Grammar/linguistics complaints, nitpicking, observations, and discussions

@Kyeh Right up there for me is “most unique”…

@Kyeh @shahnm
And ATM machine…

@Kyeh
I respectfully disagree- having worked both in retail and in medicine, the first 2 pairs had obviously different meanings to me; while the 3rd was less clear likely because its use is in a field with which I’m only peripherally familiar.

I will stipulate that in general use for the general public they are or could often be used interchangeably, and that when the compound words are used, it’s almost always an attempt to either sound more erudite, or to obfuscate something.

"While both “price” and “price point” relate to the cost of a product, “price” refers to the actual monetary value, while “price point” is a broader concept encompassing strategic positioning and a potential range of prices within a market.
Here’s a more detailed breakdown:
Price:
Refers to the specific amount of money a buyer pays for a product or service.
It’s the actual selling price.
Example: “The price of this phone is $1000”.
Price Point:
Represents a specific point on a scale of possible prices for a product.
It’s more about strategic positioning and how a product’s price fits within the market and competitive landscape.
Example: “We need to target the $500 price point for this new product”.
Consider the demand curve, where different price points yield different levels of demand.
Retailers choose price points to maintain sales volume and profit without losing customers to competitors.

“Skills” refers to individual abilities, while “skill set” encompasses a collection or range of related skills that can be applied to a specific task or profession.
Here’s a more detailed breakdown:
Skills:
Refers to specific abilities or competencies a person possesses.
Can be viewed in isolation and are relevant in specific contexts.
Examples: reading, writing, coding, playing a musical instrument.
Skill Set:
Represents a collection or range of related skills.
Emphasizes the combined application of various skills.
Examples: a marketing skill set might include skills in social media management, content creation, and email marketing.
Can be viewed as a group of skills that are useful for a particular profession or task.
A person can have multiple skill sets.

“Use” is a general term referring to the act of employing something, while “use case” is a structured, detailed description of how a user interacts with a system to achieve a specific goal.
Here’s a more detailed breakdown:
“Use” (General):
Definition: “Use” simply means to employ or put something to practical use.
Example: “I use a pen to write.”
“Use Case” (Specific):
Definition:
In software development and systems engineering, a “use case” is a detailed description of how a user (or actor) interacts with a system to accomplish a specific task or goal.
Purpose:
Use cases are used to:
Document the system’s functionality.
Identify the interactions between users and the system.
Ensure that the system meets the user’s needs.
Provide a basis for testing and development.
Structure:
Use cases typically include:
Actor: The user or external entity interacting with the system.
Goal: The objective the user wants to achieve.
Steps: The sequence of actions the user takes and the system’s responses.
Alternative Paths: Potential deviations from the main flow.
Preconditions: Conditions that must be true before the use case can start.
Postconditions: Conditions that must be true after the use case completes.
Example:
Actor: Customer
Goal: Purchase a product online
Steps:
Customer navigates to the product page.
Customer selects the product and quantity.
Customer adds the product to the cart.
Customer proceeds to checkout.
Customer enters shipping and payment information.
Customer confirms the order.
System displays a confirmation message.

ATM machine OTOH is demonstrably redundant, as is “most favorite”.

@Kyeh And it’s always an unexpected surprise when I order something and get the added bonus of a free gift.

@Kyeh @rockblossom Or not so free “free shipping”. It’s worked into the price. Duh.

@Kidsandliz @Kyeh @rockblossom or free shipping if you pay a monthly mehmbership fee…

@Kidsandliz @Kyeh @ybmuG Okay. But the point of my sentence was the 3 redundant word pairs.

@Kidsandliz @Kyeh @rockblossom when has this group ever stayed on point?

@Kyeh @rockblossom to borrow from Weird Al’s Born to Be Stupid song

Sometimes you have to buy one to get one free

@PhysAssist Sigh. I was too tired to even delve into this thread yesterday; we’ll just have to agree to disagree.
What you’re defending, in 595 words, is jargon, which has its place, but it keeps spilling out into everyday usage where it only makes for fuzzy redundancy. I like language to be concise, especially in writing; I don’t claim to be the best at it myself, but my eyes glaze over when I’m confronted by too much verbiage, written or spoken.

