My Pet Peeve in Internet Forums...

[LoyalTubist]

I don't know what people are thinking when I see them. How could I possibly tell from posts?

It is true that sometimes informal posts sometimes allow us to bend the rules with regards to capitalization and grammar rules. The problem here: When there is a more formal post the name of a prominent city (such as Phillidelphia) may be misspelled. Or someone uses -'s for a simple plural noun (such as mouthpiece's).

My master's degree in church music was, in reality, a tuba performance degree some hymnology and music education classes thrown in. The last requirement I had to complete before my comprehensive examinations wasn't a thesis, but rather a final tuba recital.

However, if, at any time, I let my grammar get lazy when writing papers (and there were many) or taking any examinations (there were very few of the multiple guess type), I wouldn't have been able to graduate.

[djwesp]

Wes, if you're able to determine someone's "real" personality from his TubeNet posts, you must be clairvoyant.

It doesn't take much clairvoyance to realize that Doc is a down to earth smart ***.


I've never claimed to be psychic.

Edited for bloke.

Wes "who thinks your posts are very telling of who you really are---because most on forums hide behind a user name to express themselves without repercussions" pendergrass

[Easty621]

Although this is irrelevent, just as you are amazed at the level of writing on the forums, I still cringe, usually at the very begining of the baseball season, when somebody says, "He's batting a thousand!!" 1.000 is not 1,000; that lucky batter is batting one!

[Jonathan Fowler]

Although this is irrelevent, just as you are amazed at the level of writing on the forums, I still cringe, usually at the very begining of the baseball season, when somebody says, "He's batting a thousand!!" 1.000 is not 1,000; that lucky batter is batting one!

I see what you mean. Their mistake is that they don't say of what the batter is batting a thousand. In this case he would, in fact, be batting 1,000 one thousandths. Your adherance to semantics is admirable though

[Rick Denney]

The purpose of language is to communicate. If the writer and the reader do not agree on the rules of language, then communication will suffer. That is why grammarians teach us and remind us of the rules.

But the rules they describe to us are really not rules at all. They are merely codification of what has been done so much by educated people that it has become accepted practice. There is no international council whose purpose is to maintain the definition of the English language (there is for many other languages, by the way).

A dictionary does not define words. It writes down what most people mean when they use words, as an aid to the reader who has never heard them.

I wouldn't know a subjunctive from a pluperfect, but I know from considerable experience of reading what sounds right. And I know from considerable experience of writing what does and does not convey information clearly. That's how English has been passed down from generation to generation for centuries, even with some awful, artificial, and amusing evolution.

There are those who would rather enforce rules than communicate. I was one corrected for using the word "pleasanter", such as "I can think of nothing pleasanter than playing a Holton." But they wilted when I forced them to explain why it was wrong, either in terms of tradition or resulting confusion. It was only the textbook they happened to study that said "more pleasant" is correct while "pleasanter" is not. A lot of those rules exist just because someone was paid to write textbooks for second-graders at the dawn of modern education.

But we go too far when we throw away the rules, even in casual conversation. Perhaps especially so in casual communication, because casual communication invariably becomes the formal communication of a few years hence.

For example, there was a difference between "you" and "thee", and that difference meant something to our ancestors. But we have lost the ability to express that distinction. (And I can't even remember what that distinction was.)

A more recent example is that contractions were forbidden in business communications even a few years ago. They are (or should I say "they're") now ubiquitous. I don't mind them (obviously), but I wish people would get them right.

We are not improving the language when we replace eloquence with grunts. Making the language simpler is a choice we make when talking to those who know little of the language, not a choice we make to improve communication overall. The approximation that is intelligible to a limited reader is preferable to unintelligible precision. But much of what I read on Internet forums (some of which I've written) is just so much grunting. The words were not nearly as subtle as the intended meaning, for the simple reason that the author didn't know enough words or how to use them to clearly express subtlety. Much misunderstanding and offense results from that inability.

