quick grammar lesson for watmm

  On 11/10/2009 at 3:14 AM, lumpenprol said:

i pretty much never make the apostrophe error, but here's a weird one - apparently if you're dealing with an acronym, you can use an apostrophe for clarity? eg., ICBM's? Grammar nazi McGriff, what say you?

don't do that either. the way I see it is that apostrophe usage in this case came about to protect the word against improper pronunciation and to provide a visible parition between the letters of the acronym from the possessive s. while the crime is less heinous and generally more acceptable, you won't see it in learned publications. but there is some wiggle room. like single letters. if you aren't a capitalizer then minding your ps and qs gets dangerously illegible. but it is grammatically correct to not use the apostrophe. download MP3s, rent DVDs, get STDs, etc.

when in doubt, leave it out.

also i didn't know about never mind being two words either, thanks for pointing that one out AW.

never mind just kicked my ass.

nvm

  On 11/10/2009 at 2:21 AM, Barricade said:

ok so that settles it than then

!

serious business indeed

  On 11/10/2009 at 2:22 AM, Braintree said:

  On 11/10/2009 at 2:12 AM, sidewinder said:

Plural and possessive, yes. Though I think adding 's to a plural word is acceptable too.

 

jones' bike

jones's bike

 

I don't think the additional apostrophe S is technically correct. I see it on signs all the time, but that doesn't mean it's actually correct. It's just redundant with an extra S.

I totally agree that it's redundant and that seeing it on signs doesn't make it right (I see plenty of signs with apostrophes on plural words). I just seem to remember a teach once saying that both were acceptable. Cool if it's not though.

  On 11/10/2009 at 3:32 AM, Fred McGriff said:

  On 11/10/2009 at 3:14 AM, lumpenprol said:

i pretty much never make the apostrophe error, but here's a weird one - apparently if you're dealing with an acronym, you can use an apostrophe for clarity? eg., ICBM's? Grammar nazi McGriff, what say you?

 

don't do that either. the way I see it is that apostrophe usage in this case came about to protect the word against improper pronunciation and to provide a visible parition between the letters of the acronym from the possessive s. while the crime is less heinous and generally more acceptable, you won't see it in learned publications. but there is some wiggle room. like single letters. if you aren't a capitalizer then minding your ps and qs gets dangerously illegible. but it is grammatically correct to not use the apostrophe. download MP3s, rent DVDs, get STDs, etc.

 

when in doubt, leave it out.

Yeah I always capitalize an acronym or single letter as you said, especially if I'm going to make it plural. I believe it has become "legal" to use an apostrophe in those cases though. Or even if not, there's wiggle room. The grammar nazis generally won't come down on you.

wtf

now seriously, stream of consciousness is more enlightening.

i think all spelling should be phonetic.

i ultimately would like to use only

pictographs for written correspondence.

more entertaining for who? you? communication is a two way street, bub. spelling phonetically is not really the issue here anyway. but what a blast that would be to read (see delet). a nice big fuck you to the people you're trying to voice your ideas to. "hey man i realize you went to school to learn how to read and write but here's a new cool way for you to waste time by trying to decipher the time i've wasted on deconstructing our language"

pictographs would be a lovely 4000 or 5000 year regression too. go bleed yourself with a leech, troon.

Dr. Lopez:

In the sentence "I'm liable to make retarded grammar mistakes." the word liable is being used correctly. There is a likely danger that you are going to make retarded grammar mistakes. If Bill is a terrible singer and I say "Watch out for Bill when he's drunk, he's liable to sing.", that is also acceptable. Liable can mean likely to when there is a sense of something bad happening as a result.

For the rest of you:

your all penises'

  On 11/10/2009 at 6:04 AM, chenGOD said:

Dr. Lopez:

In the sentence "I'm liable to make retarded grammar mistakes." the word liable is being used correctly. There is a likely danger that you are going to make retarded grammar mistakes. If Bill is a terrible singer and I say "Watch out for Bill when he's drunk, he's liable to sing.", that is also acceptable. Liable can mean likely to when there is a sense of something bad happening as a result.

 

For the rest of you:

your all penises'

lol i realized that after edit went away

i guess it depends if making retarded mistakes is considered a bad result or a negative impact on "I" maybe "I" is already retarded

i usually get infuriated by any grammar / syntax failures that i see... primarily because a quick trip to any internet forum will generally present more abhorrent grammar than most ESL classes.

HOWEVER:

there are syntactical considerations to be taken into account in some cases. there is a language in particular which escapes me at the moment in which an apostrophe is appropriate in the case of pluralisation. i thought it was dutch, but i may be wrong.

in any event, a fundamentalist would argue that if one is using the english language, then one should abide by all rules therein as dictated by the cognoscenti of that particular language.

in the age of the internet, however, language is beginning to blur. while it's true that english is emerging as the primary language in most cases, those who are practicing the language may have linguistic customs that are easily supplanted.

so at that point, the question becomes this: do we militantly stand by the grammatical and syntactical concepts that we have been taught, or do we embrace the evolution and cross-polination of language in general?

please bear in mind that none of this excuses people who should fucking well know better, god damn it.

c

  On 11/10/2009 at 6:10 AM, dr lopez said:

  On 11/10/2009 at 6:04 AM, chenGOD said:

Dr. Lopez:

In the sentence "I'm liable to make retarded grammar mistakes." the word liable is being used correctly. There is a likely danger that you are going to make retarded grammar mistakes. If Bill is a terrible singer and I say "Watch out for Bill when he's drunk, he's liable to sing.", that is also acceptable. Liable can mean likely to when there is a sense of something bad happening as a result.

