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    Pedants are wrong

    And, wrong on lots of counts are.

    #2
    Pedants are wrong

    Number 3 had me cheering. I've been making that argument since I was still at school, and it's one grammatical "rule" I almost always break in my writing. Much of this stuff is actually worth observing, even if it may not be correct, simply because it results in more elegant sentences. But that one is just a load of crap.

    You can only break the "rule" sparingly, mind you, or you do sound like an idiot.

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      #3
      Pedants are wrong

      I'm glad about no.3 too, as it clears up my confusion about it. I was one of those who, as a child, was taught that it was bad so have avoided committing that apparently cardinal sin ever since. However, I'd seen increasingly frequent examples of such sentences recently and this threw me into confusion. Y'see, if starting a sentence with 'and' I had adopted the 'technique' of preceding it with '...' just to indicate that it was some kind of continuation of a point made in my previous sentence. But now I know the facts I realise I can stop that habit. And will act accordingly in future. (Ah, that felt good!)

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        #4
        Pedants are wrong

        And, wrong on lots of counts are.
        You should never use a comma after the word "and."

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          #5
          Pedants are wrong

          Not always true, surely?

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            #6
            Pedants are wrong

            I had an argument about number 4 last year, with an English friend who teaches English to French people. He was staunchly, even abusively, in the 'none is always singular' camp. I'm going to send him that link, along with a lot of gros mots.

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              #7
              Pedants are wrong

              hobbes wrote:
              And, wrong on lots of counts are.
              You should never use a comma after the word "and."
              This is another one that I (like, I presume, Hobbes) was taught at school but which I'm pretty sure has been debunked now.

              Here is a related question for the grammaticists on the thread, though: I was also taught that a comma can represent a slight pause in sentence (as if when spoken). I presume this is what is going on in the sentence that Hobbes has quoted. The same applies to a semi-colon, but with the pause being slightly longer. Is this true, or is this grammatical bastardisation?

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                #8
                Pedants are wrong

                A semi colon links two unrelated clauses. A comma links related clauses.

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                  #9
                  Pedants are wrong

                  hobbes wrote:
                  A semi colon links two unrelated clauses. A comma links related clauses.
                  Yep - that as well. That's a given. However, are these 'parallel' practical uses that I mentioned valid too?

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                    #10
                    Pedants are wrong

                    You should never use a comma after the word "and."
                    You are wrong and, for the purposes of illustration, a hideously ugly freak.

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                      #11
                      Pedants are wrong

                      The comma after 'and' is one of my favourite constructions. They'll take that away from me when they prise my keyboard from my cold, dead hands.

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                        #12
                        Pedants are wrong

                        Great article.

                        When I think about the rules of grammar I sometimes recall the story—and it’s a true one—about a lecture given in the 1950s by an eminent British philosopher of language. He remarked that in some languages two negatives make a positive, but in no language do two positives make a negative. A voice from the back of the room piped up, “Yeah, yeah.”
                        J.L. Austin was the Brit - the unidentified "voice", almost certainly from the front of the room, was the utterly godlike Sidney Morgenbesser.

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                          #13
                          Pedants are wrong

                          I'd stick up for the comma after "and" too, though not always. But that's the point: you've got to think aesthetically, about the rhythm and nature of what you're saying, and punctuate accordingly. Sometimes this involves a lot of punctuation, other times rather less.

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                            #14
                            Pedants are wrong

                            E10 Rifle wrote:
                            I'd stick up for the comma after "and" too, though not always. But that's the point: you've got to think aesthetically, about the rhythm and nature of what you're saying, and punctuate accordingly. Sometimes this involves a lot of punctuation, other times rather less.
                            You see, that's precisely what I do. I tend to disregard the rules and just think of 'the rhythm', if you like. I think of how I mean it sound if I spoke it (usually so as to emphasise when I'm saying something ironically or in jest).

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                              #15
                              Pedants are wrong

                              In my experience, starting a sentence, especially if it starts a paragraph, with a conjunction is usually bad style. Sometimes it makes sense, but but nine times out of ten when I'm editing stuff and the writer has done that, I rewrite the sentence because I can find a more direct way to say the same thing.

