1. Removing the indefinite article does not improve the syntax of the sentence. 2. I didn't claim it was a grammatical structure. But it's certainly shoddy English. 3. My point being that you made your own sentence virtually unintelligible through your abuse of English, while complaining that other people don't stick to the rules. That makes you appear stupid and hypocritical.
None of these mistakes give you the vivid style of a Heinlein, a Bellow or a Mantel. They are not stylish. They are just mistakes. Pretending otherwise is the equivalent of the kitten hiding his head behind a sofa, unaware that his ass is sticking out the other side (there's an nice vivid metaphor for you, courtesy of the incomparable RAH).
As for your guess as to what I enjoy reading...it's exciting, but indicative of your wish to see the world as you would like it to be, rather than as it actually is. I read fiction and fact with equal gusto. Sometimes the latter can be more expressive than the latter. Who'da thunk it?
I do love the overall premise that your mistakes are lovely special stylistic motifs but other people's mistakes are indications of their idiocy. The ego is a mighty thing to behold. Or as Heinlein also put it (gosh, he was expressive, wasn't he?): Man is not a rational animal, he is a rationalizing animal.
No-one seems to have bitten on any specific egregious baity errors, intentional or no -- including you, assertions with no specifics notwithstanding.
But any errors are there because I genuinely don't give a shit. I don't aim for 100% or anything close to it; just good enough to be understood by most readers.
Actually, not even in my case, no matter how morally superior you think you are.
And yes, amazingly, regional accents are and always have been a pretty good proxy for class in the UK. Quite a famous play was once written about this very topic. You could spend some time away from Slashdot watching it. It might do you some good.
Specifically, a strong regional accent has until very recently been taken by most British people as a sign that the speaker is not middle class. I grew up in Manchester. The softer your accent, the more posh you were considered. Same was true in Birmingham, Liverpool, Leeds, Sheffield, the West Country. Compare the Glasgow to Edinburgh accents, for another example.
If you spent a little less time on ad hominems and attacking straw men, you might open up some space to actually learn something about the world. But then, learning's a scary thing.
Who said anything about rules? That's the whole point, it's a question of taste. I'm not the one venerating Strunk & White et al here, I'm the one calling out the hypocrisy of doing so while not sticking to their standards.
However, I can promise you that professional writers will not start a written sentence in this context with "So" in place of "Thus".
On "in the extreme", you've got yourself muddled. As you say, "in the extreme" is a perfectly valid phrase; "to the extreme", which is what the OP used, is not. There is the phrase, "to take X to extremes", but this is not the sense intended by the OP.
Again, you're missing my point. Talking as though the only thing standing between a bright young guy from the projects and a job at Goldmans is their poor command of standard English is just absurd. They don't value what Goldmans offers. They can't afford to value it, because it's a dangerous distraction from the world they actually have to navigate, which poses rather more immediate and visceral challenges than doing well at interview. It reminds me of the slackjawed incomprehension I saw on the faces of young bright compassionate managers at a big 4 accountancy when they tried to run a program for disadvantaged teens here in the UK, and the teens weren't hugely interested: the managers were deep in Rumsfeldian not-knowing what they didn't know territory. They lacked the insight and lived understanding of what the teens had to go through every day, to see why what was on offer was just not that appealing.
Condescension and ad hominem attacks really, honestly, truly, aren't substitutes for actual argument. They're just ways for you to masturbate without having to bother pulling your pants down.
Controlling language has a long ugly history of being about race and class. Ask the Kurds (but do so in Turkish, or Erdogan will be mighty pissed off). Or ask the presenters with regional accents on the BBC, none of whom would have had a look in only twenty years ago.
You're missing my point. Anyone who's aspiring to a career in, say, banking is pretty likely to make an effort to learn some form of "standard" English. But this is really about trying to control the language spoken by people who could not give two shits about a career in banking, because they are living very different lives in which such an aspiration is not only absurd but potentially dangerously distracting too.
Except that the author is Oliver Kamm, who's as British as they come. His mum translated the Asterix books, for God's sake! And in doing so, created some of the most elegant, witty and precise translations ever achieved, such as the immortal "We've been framed, by Jericho".
Thank you Anthea Bell! And Derek Hockridge, too, of course.
You really do not understand the nature of the OED, if you think it is the definitive source for the language. The OED is a record of known usages of English words. It is decidedly descriptive and not prescriptive.
Sheesh, people! Can we please start seeing the world as it is, rather than as we would like it to be??
Why is it that *every single* person who has complained along these lines has made a horrible English mistake in their sentence of complaint. Here, the entire first sentence is virtually gibberish.
