Grammar/linguistics complaints, nitpicking, observations, and discussions
4Somewhere in the middle of a serious discussion thread started by @Star2236, a tangent was created regarding grammar and linguistics, prodded by Siri’s lack of humanness, being tired enough to not thoroughly proofread, or maybe even the dreaded autocorrect now “improved” by AI. @pakopako brought it to a high level and his posting is below. Here’s your chance to air your complaints, pet peeves, observations, humorous anecdotes, and whatever else on the topic.
And now… from @pakopako
- Verbs HAS to agree with their subjects.
- Prepositions are not words to end sentences with.
- And don’t start a sentence with a conjunction.
- It is wrong to ever split an infinitive.
- Avoid cliches like the plague. (They’re old hat)
- Also, always avoid annoying alliteration.
- Be more or less specific.
- Also too, never, ever use repetitive redundancies.
- No sentence fragments.
- Contractions aren’t necessary and shouldn’t be used.
- Foreign words and phrases are not apropos.
- Do not be redundant; do not use more words than necessary; it’s
highly superfluous. - One should NEVER generalize.
- Comparisons are as bad as cliches.
- Don’t use no double negatives.
- Eschew ampersands & abbreviations, etc.
- One-word sentences? Eliminate.
- Analogies in writing are like feathers on a snake.
- The passive voice is to be ignored.
- Eliminate commas, that are, not necessary. Parenthetical words
however should be enclosed in commas. - Never use a big word when a diminutive one would suffice.
- Kill all exclamation points!!!
- Use words correctly, irregardless of how others use them.
- Understatement is always the absolute best way to put forth earth shaking ideas.
- Use the apostrophe in it’s proper place and omit it when its not
needed. - Eliminate quotations. As Ralph Waldo Emerson said, “I hate
quotations. Tell me what you know.” - If you’ve heard it once, you’ve heard it a thousand times: Resist
hyperbole; not one writer in a million can use it correctly. - Puns are for children, not groan readers.
- Go around the barn at high noon to avoid colloquialisms.
- Even IF a mixed metaphor sings, it should be derailed.
- Who needs rhetorical questions?
- Exaggeration is a billion times worse than understatement.
- 6 comments, 27 replies
- Comment
Personally I’m peeved by unnecessary redundancies (
) like these:
•Price point
•Skill set
•Use case
In every example, if you drop the second word it still means exactly the same thing and it’s shorter.
@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.
Wow “You” seriously took. the? time too write, all that!
I hoped that sentence helped with my grammar. If that’s the biggest problem of your day, maybe you should edit some school papers or something.
@Star2236 It was @pakopako that wrote that list. I just copy-and-pasted it.
Oh, and I sometimes edit Italian-to-English translations from my Italian friends.
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.
@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?
Where does TLDR fall in these lists of “observations” and grammatical nonconformity?
KuoH
@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.
I’ve done creative writing, technical writing, grant writing… I was once a content editor and got appalled at the stuff that got approved. The documents passed the AI test, but did no one bother reading past the titles (which were also meandering drivel)
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!
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