suggestion that 'imply' and 'infer' can be used interchangeably.

[Sandman]

Well, they can be; which is to say, they are frequently so used -- the dictionary in question could be describing a fact. If it is prescribing, or saying that they may be correctly used interchangeably, then I'm with Wolfe. :-) If the distinction marks a difference in meaning which is usefully preserved, then I'd say the rule serves a purpose.

[legaleagle53]

8 hours ago, Sandman said:

Well, they can be; which is to say, they are frequently so used -- the dictionary in question could be describing a fact. If it is prescribing, or saying that they may be correctly used interchangeably, then I'm with Wolfe. :-) If the distinction marks a difference in meaning which is usefully preserved, then I'd say the rule serves a purpose.

There is a material difference in meaning, and the two are therefore NOT interchangeable.  Imply means "to express indirectly," as in "Her remarks implied a threat" or "The news report seems to imply his death was not an accident." Infer, on the other hand, means "to derive as a conclusion from facts or premises," as in "We see smoke and infer fire."

However, there is this comment in Merriam-Webster's Online Dictionary that makes an interesting point:

Quote

 

INFER VS. IMPLY

Sir Thomas More is the first writer known to have used both infer and imply in their approved senses in 1528 (with infer meaning "to deduce from facts" and imply meaning "to hint at"). He is also the first to have used infer in a sense close in meaning to imply (1533). Both of these uses of infer coexisted without comment until some time around the end of World War I. Since then, the "indicate" and "hint or suggest" meanings of infer have been frequently condemned as an undesirable blurring of a useful distinction. The actual blurring has been done by the commentators. The "indicate" sense of infer, descended from More's use of 1533, does not occur with a personal subject. When objections arose, they were to a use with a personal subject (which is now considered a use of the "suggest, hint" sense of infer). Since dictionaries did not recognize this use specifically, the objectors assumed that the "indicate" sense was the one they found illogical, even though it had been in respectable use for four centuries. The actual usage condemned was a spoken one never used in logical discourse. At present the condemned "suggest, hint" sense is found in print chiefly in letters to the editor and other informal prose, not in serious intellectual writing. The controversy over the "suggest, hint" sense has apparently reduced the frequency with which the "indicate" sense of infer is used.

 

.

[Sandman]

12 hours ago, legaleagle53 said:

There is a material difference in meaning, and the two are therefore NOT interchangeable. 

Just for the sake of clarity, I know the two aren't interchangeable. I have pretty prescriptivist leanings myself, and I find sometimes I'm made to feel defensive about that (though not in the discussions here!). It might have been better for me to say "where a distinction marks a difference in meaning which is usefully preserved ..."  in more general terms -- in case I need to back up my prescriptive ways. In this case, there's no "if" for me. The difference in meaning strikes me as crucial.

[shapeshifter]

"A couple o' three weeks ago" is when highly educated NPR Marketplace reporter Kai Ryssdal said he interviewed an also educated pecan farmer in Georgia (https://www.marketplace.org/2018/07/05/economy/georgia-pecans-popular-china-tariffs, in the audio file, after the end of the interview).

For 8 years in the 1980s I was married to an uneducated man (a sinewy, flannel-shirted lumberjack) who frequently said he'd be back "in a couple o' few hours." I never figured out what he meant in terms of chronology, and now I am not sure what to think of Mr. Ryssdal.

[Browncoat]

It’s a common phrasing around here, regardless of education, but it’s “a couple or three”, meaning two or three.

[shapeshifter]

5 hours ago, Browncoat said:

It’s a common phrasing around here, regardless of education, but it’s “a couple or three”, meaning two or three.

That seems so obvious now that you've typed it.
My ex always said it "couple of few" or "couple of three," and often he was gone for 6 or more hours--hence my confusion. 

[meep.meep]

Extra most bestest

makes my blood boil

[Browncoat]

54 minutes ago, meep.meep said:

Extra most bestest

makes my blood boil

I might be able to tolerate that if their pizza were tolerable.