@rockblossom

And it’s always an unexpected surprise when I order something and get the added bonus of a free gift.

I completely absolutely agree!

@Kyeh “This period in time” annoys me. What’s wrong with “now”?

@Kyeh @lisagd When?

KuoH

@Kyeh
“I will stipulate that in general use for the general public they are or could often be used interchangeably, and that when the compound words are used, it’s almost always an attempt to either sound more erudite, or to obfuscate something.”

@PhysAssist
Even used in the appropriate context, most of it is unnecessarily wordy. At the library where I used to work (and at universities in general) they’ve renamed the departments, so for example there’s now a “RESEARCH & INNOVATION STRATEGIES.” Guess what - it used to be called “REFERENCE,” and it meant the same thing and was much clearer.
I disagree that “Skill Set” means anything different from “Skills,” or that the other compounds really add any clarity to what’s being said.

@Kyeh
As you already said, I agree to disagree.

Which I thought my caveat already allowed for.

@Kyeh @rockblossom Maybe “gift” without the “free” means you have to pay for shipping and handling to get it?

@ItalianScallion @rockblossom I buy import food from this site sometimes but their emails are so annoying - especially when they announce “Freeeeeee Shipping! ” and you open it and see this:

@Star2236 It was @pakopako that wrote that list. I just copy-and-pasted it.
P.S. I’ve been editor of my reenacting group’s monthly newsletter for several years. Each issue runs 20 to 30 pages. It indulges my pedantic urges regarding languages and I’m quite proud of the results. Oh, and I sometimes edit Italian-to-English translations from my Italian friends.

@ItalianScallion @pakopako @Star2236
Also Star, it came as a result of f00l’s long post on your thread, where she used speech-to-text and had some really weird mistakes, so some us were bugging/teasing her about them.

And that list of pako’s is really funny.

@ItalianScallion @Kyeh @pakopako @Star2236
… and plagiarized…

@chienfou @ItalianScallion @Kyeh @pakopako @Star2236
…and incomplete- perhaps ironically so, given that this is the missing caveat:
“And finally…
34. Proofread carefully to see if you any words out.”

@chienfou @ItalianScallion @Kyeh @pakopako @PhysAssist @Star2236

True story
My very very gifted daughter headed off to college back in the mid 1990s. She had papers to write and had a very difficult time. You see, like many gifted people, when she read she skipped words in her head that were not necessary to understanding the concept - words such as “the” and ‘and’ and well, you get the picture. So when she wrote she did the same thing. Email, thank the Lord and Lady, existed, so she would email them to me and I would use track comments to remind her were to put these comprehensively useless words that the absence of which would have cost her many points.

Also true story.
I got my first college degree in 1976. At a UC campus in life sciences 10 years later, I went back for a BSN at at Cal State college. I couldn’t pass the writing exam. So I took the class. One of the best things I ever did although I grumped a lot at the time. I learned a lot about sentence structure and varying the structure within a paragraph. It served me well later when I wrote papers for publication and helped my daughter get through her BS degree.

Language is an interesting thing. Spoken and written language are not the same. Generational generalization coming. Boomers and older gave much more attention to the written word. Even Gen X. Gen Z doesn’t care and neither do many millennials. They don’t understand why it is important. And who knows, maybe it’s really not. But it is a definite pleasure to all the grammar nazi’s out there.

@chienfou @ItalianScallion @Kyeh @pakopako @PhysAssist @Star2236 Yes (@Cerridwyn) those generations will give the grammar nazi’s a full time volunteer job correcting people; something that could fill their retirement years with something to do.

/showme a 65 or older grammar nazi

@mediocrebot Hahaha that grammar nazi needs to learn how to spell

@chienfou @Kyeh @pakopako @PhysAssist @Star2236 34 is my downfall. I nearly always reread what I write before sending/posting and end up changing something, but not re-proofreading closely enough, resulting in leaving out a word or leaving a word in that shouldn’t be in my revision. Fortunately, I rarely do that as a newsletter editor because I proofread several times.