1. Pandering is a gerund, not a noun. "A pandering" is just...awful. 2. "The youth" is equally shoddy. This ought to be "the young" or "young people" with no definite article. 3. "Excuse for their... excuses". Excuse me! This is just sloppy sloppy writing. It actually affects the content, too, because I can't imagine that the author really intended to state that the article was only an excuse for the excuses of the young, as opposed to being an excuse for the language usage of the young", yet that is what they have written.
If you claim to give a shit about clear and correct writing, then take the time to get it write yourself. I make no such claim, but you do.
Why is it necessary for your and you're to be distinct? We don't need them to be distinct in oral English; that's how the confusion arises in the first place. In oral English, we determine which is intended by context. We could do the same with written English, too.
Don't you get it? Who determines "correct"? And how on earth would you decide? One of the SVPs of my multi-billion dollar employer is in the habit of saying "lookit" quite a lot; I haven't noticed it impeding his success or my ability to understand him.
I think this desire to declare some language "wrong" is just code for racism and classism.
There is something exquisitely irritating about a post that says "Author has apparently never heard of Strunk & White" when the article explicitly discusses Strunk and White. FFS, Jane Q Public, would it really have troubled you that much to have read the article you've chosen to criticise, at least to save yourself from looking like a complete and utter tit?
While the British Isles has many forms of English, and a number of dialects, regional variations are mainly confined to accents and some vocabulary. There is no mutual incomprehensibility between a Mancunian and a Kentish resident, even if there's the odd word or phrase used by the one and not the other. This is also true for Scottish English, which is very definitely not typically "hard to understand as even being English". Cockney slang as slang is barely used by anyone any more, while more generally Cockney English has, of course, more or less been replaced by Estuary English, which is spoken by people all across the South East. In the East End, English is most likely to be difficult to understand for people who only speak Standard British English because of imported words and features from new immigrant communities such as Sylhetis and Lithuanians.
Regional variations continue to exist in British English, and will continue to be generated, but it is undoubtedly true that the extent of variation has lessened compared to 50 years ago, and that this is partly driven by migration and partly by media.
It sounds to me, as a Brit, as though you're simply subscribing to a popular US view of how Britain's language works from several thousand miles away; a view which is inaccurate.
"So being lazy and using improper English is impolite to the extreme."
Motes and beams, people! If you're going to moan about "improper" English, it's best not to make lots of errors yourself: - you started your sentence with "So". The word you ought to have used was "Thus". - you missed out the comma that should have followed the "So" - the expression is "in the extreme", not "to the extreme" - even had you used "in the extreme", it would still have made for an awkward and inelegant sentence, compared to the obvious alternate of "... is extremely impolite."
I personally don't think any of this matters much; however, given that you claim to care about correct English usage, it surely behooves you to check, double-check and triple-check your own writing before posting.
This is really an argument about values, isn't it? Quite a lot of people want "others" (and as your post implies by referring to ebonics, the other here is typically young black people) to value what they value -- a good job in academia or business. And want them to *de*-value, literally, the form of English they have grown up using, and see it as worthless to "getting ahead". This, despite the pretty obvious fact that if you used what you describe as "formal English" in the context in which many people live, it would be detrimental to your interests, just as using ebonics would be detrimental to your interests if used in a merchant bank. It's really about an underlying desire to not want alternative value systems to evolve, in which getting ahead may mean something other than getting a good job at a corporate or institution.
What is it about a certain type of Republican lawmaker that seems to require them to insert a blender through their nose and switch it on before they take office?
I'll be half of them haven't even mastered bladder control yet.
From a British perspective, this all seems.... odd. Barclays and First Direct both use one-time time-limited two-factor authentication with the codes sent to special devices, and have done for quite a while, and the other components of their security are thoughtfully designed as well. They feel pretty secure to me -- not foolproof, but definitely good enough.
Well, what also matters is how much one cares about the number of people harmed in the process of growing up (both physically and psychologically). It might be that actually children given lots of freedom are hurt no more often than children who aren't, or it might not. And it might be that a society considers those harms to be a price worth paying.
That is a very strange comment. Scandinavian countries are famously nanny-ish! They are the foremost exponents of positive liberal-minded interventions. Love it, hate it, but don't ignore it.
Of course distance matters! My kids are friends with the kids next door. Walking home from there is a different proposition from walking home from my son's best friend, which would involve crossing a major highway and is over a mile away.
Slashdot Mirror
1. Removing the indefinite article does not improve the syntax of the sentence.
2. I didn't claim it was a grammatical structure. But it's certainly shoddy English.
3. My point being that you made your own sentence virtually unintelligible through your abuse of English, while complaining that other people don't stick to the rules. That makes you appear stupid and hypocritical.