An obvious example is the incorrect use of contractions, plurals, and possessives, as we have seen in this thread. It does not simplify language to replace "they're" with "their", or "their" with "there". These add confusion not clarity, and result from ignorance (or carelessness) not efficiency. But if I pluralize a non-word with an apostrophe (e.g. 345's), people still know what I mean. And it keeps people from thinking I'm talking about a 345s. I find I do it both ways--the rules haven't found a good way yet to mix Arabic numerals with Roman characters, especially in a time when proper names for objects so often include both.

The florid style of Victorian writers has been leaned out in the last hundred years or so. That is an example of simplification without grunting. Consider the difference between, say, Elmore Leonard and Arthur Conan Doyle. This process could not be confused with the gruntings often seen on Internet forums.

The problem is that we don't require enough reading, and what little we do require does not attain to a high standard of erudition and subtlety. For example: Reading newspapers does not expand one's reading horizons. Newspaper articles (with the exception of those on the editorial page) are purposely written to an eighth-grade level. Sometimes the thoughts expressed are no more mature than would be displayed by the average 8th-grader, but that's another story.

And in our desire to be "free", we have come to hate any rules that we think limit what we want to do (while being happy to limit others with different rules, of course, but, again, that's another story). But following rules allows us to play with language with subtlety and grace, in the knowledge that our readers will be able to enjoy our abilities. Thus: Do not break the rules before learning them.

Rick "not trained as a writer" Denney

[Chuck(G)]

I'll readily acknowledge that "cringe levels" differ widely among individuals. I cringe when I hear "the hoi polloi" or "hoisted on his own petard". I find that a jigger or two of a good brandy helps me to be more tolerant.

[Mark]

Posessive nouns ALWAYS HAVE APOSTROPHES.

It's an interesting statement that you make above. Are you sure of its correctness. English is hard, isn't it?

[Chuck(G)]

Posessive nouns ALWAYS HAVE APOSTROPHES.

It's an interesting statement that you make above. Are you sure of its correctness. English is hard, isn't it?

"It" is a pronoun, not a noun.

[Mark]

Posessive nouns ALWAYS HAVE APOSTROPHES.

It's an interesting statement that you make above. Are you sure of its correctness. English is hard, isn't it?

"It" is a pronoun, not a noun.

Yes, I thought someone would call me on that. However, it's and exception to the rule for posessives.

[lgb&dtuba]

It's an interesting statement that you make above. Are you sure of its correctness. English is hard, isn't it?

"It" is a pronoun, not a noun.

Yes, I thought someone would call me on that. However, it's and exception to the rule for posessives.

His exception duly noted.

[Mark]

..."hoisted on his own petard".

Ouch! That must hurt even more worser than being hoisted by his own petard. (Reference viewtopic.php?p=179889&highlight=#179889)

[windshieldbug]

http://www.lyricsondemand.com/w/waynesi ... yrics.html

Wayne Sid Lyrics

Its Impossible Lyrics

IT'S IMPOSSIBLE
It's impossible tell the sun to leave the sky,
it's just impossible.

[Allen]

What a great topic for rants and trotting out pet peeves!

Rick Denney had given us an excellent description of present-day linguistic issues. I'd like to add a bit to it.

English is an unusual language in that Latin-favoring academics and intellectuals tried to impose Latin grammar onto English back in the eighteenth century, and we are still suffering from the mess they created. In Latin, syntactical relations are indicated by word morphology (that is, a word's role in a sentence is shown by the ending on the word). In English, syntatical relations in a sentence are indicated by word order ("Dog bites man." and "Man bites dog." are quite different). The Latinists thought that Latin grammar was universal truth, and should be applied to English. No other language has had to suffer the indignity of having the rules of an entirely different language imposed upon it. [The modern scholarly view is that the grammar of a language is something that should be discovered by actually studying the language as it is spoken and written.]

Since English had no need of different word forms to indicate grammatical meaning, by the early eighteenth century, the word "whom" had been lost, and "who" was used for all instances of the interrogative pronoun. The Latinists would have none of that. They re-introduced whom, and got people to believe in its usage as a bit of a litmus test for one's culture level.

There's yet more, such as the distinction between "It is I." versus "It's me." I generally say, "It's me," because I think the rule of "nominative case after copulative verb" is nonsense. However, I admit to sometimes using "whom," as that makes people think I'm not entirely uneducated.

