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I wonder about homonyms. People using the wrong one is a pretty big pet-peeve of mine (though mostly when that person already annoys me in some other way, people I don't know don't bother me when they do it wrong & if I suspect they're doing it on purpose, it doesn't bother me). If I mean "your" but I type "you're" didn't I still misspell "your"?* Yes, no (current) spell-checker (that I am aware of) can catch that, as the misspelling happens to be another word (and a grammar-checker likely would), but does that make it not a misspelling?

If my child in grammar school was being given a spelling test and the word was your, the teacher would give the word in a sentence. If she wrote "you're," the teacher would rightfully mark it wrong. I duhno, I suspect I am being overly pedantic (especially given what you were replying to was a reference to using a spell-checker and no spell-checker could do what they asserted it could) and maybe this is more of a philosophical question, but I figured you wouldn't mind wasting a few moments pondering it with me (or demonstrating why I was wrong, if I was).

*I had to look up my punctuation for this sentence; periods and commas go inside quotation marks at the end of a sentence but apparently exclamation marks and question marks only do when the punctuation goes with the quoted item. English is a weird language, but since it's the only (written) language I know (no written form of ASL), I figure I aught to use it as accurately as my brain allows (and I welcome corrections, save obvious typos).

I see nothing wrong with that comma, and I have a reference to back it up.

"Two specific situations call for the use of a comma before "and." The first is created when we have three or more items in a series."
Well that is embarrassing for you. Please try to learn the language before you claim to be a master of it.

http://www.getitwriteonline.com/archive/020204whencommabfand.htm

Now since the English language is quite a flexible one and an overused comma is very common, most people tend to let that kind of thing go.
Unfortunately you chose to dwell on it, incorrectly it seems, and it lead to my great amusement.

Don't be an elitist, or an idiot.

In many cases you should, but you're correct; not in this case.

I believe that I did. I never said that I had good style, but it's not incorrect grammar by any means.

Sorry - but it is not incorrect to start sentences with "And" - Starting Sentences with "And" or "But"

Unfortunately you are wrong, and perhaps should be referred to: http://www.getitwriteonline.com/archive/022703.htm

"...in professional contexts, it is probably best to avoid ending sentences with prepositions simply because many people *think* that doing so is always incorrect. Many readers do not recognize the difference between ending a sentence with a preposition whose object appears earlier in the sentence and ending a sentence with a preposition that has no object."

The object of the tampering is the data in transit. No problem there.

Quoth your sig:

Who the f*** decided that sentences on the Internet shall no longer be formatted with two spaces after a period?!

Because this is no longer needed, now that we have proportional fonts.

Seriously. Who the fuck decided that bitching on the Internet shall no longer be researched before posting? For homework, figure out why the authors of HTML force all spaces after the first to be trimmed in the output.

* -- Don't end sentences with prepositions, kids

I'll see your ridiculous non-rule, and raise you an opposing argument.

Not everything you learnt in school is correct.

"Irregardless" is a horrible word to use in any discussion whre you want to be taken seriously. This is probably one of the most common "bad words that intelligent people throw into a conversation, and few people questions it's misuse" that you will find.

References: World Wide Words

Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary

American Heritage Dictionary

Get It Write

And don't feel like I am calling you an idiot. My father spent YEARS giving me crap about this. lol

I'm seeing this more and more, also on slashdot. "The reason is because ..." is strange and redundant. Please use "The reason is that ..." (more info)

Do not use irregardless .

If you're interested in the book's subject, you might find the following links usefull:

Technical writing tips: http://www.docsymmetry.com/index.html

Plain English Campaign: http://www.plainenglish.co.uk/index.html

Get it write: http://www.getitwriteonline.com/archive/tips.htm

It's called a 'serial comma' and is used to introduce clarity into lists and groupings. So in this case you know for certian that the poster in fact was trying to specify three separate entities.

Hackers

Spelling

Grammar

With out the serial comma it could be construed that the poster was talking about only two entities

Hackers

Spelling and grammar

Legal documents love these things. For more info check out http://www.getitwriteonline.com/archive/020204.htm

"In 2003, the school, who saved over $100,000 in the process, converted 110 Windows NT machines to Linux with OpenOffice."

I hope the school teaches students that "who" is a pronoun that references people. "School" is a noun properly referenced by the pronoun "that" or "which" (in this case, "which"). Choosing "that" or "which" properly can require some fast thinking, but using "who" for a school is a real failure.

Actually, the problem is not ending a sentence with a preposition, but including a preposition without an object: here and here.

You probably want an em dash instead of a hyphen in there. Of course, there shouldn't be spaces around it either.

Check out this article at getitwriteonline.com for more information.

Incorrect. You do not hyphenate "-ly" adverbs such as "poorly". Please see:

http://www.getitwriteonline.com/archive/042703.htm

While off topic, I have often thought that when applying this rule to the pronunciation of letters one bases the rule on the spelling of the letter.

That is, F is a consonant, but if one were to spell the letter it as it sounds it would be something like eff which begins with a vowel. Hence, the more natural sounding "An FM transm....."

Yes, no, maybe?

Yep. If the pronunciation of a word begins with a vowel sound, it should be preceded by "an" rather than "a".

"An FM transmitter" is correct, as is "a unicorn" and "an umbrella".

In fact, I just Googled for it. First hit seems seems pretty helpful, and they even use "umbrella" and "unicorn" as examples ;-).

Both I and the anonymous grandchild post are not wrong! The difference being we probably don't speak bastardised English - I didn't realise US English did this :)

It doesn't work like that for the rest of the English-speaking world. Though I accept that this is a US server.

-- james

PS: See here:
Committee is a collective noun, just like jury, flock, herd, class, choir, team, family, and other words that refer to a single unit consisting of more than one person or thing. In American English (British English differs on this issue, as it does on many others), collective nouns can be either singular or plural, depending on how the group is being spoken of in the sentence.

Some writers omit the comma before a coordinating conjunction if the two independent clauses are short, as in these examples:

--I drove home but he stayed.
--Give me the keys and get in the car.

Although it is not necessary to use a comma before "but" or "and" in these sentences, it would not be considered wrong to do so since we do, in fact, have two independent clauses in each sentence.

In his in depth paper

That should be "in-depth paper" to avoid ambiguity. More on compound words.

http://www.press.uchicago.edu/Misc/Chicago/cmosfaq /cmosfaq.OneSpaceorTwo.html
http://www.greece.k12.ny.us/taylor/topics/doublesp ace.htm
http://desktoppub.about.com/cs/typespacing/a/onetw ospaces.htm
http://www.webword.com/reports/period.html
http://www.getitwriteonline.com/archive/011803.htm

Both the MLA and Chicago Manual of Style suggest one space after punctuation while using a compensatory font (ie, not-monospaced). Two spaces after a period is very out of style. Yeah I know - shocked the hell out of me when I learned it a couple years ago too.