None of these mistakes give you the vivid style of a Heinlein, a Bellow or a Mantel. They are not stylish. They are just mistakes. Pretending otherwise is the equivalent of the kitten hiding his head behind a sofa, unaware that his ass is sticking out the other side (there's an nice vivid metaphor for you, courtesy of the incomparable RAH).
As for your guess as to what I enjoy reading...it's exciting, but indicative of your wish to see the world as you would like it to be, rather than as it actually is. I read fiction and fact with equal gusto. Sometimes the latter can be more expressive than the latter. Who'da thunk it?
I do love the overall premise that your mistakes are lovely special stylistic motifs but other people's mistakes are indications of their idiocy. The ego is a mighty thing to behold. Or as Heinlein also put it (gosh, he was expressive, wasn't he?): Man is not a rational animal, he is a rationalizing animal.
No-one seems to have bitten on any specific egregious baity errors, intentional or no -- including you, assertions with no specifics notwithstanding.
But any errors are there because I genuinely don't give a shit. I don't aim for 100% or anything close to it; just good enough to be understood by most readers.
Actually, not even in my case, no matter how morally superior you think you are.
And yes, amazingly, regional accents are and always have been a pretty good proxy for class in the UK. Quite a famous play was once written about this very topic. You could spend some time away from Slashdot watching it. It might do you some good.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
Specifically, a strong regional accent has until very recently been taken by most British people as a sign that the speaker is not middle class. I grew up in Manchester. The softer your accent, the more posh you were considered. Same was true in Birmingham, Liverpool, Leeds, Sheffield, the West Country. Compare the Glasgow to Edinburgh accents, for another example.
If you spent a little less time on ad hominems and attacking straw men, you might open up some space to actually learn something about the world. But then, learning's a scary thing.
Who said anything about rules? That's the whole point, it's a question of taste. I'm not the one venerating Strunk & White et al here, I'm the one calling out the hypocrisy of doing so while not sticking to their standards.
However, I can promise you that professional writers will not start a written sentence in this context with "So" in place of "Thus".
On "in the extreme", you've got yourself muddled. As you say, "in the extreme" is a perfectly valid phrase; "to the extreme", which is what the OP used, is not. There is the phrase, "to take X to extremes", but this is not the sense intended by the OP.
I went to Cambridge, so while I will use an Oxford comma, I only do so where it helps avoid ambiguity, which was not the case here.
In any event, did you miss the first part of my sentence? I don't care. But the OP said that they did.
Again, you're missing my point. Talking as though the only thing standing between a bright young guy from the projects and a job at Goldmans is their poor command of standard English is just absurd. They don't value what Goldmans offers. They can't afford to value it, because it's a dangerous distraction from the world they actually have to navigate, which poses rather more immediate and visceral challenges than doing well at interview. It reminds me of the slackjawed incomprehension I saw on the faces of young bright compassionate managers at a big 4 accountancy when they tried to run a program for disadvantaged teens here in the UK, and the teens weren't hugely interested: the managers were deep in Rumsfeldian not-knowing what they didn't know territory. They lacked the insight and lived understanding of what the teens had to go through every day, to see why what was on offer was just not that appealing.
They could have done with watching this. https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
"silly"?
"little"?
"sonny"?
Condescension and ad hominem attacks really, honestly, truly, aren't substitutes for actual argument. They're just ways for you to masturbate without having to bother pulling your pants down.
Controlling language has a long ugly history of being about race and class. Ask the Kurds (but do so in Turkish, or Erdogan will be mighty pissed off). Or ask the presenters with regional accents on the BBC, none of whom would have had a look in only twenty years ago.
You're missing my point. Anyone who's aspiring to a career in, say, banking is pretty likely to make an effort to learn some form of "standard" English. But this is really about trying to control the language spoken by people who could not give two shits about a career in banking, because they are living very different lives in which such an aspiration is not only absurd but potentially dangerously distracting too.
Except that the author is Oliver Kamm, who's as British as they come. His mum translated the Asterix books, for God's sake! And in doing so, created some of the most elegant, witty and precise translations ever achieved, such as the immortal "We've been framed, by Jericho".
Thank you Anthea Bell! And Derek Hockridge, too, of course.
You really do not understand the nature of the OED, if you think it is the definitive source for the language. The OED is a record of known usages of English words. It is decidedly descriptive and not prescriptive.
Sheesh, people! Can we please start seeing the world as it is, rather than as we would like it to be??
Why is it that *every single* person who has complained along these lines has made a horrible English mistake in their sentence of complaint. Here, the entire first sentence is virtually gibberish.