@ItalianScallion
I wish you’d share that skill with the local newspaper (Montgomery Advertiser). It’s often obvious that the reporter re-wrote a section and then pasted it in without checking to make sure it fit like it should resulting in awkward phrasing as well as redundancies. It’s mind-blowing!

@Cerridwyn, your comment is fascinating to me. Your daughter’s skipping words goes right along with English being a syllable timed language, i.e., its rhythm and intonation puts subtle emphasis on important/necessary words and deemphasizes less important/necessary words like articles and conjunctions. As an English as a Second Language teacher, I surmised that learning English verbal comprehension would be easier than romance languages, like Italian, which are syllable timed so emphasis can’t be used to identify less important words, pay less attention to them, and give your mind a little bit of time to catch up with comprehension. Even after 15 years of studying Italian, verbal comprehension is still by far my weakest skill in the language, something I often attribute to the need to constantly pay attention to every word since I don’t have emphasis-based clues to know what I can safely skip over.

I never gave much thought why I (a boomer) see the written word as so important versus people, many of whom are likely younger, that I see on social media. I always attributed it to my grammar geek tendencies rather than it being generational, but now that you mention it, the generational thing makes sense. There was a lot of rigor around English grammar when I was a kid in the 60s and 70s and written English was the vehicle for teaching it. I guess grammar isn’t often taught at that level anymore.

@Kidsandliz Where did you find that picture of me? I thought I locked down my social media accounts really well! I did spot one spelling error right away: it’s not goaese, it’s goatese. Baaah! Bleat!

@ItalianScallion @Kyeh @pakopako
I actually did use Speach to text on half of it bc I got so emotional I couldn’t text. I didn’t reread anything either before I posted it bc I just didn’t care. I figured if I reread it, I was gonna delete it. So I just posted it.
I know my grammar is horrible, I missed half of second and third grade (due to medical issues). My boyfriend’s mom is a retired school teacher and anytime I write something and have her proof read it I’m so embarrassed bc of it. It’s not a strong suit of mine.

@mediocrebot I must know.

/showme a Gerpstel

@Cerridwyn @chienfou @ItalianScallion @Kyeh @pakopako @Star2236

I was shocked when I found out that our great-nieces and nephews [who are in their tweens and teens now] didn’t learn to write in cursive, and can’t read it either.

Is that common to the rest of you as well?

@Cerridwyn @ItalianScallion @Kyeh @pakopako @PhysAssist @Star2236
That is a skill that is lamentably being lost rapidly. I must admit my handwriting sucks so no big loss there. However loss of the ability to READ cursive is a problem. There’s currently a massive undertaking to transcribe a bunch of cursive documents from the Library of Congress into digital form (with translation) to expand access…

@Cerridwyn @chienfou @ItalianScallion @Kyeh @pakopako @PhysAssist @Star2236 It’s sad state of affairs to think that we might one day end up with more people who can read Latin than cursive. The next generation of legislators will be signing all documents with autopen or just an X if the machine happens to be broken… oh wait.

KuoH

@Cerridwyn @chienfou @kuoh @Kyeh @pakopako @PhysAssist @Star2236 The young people that I know sign their names with not much more than a wavy line across the screen or paper. I guess that replaces the X from long ago.

@Cerridwyn @chienfou @Kyeh @pakopako @PhysAssist @Star2236 In all fairness to the young people, even as an 18th century reenactor I sometimes have trouble reading cursive from that period and I know the rules for when to use the long s (the thing that looks like a long f).

@Cerridwyn @chienfou @ItalianScallion @Kyeh @pakopako @PhysAssist @Star2236 Poor penmanship is not quite the same as the inability to read standard cursive. I’ll be the first to admit that my cursive handwriting and signature have nosedived off a cliff with the advent of electronic communications and bill pay, but the ability to read most legible cursive should still be a basic skill like simple math.