Here's my criterion for grammatical writing: Is it easy to read, and can I understand the writer without having to ponder? Of course elements of style enter into it, such as making paragraphs.

Cheers,
Allen

[TubaRay]

[
Dam, your/you're/yewer good. Gooder then thee wrest.
Dawk

Whale, Dawk, ah guess u no that Rick is the goodest their e-yes.

[TubaRay]

Here's my criterion for grammatical writing: Is it easy to read, and can I understand the writer without having to ponder? Of course elements of style enter into it, such as making paragraphs.
Cheers,
Allen

I believe this is a reasonable standard for TubeNet writing.

[Chuck(G)]

Since English had no need of different word forms to indicate grammatical meaning, by the early eighteenth century, the word "whom" had been lost, and "who" was used for all instances of the interrogative pronoun.

Perhaps "whom" was lost as the interrogative pronoun, but it was far from lost as the object of a preposition. It'll be a cold day in Hades when you'll catch me quoting Donne as "Send not to ask for who the bell tolls".

Even so, "whom" is a special case with plenty of attendant oddities. For example, the KJV has "He saith unto them, But whom say ye that I am? (Matthew 16:15). And "whomsoever" is often used as a subject.

The Latinists invented such interesting conventions as "never end a sentence with a preposition"--a wonderful non-rule up with which I will not put (to quote Sir Winston). But then, neither did the Romans who walked the via Appia in ancient times speak the formal Latin of Cicero.

If one is going to violate conventions of accepted grammar, one should at least be aware of them. Like it or not, when one speaks and writes, one is frequently judged by the grace and eloquence of one's expression.

else me Not gots nuffin moar to say, yo.

[Allen]

Since English had no need of different word forms to indicate grammatical meaning, by the early eighteenth century, the word "whom" had been lost, and "who" was used for all instances of the interrogative pronoun.

Perhaps "whom" was lost as the interrogative pronoun, but it was far from lost as the object of a preposition. It'll be a cold day in Hades when you'll catch me quoting Donne as "Send not to ask for who the bell tolls".

Even so, "whom" is a special case with plenty of attendant oddities. For example, the KJV has "He saith unto them, But whom say ye that I am? (Matthew 16:15). And "whomsoever" is often used as a subject.
...

Your examples are from the early seventeenth century. By the early eighteenth century, "whom" was gone, gone, gone, until the Latinists exhumed its corpse. Of course, when quoting earlier works that used whom and its variations, one should quote them accurately. There are those who think that any old stuff should be translated into modern dialect, but I don't think that either one of us would have anything to do with such nonsense.

I think I'd better stop now. It's too tempting to rant on about those pompous scholars that have muddied the teaching of good English. There's enough bad usage of our language without such scholarly "help."

Cheers,
Allen

[LoyalTubist]

I guess I am tired of grading papers. I don't think that reading posts in a forum should be anything like reading my students' essays. My students are learning English as a foreign language and want to do well in a school in which English is the only language of instruction--I am the teacher they take if they are deficient in an area of speaking or writing English. Some of my students are better spellers than what I have seen in some of the forums. It should be pointed out that it doesn't matter to me if British, American, or Australian spellings are used (yes, Australian English is different from British English), so long as they stay consistent and write so we all can understand. I am the only American on the faculty of a school that also has 1 British, 1 Singaporean, 2 Indian, and 4 Australian members.

[Chuck(G)]

Your examples are from the early seventeenth century. By the early eighteenth century, "whom" was gone, gone, gone, until the Latinists exhumed its corpse.

How many counter-examples would it take from eighteenth century literature to disprove your statement? I can find an ample number of passages containing "whom" in Gibbon, Hume, Walpole and a host of others. Are you arguing that "whom" had vanished from spoken vernacular? I suppose I could believe that.

But "whom" never really departed the language.

[Allen]

OK, I exaggerated. I should have said that "whom" was moribund, not dead. There was definitely a (undeserved, I think) rescue operation for that word.

My interest in linguistics has been long dormant. It's been interesting thinking about the topic again.

Cheers,
Allen