1. Pandering is a gerund, not a noun. "A pandering" is just...awful. ... excuses". Excuse me! This is just sloppy sloppy writing. It actually affects the content, too, because I can't imagine that the author really intended to state that the article was only an excuse for the excuses of the young, as opposed to being an excuse for the language usage of the young", yet that is what they have written.
2. "The youth" is equally shoddy. This ought to be "the young" or "young people" with no definite article.
3. "Excuse for their
If you claim to give a shit about clear and correct writing, then take the time to get it write yourself. I make no such claim, but you do.
Why is it necessary for your and you're to be distinct? We don't need them to be distinct in oral English; that's how the confusion arises in the first place. In oral English, we determine which is intended by context. We could do the same with written English, too.
We may prefer not to, but it's hardly a need.
Don't you get it? Who determines "correct"? And how on earth would you decide? One of the SVPs of my multi-billion dollar employer is in the habit of saying "lookit" quite a lot; I haven't noticed it impeding his success or my ability to understand him.
I think this desire to declare some language "wrong" is just code for racism and classism.
There is something exquisitely irritating about a post that says "Author has apparently never heard of Strunk & White" when the article explicitly discusses Strunk and White. FFS, Jane Q Public, would it really have troubled you that much to have read the article you've chosen to criticise, at least to save yourself from looking like a complete and utter tit?
You mean "distinct", not "disparate".
While the British Isles has many forms of English, and a number of dialects, regional variations are mainly confined to accents and some vocabulary. There is no mutual incomprehensibility between a Mancunian and a Kentish resident, even if there's the odd word or phrase used by the one and not the other. This is also true for Scottish English, which is very definitely not typically "hard to understand as even being English". Cockney slang as slang is barely used by anyone any more, while more generally Cockney English has, of course, more or less been replaced by Estuary English, which is spoken by people all across the South East. In the East End, English is most likely to be difficult to understand for people who only speak Standard British English because of imported words and features from new immigrant communities such as Sylhetis and Lithuanians.
Regional variations continue to exist in British English, and will continue to be generated, but it is undoubtedly true that the extent of variation has lessened compared to 50 years ago, and that this is partly driven by migration and partly by media.
It sounds to me, as a Brit, as though you're simply subscribing to a popular US view of how Britain's language works from several thousand miles away; a view which is inaccurate.
"So being lazy and using improper English is impolite to the extreme."
Motes and beams, people!
If you're going to moan about "improper" English, it's best not to make lots of errors yourself:
- you started your sentence with "So". The word you ought to have used was "Thus".
- you missed out the comma that should have followed the "So"
- the expression is "in the extreme", not "to the extreme"
- even had you used "in the extreme", it would still have made for an awkward and inelegant sentence, compared to the obvious alternate of "... is extremely impolite."
I personally don't think any of this matters much; however, given that you claim to care about correct English usage, it surely behooves you to check, double-check and triple-check your own writing before posting.
This is really an argument about values, isn't it? Quite a lot of people want "others" (and as your post implies by referring to ebonics, the other here is typically young black people) to value what they value -- a good job in academia or business. And want them to *de*-value, literally, the form of English they have grown up using, and see it as worthless to "getting ahead". This, despite the pretty obvious fact that if you used what you describe as "formal English" in the context in which many people live, it would be detrimental to your interests, just as using ebonics would be detrimental to your interests if used in a merchant bank. It's really about an underlying desire to not want alternative value systems to evolve, in which getting ahead may mean something other than getting a good job at a corporate or institution.
What is it about a certain type of Republican lawmaker that seems to require them to insert a blender through their nose and switch it on before they take office?
I'll be half of them haven't even mastered bladder control yet.
From a British perspective, this all seems.... odd. Barclays and First Direct both use one-time time-limited two-factor authentication with the codes sent to special devices, and have done for quite a while, and the other components of their security are thoughtfully designed as well. They feel pretty secure to me -- not foolproof, but definitely good enough.
They do both, though!
Well, what also matters is how much one cares about the number of people harmed in the process of growing up (both physically and psychologically). It might be that actually children given lots of freedom are hurt no more often than children who aren't, or it might not. And it might be that a society considers those harms to be a price worth paying.
That is a very strange comment. Scandinavian countries are famously nanny-ish! They are the foremost exponents of positive liberal-minded interventions. Love it, hate it, but don't ignore it.
Of course distance matters! My kids are friends with the kids next door. Walking home from there is a different proposition from walking home from my son's best friend, which would involve crossing a major highway and is over a mile away.
A juvie, updated, eg Red Planet or Farmer in the Sky.
Genuinely funny!