With the proliferation and push for common core, I’m fearful that will be the next loss if the current educational trends continue. After all, we now actually do always have a calculator and even an entire encyclopedia in our pockets despite the constant protestations of our grade school teachers. For awhile there, we at least still had to employ the phone a “smarter” friend lifeline for those really complex subjects, but now with AI we won’t even need friends, smart or otherwise.

That dystopian scifi future of Idiocracy is looking less and less like just some far off fantasy on the horizon and more like the brick wall across a rapidly diminishing road we’re speeding down at 100mph in a car where the last guy that worked on it didn’t know the difference between brakes and breaks or lug nuts and deeznuts.

Not sure how many linguistical and grammatical rules I just violated in these here sentences besides TLDR.

KuoH

@Cerridwyn @chienfou @ItalianScallion @Kidsandliz @pakopako @PhysAssist @Star2236
Umm, I really dislike this term “grammar nazi’s” (apostrophe not needed ) because it dilutes the term “Nazi.” My husband’s Jewish friend asked him to stop talking about the “parking Nazis” when discussing the campus cops; he said save it for the real Nazis. (And sadly there seem to be plenty of them these days.)

@chienfou @ItalianScallion @Kidsandliz @Kyeh @pakopako @PhysAssist @Star2236 Point well made

@Cerridwyn @chienfou @ItalianScallion @Kidsandliz @pakopako @PhysAssist @Star2236 Thanks

@Cerridwyn @chienfou @Kidsandliz@pakopako @PhysAssist @Star2236 I agree with you 1000%, @Kyeh. That’s why I say “grammar geek.” Dilute is exactly the word I would have chosen.

@Cerridwyn @chienfou @ItalianScallion @Kyeh @PhysAssist @Star2236 I apologize.

@Cerridwyn @chienfou @ItalianScallion @Kidsandliz @PhysAssist @Star2236
It’s very common; just trying to make the point where I can. I probably said “parking Nazis” too before our friend made us aware.

@kuoh
Under # 35…be brief

@chienfou @kuoh I thought 35 was “Remember the importance of being succinct in your choice of words and your explanations. The judicious use of the reader’s time being paramount, the need to be brief should not need any explanation.”

@ItalianScallion @kuoh
FIFY
TL:DR - Remember the importance of being succinct in your choice of words and your explanations. The judicious use of the reader’s time being paramount, the need to be brief should not need any explanation.

Plenty of illustrated manuals

https://theoatmeal.com/comics/semicolon
https://theoatmeal.com/comics/apostrophe
https://theoatmeal.com/comics/irony
https://theoatmeal.com/comics/mispelling

And I so do love Oxford comma images

@pakopako I am a huge proponent of the Oxford comma!

@pakopako
The “mispelling” link is 404. Thats very odd; and ironic!

@pakopako
Here goes to me missing so much school. I never knew this. I didn’t think you were supposed to put a comma after “and” so I never do but seeing a picture of it explained I see why now. If someone posted picture like this of the each of these rules I could actually learn a lot.
You’re probably rolling your eyes at how stupid I sound right now but remember everybody has their downfalls. I graduated top of my class, on the deans list every semester (except for the one I had to religious courses). I have a BS in criminal justice, so I’m stupid even though I may sound it.

@pakopako @Star2236 Fwiw, whether you are “supposed to” put a comma after “and” is up for debate. Basically it comes down to which curriculum your grade school teacher(s) used, or which style guide your workplace forces upon you. From what I can tell, most American guides use it, but the New York Times and the Associated Press oppose it. (Foreigners also tend to oppose it.)

(For a very long time I used to think people left it out because of laziness, ignorance, or uneducatedness — things which may also be true — until I discovered that some people were actually taught to avoid it. )

While there may be justification for the opposition,⁽ᶜᶦᵗᵃᵗᶦᵒⁿ ⁿᵉᵉᵈᵉᵈ⁾ I am very much in the Oxford comma camp. I feel it provides better consistency and clarity (and adjustments can be made if it introduces ambiguity). But I’m a bit of a prescriptivist. Also, it’s what I was taught back in 3rd grade or whenever.