[Pallas]

Until I read about it here, I don't recall having noticed the use of 's to designate the plural. Now I see it everywhere -- including PTV. It's the new kudzu. Perhaps taking over for the use of quotation marks to indicate emphasis or simply, a proper noun. Watch out! (as Waze would have it): "weed's" ahead!

[meep.meep]

There's actually at least one website devoted to pictures of the unnecessary apostrophe.  It's not just here.

[mojito]

Quote

It’s a common phrasing around here, regardless of education, but it’s “a couple or three”, meaning two or three.

Here they say "a couple, three". So, "It rained a couple, three days ago." Different but seems as normal as someone saying "I called him, two, three times, but he didn't answer."

[riley702]

Reminds me of the Cajun cook, Justin Wilson, who would deliberately say numbers "backwards". "Put in 4 or 3 tsps of (whatever)."

[Moose135]

1 hour ago, riley702 said:

the Cajun cook, Justin Wilson

"I gar-on-tee!"

[WarnerCL45]

I was just reading online comments somewhere.  A poster was accused of being caddy.  I’ve seen this before.  Does no one read?

Edited July 26, 2018 by WarnerCL45

[shapeshifter]

I was watching Match Game '76. Celebrity Joyce Bulifant kept giggling before showing her hand-written answers, saying she was embarrassed because she didn't know how to spell. She actually had a wonderful grasp of phonetics; pronunciation and vocabulary were her problems. For example, "Cowwa lily" for "Calla lily."

Edited July 27, 2018 by shapeshifter

[rur]

1 hour ago, WarnerCL45 said:

I was just reading online comments somewhere.  A poster was accused of being caddy.  I’ve seen this before.  Does no one read?

Hardly anyone reads, "little own"* read and think at the same time, preventing them from making an association-then-a-correction between what they're writing and what others have written.

*This one makes me crazy because most of the time it doesn't even make any sense in the context that it's used. 

[WarnerCL45]

Good ones!  I'm writing all of these gems down!  

"little own" and "cowwa lilly"  Love it!  (No, I don't!)

Don’t forget “mute point” and “moo point” - gah!

Edited July 26, 2018 by WarnerCL45

[meep.meep]

Many people read.  Many people are poor spellers.  Many people think that if the spell checker says it's OK, that it is.  If you use a wrong, but valid, word, the spell checker won't detect it.

And "moo point" was a joke.  "It's like the cow's opinion - a moo point!  Who cares?"

[legaleagle53]

14 hours ago, meep.meep said:

Many people read.  Many people are poor spellers.  Many people think that if the spell checker says it's OK, that it is.  If you use a wrong, but valid, word, the spell checker won't detect it.

Furthermore, they'll argue that it doesn't matter whether they muck up the spelling or the grammar because people understand what they're trying to say anyway.  Anyone who clutches his or her pearls over it is just a pedantic tight-ass who needs to loosen up and get over it because "language evolves."

[Milburn Stone]

I'm constantly hearing "poignant" when the word wanted is "pointed." (Heard it on cable news just last night.) The context is always "that person's remark was sharply pertinent," and along those lines. So "pointed" is the correct word, while "poignant"--the primary definition of which is "evoking a keen sense of sadness or regret," according to Google's dictionary--is not. (The commentators using the word never mean "that person's remark was sad.")

Google does supply an archaic definition as "sharp or pungent in taste or smell," which can be used I suppose to justify the use of "poignant" to mean "sharp," but since that meaning is archaic, I don't believe it should be preferred. (Besides which, the commentator likely doesn't mean "that person's remark resembled stinky cheese.")

Edited July 28, 2018 by Milburn Stone

[rur]

And then there was "(name) put through ringer" scrolling across the screen on last night's local news.

[WarnerCL45]

15 hours ago, meep.meep said:

Many people read.  Many people are poor spellers.  Many people think that if the spell checker says it's OK, that it is.  If you use a wrong, but valid, word, the spell checker won't detect it.

And "moo point" was a joke.  "It's like the cow's opinion - a moo point!  Who cares?"

It was a joke when Joey said it.  Other people have said it because they don’t know it is incorrect.  

If people are aware that they are poor spellers, they should take extra care.  If they are readers, they can see context and spelling.