                              Starting a sentence with "but" is usually just a short way of saying "however." Ideally, you can find a way to tie the sentences together with a "despite" or "even with" or something like that. But sometimes its the best way to go as long as one doesn't do it five times in a row.

                              Most "and"s at the beginning of sentences are usually superfluous and removable. English teachers have pounded the idea of "transition" into kids heads, so I see a lot of young writers putting all sorts of extraneous "And" and "Also" and "In addition to x, also y" constructions to start paragraphs.

                              I find that usually most readers can infer the "in addition to" from the position of the sentence on the page in relation to the one telling what it's in addition to. (assuming it's in english which in my case, it always is) Again, if possible, it's better to explain substantive connection than just "this happened and then that happened," but if there isn't a connection, then tossing in an "and" or "also" doesn't help.

                              Same with that "whose" rule. There's usually a way around the whole problem which makes the sentence more direct and simpler. I think the best way to say that particular sentence. would be "Don't buy a car with a shot engine." Problem solved.

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                                #16
                                Pedants are wrong

                                But it depends on how formal you want the writing to be. And Clive's point about being sensitive to the rhythms of spoken speech holds here too: less formal writing is often closer to spoken patterns.

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                                  #17
                                  Pedants are wrong

                                  Yes. In the case of my profession, I want to be able to convey the maximum amount of information with the fewest words while still being clear. Of course, it has to be interesting to our readers, but they are all being well paid to care about this rather boring stuff so that's a pretty low bar.

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                                    #18
                                    Pedants are wrong

                                    toro toro toro toro wrote:
                                    Great article.

                                    When I think about the rules of grammar I sometimes recall the story—and it’s a true one—about a lecture given in the 1950s by an eminent British philosopher of language. He remarked that in some languages two negatives make a positive, but in no language do two positives make a negative. A voice from the back of the room piped up, “Yeah, yeah.”
                                    J.L. Austin was the Brit - the unidentified "voice", almost certainly from the front of the room, was the utterly godlike Sidney Morgenbesser.
                                    I thought that the unidentified "voice" actually piped up "yeah, right"?

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                                      #19
                                      Pedants are wrong

                                      .

                                      Hooray for #5!

                                      .

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                                        #20
                                        Pedants are wrong

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                                          #21
                                          Pedants are wrong

                                          A few of us have been banging away about, I think, all five of these on here for years, off and on, usually in response to spurious corrections or "Don't you hate it when"s. Shows how much notice etc. Sniff.

                                          Comment


                                            #22
                                            Pedants are wrong

                                            Excellent point by E10, and lots of good points by Reed.

                                            When subbing, obviously one must take into account the nature of the article. I'd automatically edit a sentence beginning with a conjunction in a news report, and avoid it in an editorial leader, as a matter of style. But I'd happily let it slide in a conversational column (or a message board post). Having said that, I have one columnist who in a 800 word piece will routinely start a sentence with "But", plus a comma, something like seven times, which is grating.

                                            Infinitives are there to be split, as I defiantly told a "purist" colleague last week. Whatever flows, man.

                                            I didn't know that there was a rule about "none" always being singular. It's a totally illogical proposition.

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                                              #23
                                              Pedants are wrong

                                              Do you ever read the Spiegel, Pan Tau?

                                              I'm translating an article from it at the moment and their house style is driving me bloody mad.

                                              They can't write a sentence with more than a dozen words in it. And every one begins with und. Or oder. Except if it starts with aber. And every other sentence ends with a colon: like that.

                                              And they never talk about things that happened in the past in the past tense. They do it in the present. To make it more exciting. And it's chock full of smartarse puns. And alliteration. As well.

                                              Every article that deals with any kind of scandal reads like a Raymond Chandler novel. But a really shit one.

                                              Not that this has anything to do with English - I just had to get it off my chest. Sorry.

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                                                #24
                                                Pedants are wrong

                                                I'm sorry. "None" is always singular in my head. I don't get the argument at all - I mean, it just doesn't make any sense to me.

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                                                  #25
                                                  Pedants are wrong

                                                  .

                                                  none = not one

                                                  .

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