So don’t feel bad if you didn’t know what you’re supposed to do with commas. We can’t get everyone to agree. Pick a style you like and stick to it. Even if you’re wrong, at least you’ll be consistent.

---

There are surely examples to be found all over the interwebs, but Wikipedia provides some basic examples of where the presence of the comma makes a big difference.
Probably my favorite is a fake book dedication, which probably wants the comma added:

To my parents, Mother Teresa and the pope.

And its variant, which suffers by the inclusion:

To my mother, Mother Teresa, and the pope.

The problem with this one is that “Mother Teresa” now looks like an appositive. (Which can be another neat thing to learn about, if you don’t happen to remember it coming up in school.) The only way to fix it is a bit of restructuring.

@pakopako @Star2236

I have a BS in criminal justice, so I’m [NOT] stupid even though I may sound it.

FIFY! And I agree, you’re not. And I think people writing casually in a forum can be sloppy or make mistakes with text-to-speech or autofill or just typos, but it doesn’t mean they’re stupid. Sometimes though it ends up completely changing the meaning, as it did in that sentence!

@Kyeh @pakopako
Yeah I was definitely never taught that and even in college I had to take a writing course to help with such things and they didn’t teach that. It’s why I find it so much as a shock and blamed my missing school but the more I thought, I just wasn’t taught it.

@pakopako @Star2236 @xobzoo I keep the Associated Press Stylebook (56th edition) and the Chicago Manual of Style (16th edition) near my desk to help me when I’m not sure about a grammar or writing question. The AP Stylebook discourages use of the Oxford comma, while the Chicago Manual “strongly recommends” it. I usually go with the AP when there’s a conflict with the Chicago Manual, but in this case Chicago wins.

@zhicks1987
What seen you?

@PhysAssist @zhicks1987 As they say around these here parts: “Well, now I done seen ev’rythang!”

@werehatrack
Well YOU missed out then!

@xobzoo I count that as an MBA-ism.

@werehatrack I love that!
Actually, I hate that, but I love having a term for it.

And I hadn’t (until now) considered that it’s probably a bit of a shibboleth for “business” people.

In any case, I’m highly/strongly opinionated about many things, especially language. I think I’m mostly successful in not holding it against people when they get things “wrong”. The part I worry about is unconscious biases that may be silently forming, but I can’t afford to waste away my life dwelling on that.

@xobzoo Why a lizard?

@Kyeh @xobzoo I just looked it up. It’s probably a reference to “Ask Mr. Lizard,” a TV show within the “Dinosaurs” animated TV show. Ask Mr. Lizard was a parody of the science show “Watch Mr. Wizard.”

@ItalianScallion @xobzoo I looked it up and saw that too but it didn’t make sense to me … still not a noun!

@Kyeh @xobzoo Right, but it has to be that.

@ItalianScallion @Kyeh Nothing nearly so strangely-linked as that.

I default to Wiktionary as Exhibit A:

Noun
ask (plural asks)

1. (UK dialectal and Scotland) An eft; newt.
2. (UK dialectal) A lizard.

So I suppose I should be saying “a lizard or a newt” rather than just lizard.

@ItalianScallion @xobzoo Aha - thanks! I never knew that. (I like the words “eft” and “newt.”)

@xobzoo Birdsnakes. Maybe that’s why there are cassowaries.

@werehatrack Wait… are you suggesting that if Aztecs had been in Australia during the Great Emu War of 1932, they might have participated… on the side of the emus?
I guess it would have depended first on whether they considered them to be representatives of Quetzalcoatl, and second on whether they would want to defend or conquer their god.

Either way, I’m probably not qualified to make up religious views for past (or current) civilizations.

@ItalianScallion It was the bear minimum we could do.

@ItalianScallion @rockblossom I think this thread is windying down

@pakopako …to the end? Butt we bearly got started on that long and windying road!