... because language is completely static, so we should strictly adhere to what some long dead guys said about our native tongue, just like we should apply the grammatical rules of Latin to English and never split an infinitive or end a sentence with so-called prepositions, because the first of those actions is literally impossible in Latin and the second very difficult to do, even though they are perfectly acceptable constructions in Germanic languages ... and English, contrary to what my idiotic high-school Spanish teacher thought, is a Germanic language according to its grammatical structure and basic words like, well, "word", and connectives like "and"; the fact that English has borrowed a lot of words from Romance languages is irrelevant. Honestly, why should we conform to what the United States Government Printing Office or the Oxford Press does? Language is dynamic; writen language less so, but it's reactionary, and a waste of time, to try to force it to remain static while the spoken language it expresses goes through its natural process of change; the French, for instance, should not be wasting their time telling people what words are and are not "officially" French. A language is what people speak; it's a bottom-up system, not a top-down one, for the most part.
Hey, I know what you mean. Precision is a rat in the blender. When you write thoughts like up wasn't and over won't then the more sensitive people either understand or don't. But at least we know what they can't. So I say take the turkey baster out the horse's ass and let the people feel the power of your words or not. Life is an illusion that blind people can't or _won't_ hear.
In other words, the rules exist so that the language makes sense and doesn't have ambiguous meanings. Flaunting the rules makes your language *harder* to understand and defeats the purpose of having language in the first place.
I'll tell you what. You don't like the rules of the language? Go check out places where they don't use 'em - texts from the 1500s, AOL chatrooms, MMORPGs - and tell me how much communication you get done. Then come back and tell me that the rules for how to put things together and where to use different punctuations don't matter.
It really isn't a valid comparison, though. The possessives' formation is completely valid done like so, rather than Strunk & White's variety. We're talking *conflicting style guides* here, not the abandonment of style guides altogether. As long as one is consistent, it's just as valid. In fact, I believe the Strunk & White version here is the newcomer interloper. Americans should really try to keep out of the spelling of English and just focus on American.
There's a difference between there being no rules and the rules being archaic; tradition or authority are never sufficient justification for anything, plus, arguably, Strunk's rules were originally intended only for prose, so the poet doesn't have to, and arguably shouldn't, worry about such trivialities. Anyway, I think bitching about people's lack of adherence to the rules of grammar isn't even a remotely valid argument against anything they have to say; if you're saying, "You use bad grammar; therefore you're an idiot and anything you say is invalid," you are, by definition, committing ad hominem.
No, there's a huge difference between "You're an idiot, and hence your argument is wrong" - which is ad hominem - and "You're an idiot, and you're wrong", which is just an insult.
If you deliberately abandon the rules of grammar for no reason other than a perception that this somehow makes you more free or more creative, or just because they're part of the establishment, you're an idiot. This doesn't make what you're saying wrong, it makes you stupid. It means, however, that you're also requiring other people to translate your work into the language of the non-stupids, which, in most cases isn't worth while - the fact of your unwillingness to communicate clearly TELLS the reader that you don't really want your thoughts to be read, and that you don't consider your thoughts to be worth the effort of communicating clearly.
Google it. There are a zillion variants on this rant out there, a good number by me. The rules exist for good reasons, and abandoning even the smallest of them should neve be done without an extremely compelling reason. While you're at it, look up Mark Twain's essay on the simplification of the English language.
Working as a freelance and corporate editor, believe me when I say punctuation and spelling is dreadfully important. There have been times where I'm called a bitch becuase I could not figure out what on earth the client had written. Commas do change the meaning of a sentence. To cite an example given to me by torrain: "I'd like to thank my parents, Ayn Rand and God." (I hope everyone reading this knows where the comma should go, and I also hope that they know no child has ever been produced by a union between these individuals). I could rant for hours on stupid things people write. I'm not perfect, but I don't use phrases like "approximately 9.564392 seconds" or date the memo to yesterday's date, written Thursday, July 14, 2005, and wonder why no one showed up for lunch today (Friday, July 15, 2005). In both of those cases, I'm with John when I say these people "are wrong and stupid".
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(no subject)
Date: 2005-07-23 02:07 am (UTC)Beautiful
Date: 2005-07-23 02:32 am (UTC)Right ...
Date: 2005-07-23 10:33 am (UTC)Honestly, why should we conform to what the United States Government Printing Office or the Oxford Press does?
Language is dynamic; writen language less so, but it's reactionary, and a waste of time, to try to force it to remain static while the spoken language it expresses goes through its natural process of change; the French, for instance, should not be wasting their time telling people what words are and are not "officially" French. A language is what people speak; it's a bottom-up system, not a top-down one, for the most part.
Re: Right ...
Date: 2005-07-23 02:46 pm (UTC)write thoughts like up wasn't and over won't then the more sensitive
people either understand or don't. But at least we know what they
can't. So I say take the turkey baster out the horse's ass and let the
people feel the power of your words or not. Life is an illusion that
blind people can't or _won't_ hear.
In other words, the rules exist so that the language makes sense and doesn't have ambiguous meanings. Flaunting the rules makes your language *harder* to understand and defeats the purpose of having language in the first place.
I'll tell you what. You don't like the rules of the language? Go check out places where they don't use 'em - texts from the 1500s, AOL chatrooms, MMORPGs - and tell me how much communication you get done. Then come back and tell me that the rules for how to put things together and where to use different punctuations don't matter.
Re: Right ...
Date: 2005-07-23 03:01 pm (UTC)Re: Right ...
Date: 2005-07-23 03:21 pm (UTC)Re: Right ...
Date: 2005-07-23 03:51 pm (UTC)Re: Right ...
Date: 2005-07-23 04:07 pm (UTC)Anyway, I think bitching about people's lack of adherence to the rules of grammar isn't even a remotely valid argument against anything they have to say; if you're saying, "You use bad grammar; therefore you're an idiot and anything you say is invalid," you are, by definition, committing ad hominem.
Re: Right ...
Date: 2005-07-23 07:09 pm (UTC)If you deliberately abandon the rules of grammar for no reason other than a perception that this somehow makes you more free or more creative, or just because they're part of the establishment, you're an idiot. This doesn't make what you're saying wrong, it makes you stupid. It means, however, that you're also requiring other people to translate your work into the language of the non-stupids, which, in most cases isn't worth while - the fact of your unwillingness to communicate clearly TELLS the reader that you don't really want your thoughts to be read, and that you don't consider your thoughts to be worth the effort of communicating clearly.
Google it. There are a zillion variants on this rant out there, a good number by me. The rules exist for good reasons, and abandoning even the smallest of them should neve be done without an extremely compelling reason. While you're at it, look up Mark Twain's essay on the simplification of the English language.
(no subject)
Date: 2005-07-23 07:53 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2005-07-23 08:28 pm (UTC)Commas do change the meaning of a sentence. To cite an example given to me by torrain: "I'd like to thank my parents, Ayn Rand and God."
(I hope everyone reading this knows where the comma should go, and I also hope that they know no child has ever been produced by a union between these individuals).
I could rant for hours on stupid things people write. I'm not perfect, but I don't use phrases like "approximately 9.564392 seconds" or date the memo to yesterday's date, written Thursday, July 14, 2005, and wonder why no one showed up for lunch today (Friday, July 15, 2005).
In both of those cases, I'm with John when I say these people "are wrong and stupid".
(no subject)
Date: 2005-07-23 10:39 pm (UTC)