I'm not inflexible about them.Brus wrote:Don't you never use double negatives?Nanohedron wrote: And yes, I cheerfully split verbs and infinitives and put "And" at the front of a sentence.
So grammar pedants are introverts. Who knew?
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Re: So grammar pedants are introverts. Who knew?
"If you take music out of this world, you will have nothing but a ball of fire." - Balochi musician
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Re: So grammar pedants are introverts. Who knew?
Good. Because I know that you know that, oh, 25% of the grammar 'rules' your elementary school teacher taught you are false. Some were totally bogus, like the completely imaginary "don't split infinitives' rule. Others were wildly exaggerated style advice oversold as rules, like the aforementioned 'sentence fragments' dicta.Nanohedron wrote: And yes, I cheerfully split verbs and infinitives and put "And" at the front of a sentence. Or not. It's about euphony. People should put those "rules" to rest once and for all.
Here's what you really need to know about grammar:
1. It's a moving target. Every living language is changing, constantly. In fact, change is the definition of living language. The rules of grammar are observed, not ordained by any external authority.
2. "Correct' grammar is what people are saying, not what some fifty year old stylebook thought should be the truth. If you are over invested in what was correct when you went to school, you will find this painful. Me too.
3. There is ballast in the work of the giants of English Lit. This is where you will find the greatest examples, and find what has always been accounted the best of english writing. No rule which has not been followed by the greatest writers in english exists, no matter what you might see elsewhere.
And now there was no doubt that the trees were really moving - moving in and out through one another as if in a complicated country dance. ('And I suppose,' thought Lucy, 'when trees dance, it must be a very, very country dance indeed.')
C.S. Lewis
C.S. Lewis
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Re: So grammar pedants are introverts. Who knew?
There's an old Vietnamese saying that runs something along the lines of if you understand the message, don't get caught up on the words.
"Yes... yes. This is a fertile land, and we will thrive. We will rule over all this land, and we will call it... This Land."
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Re: So introverts are grammar pedants. Who knew?
Suppose we sample 100 people and find 30 introverts, of whom 25 are grammar pedants,* and 70 extraverts, of whom 25 are grammar pedants. Then an introvert from the sample is likely to be a grammar pedant, an extravert is less likely to be a grammar pedant, but a grammar pedant is equally likely to be an introvert or an extravert.s1m0n wrote:Well, they also found that extraverts aren't (as) likely to be pedants, which gets you to the same conclusion.Tunborough wrote:Actually the researchers observed that introverts are (more likely to be) grammar pedants. They didn't comment on pedants being introverts.
Edit: I'm an introvert.
* - And one of those 25 is also a statistics pedant.
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Re: So grammar pedants are introverts. Who knew?
Oh, fer...benhall.1 wrote:Is the pedant's sting worse than that of the ordinary ant?
Took me over 24 hours to catch that, you scoundrel.
"If you take music out of this world, you will have nothing but a ball of fire." - Balochi musician
Re: So introverts are grammar pedants. Who knew?
Some of us are just plain verts, as were our grammars and great-grammars before them.Tunborough wrote:Suppose we sample 100 people and find 30 introverts, of whom 25 are grammar pedants,* and 70 extraverts, of whom 25 are grammar pedants.
Quidquid latine dictum sit, altum viditur. (Anything is more impressive if you say it in Latin)
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Re: So grammar pedants are introverts. Who knew?
Nanohedron wrote:Oh, fer...benhall.1 wrote:Is the pedant's sting worse than that of the ordinary ant?
Took me over 24 hours to catch that, you scoundrel.
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Re: So grammar pedants are introverts. Who knew?
There was a country bumpkin who went to a snooty northeastern university. His first day there he got lost on his way to supper. He stopped someone who looked like he'd been there for awhile and asked, "Could you tell me where the dining hall is at?"
The upperclassman tut-tutted and said, "Don't you know you should never end a sentence with a preposition?"
To which the new guy replied, " 'Scuse me, could you tell me where the dining hall is at, a**hole?"
The upperclassman tut-tutted and said, "Don't you know you should never end a sentence with a preposition?"
To which the new guy replied, " 'Scuse me, could you tell me where the dining hall is at, a**hole?"
Charlie
Whorfin Woods
"Our work puts heavy metal where it belongs -- as a music genre and not a pollutant in drinking water." -- Prof Ali Miserez.
Whorfin Woods
"Our work puts heavy metal where it belongs -- as a music genre and not a pollutant in drinking water." -- Prof Ali Miserez.