 

For the rest of you:

your all penises'

lol i realized that after edit went away

 

i guess it depends if making retarded mistakes is considered a bad result or a negative impact on "I" maybe "I" is already retarded

Jah bless I and I seen? rasta don make no mistake or babylon gonna catcha fiyah.

  On 11/10/2009 at 6:11 AM, maus said:

i usually get infuriated by any grammar / syntax failures that i see... primarily because a quick trip to any internet forum will generally present more abhorrent grammar than most ESL classes.

 

HOWEVER:

 

there are syntactical considerations to be taken into account in some cases. there is a language in particular which escapes me at the moment in which an apostrophe is appropriate in the case of pluralisation. i thought it was dutch, but i may be wrong.

 

in any event, a fundamentalist would argue that if one is using the english language, then one should abide by all rules therein as dictated by the cognoscenti of that particular language.

 

in the age of the internet, however, language is beginning to blur. while it's true that english is emerging as the primary language in most cases, those who are practicing the language may have linguistic customs that are easily supplanted.

 

so at that point, the question becomes this: do we militantly stand by the grammatical and syntactical concepts that we have been taught, or do we embrace the evolution and cross-polination of language in general?

 

please bear in mind that none of this excuses people who should fucking well know better, god damn it.

 

c

Having taught ESL for a considerable length of time, I can attest to the first point. As to your second point, code-mixing is here to stay regardless of any baseball hall-of-famer's point of view. English is the most widely spoken language in the world by a long shot when you take ESL subjects into account. Since those particular users of the language are not going to master all of the intricacies of English, there are sometimes when you just have to accept it. However, Youtube comments infuriate me, so I just ignore the little bastards altogether.

  On 11/10/2009 at 3:22 AM, Calx Sherbet said:

i hate words

Oh, I got two legs from my waist to the ground, and

When I move 'em they walk around, and

When I lift 'em they climb the stairs, and

When I shave 'em they ain't got hairs

Fred should have just recommended "Eats, Shoots, and Leaves."

I'm with Fred on this one as far as the apostrophe fucking up the flow of sentences. I can deal with reading all lower case, that doesn't bother me in the slightest, but for some reason I find it so jarring to see grammar fuck ups like that and the ol' "there" "their" and "they're" thing.

I'm going to say fuck its.

lol wut .. nevermind grammer? . if you know what its means than who cares yeah. their's more important things then grammer... language is like evolving yeah

i want to fucking kill these swarms of first-language Englishers at my uni who can't use their own fucking language. fucktards

  On 11/10/2009 at 1:40 PM, LUDD said:

lol wut .. nevermind grammer? . if you know what its means than who cares yeah. their's more important things then grammer... language is like evolving yeah

apart from the language is evolving bullshit this is exactly how i feel. if it irritates you, dont read what im saying, but i really cant be arsed putting anything more than minimal thought processes into chatting shit on a redundant internet forum.

job application, essays, il make the effort. here, no.

  On 11/10/2009 at 11:28 AM, Obel said:

I'm with Fred on this one as far as the apostrophe fucking up the flow of sentences. I can deal with reading all lower case, that doesn't bother me in the slightest, but for some reason I find it so jarring to see grammar fuck ups like that and the ol' "there" "their" and "they're" thing.

I agree -- some language errors are just more egregious than others. It's like hearing a flubbed note in an otherwise quality guitar solo or something. Or wearing a great button-down dress shirt untucked. It just seems careless.

  On 11/10/2009 at 4:28 PM, messiaen said:

  On 11/10/2009 at 1:40 PM, LUDD said:

lol wut .. nevermind grammer? . if you know what its means than who cares yeah. their's more important things then grammer... language is like evolving yeah

 

apart from the language is evolving bullshit this is exactly how i feel. if it irritates you, dont read what im saying, but i really cant be arsed putting anything more than minimal thought processes into chatting shit on a redundant internet forum.

 

 

job application, essays, il make the effort. here, no.

It shouldn't require effort. If you don't know the difference between "then" and "than" in infant school, then all your efforts are going to be wrongly directed.

If not Chris Clark than who?

my friend complained that i never capitalized anything in an email i sent him. even after a fullstop. i haven't emailed him since.

  On 11/10/2009 at 5:50 PM, LUDD said:

It shouldn't require effort. If you don't know the difference between "then" and "than" in infant school, then all your efforts are going to be wrongly directed.

This.

  On 11/10/2009 at 4:40 PM, encey said:

  On 11/10/2009 at 11:28 AM, Obel said:

I'm with Fred on this one as far as the apostrophe fucking up the flow of sentences. I can deal with reading all lower case, that doesn't bother me in the slightest, but for some reason I find it so jarring to see grammar fuck ups like that and the ol' "there" "their" and "they're" thing.

I agree -- some language errors are just more egregious than others. It's like hearing a flubbed note in an otherwise quality guitar solo or something. Or wearing a great button-down dress shirt untucked. It just seems careless.

woa i didn't know those words.

also tucking is gay. i only tuck at work where i am mostly gay.

I always hear excuses like that... "bah it's just an internet forum, who cares?" Well it shows that you really don't know your shit and that you actually do have to put effort into getting it right when writing more important stuff. If you know it, it would come naturally no matter where you're writing, excusing the occasional mistype of course...especially as we all tend to type fast online and while text messaging and such.