Can't read it wrong

[chas]

From the Washington Post:

Want to blow up things in space? Here’s an app that let’s you do it.

The Washington Post??!!?!?!!! We're doomed ...

From the second page of this thread:

I read most of the Washington Post on Saturdays and Sundays, and on any given day can come up with a half dozen or more cases of the misuse of words, usually use of a word that sound similar to another but has a different meaning.

Yep, we're doomed.

[Nanohedron]

Dont giveup hoap.

[s1m0n]

Dont giveup hoap.

But more importantly, don't give up soap.

[s1m0n]

Is part of the reason that much of the 'writing' many people now do is typing that follows conventions more like those of conversational, rather than written, language?

Yes. From the beginning, English style and grammar has been much freer in spoken than written discourse. In conversation we don't even hear 'errors' - sentence fragments, verb tense & number non-agreement, complete jumps from one topic to another - that would alarm us all in print.

It's a feature of communications revolutions that they give us first an advance in text before we get it in sound (ie, speech). Being human, we treat this text revolution as if it's speech, not text. Semaphore, Morse code (ie telegrams) and now email, chat and texting have all gone through the same process, in which a strange version of text-as-speech appears and enjoys for a time the special grammatical license usually only accorded to bona fide speech. Usually the tech catches up, audio reasserts its primacy, and norms return until the next tech shift. Now is one of those times.

"Cablese" was once a proto-language as distinct as SMS, textese, chatspeech, etc, and for exactly the same reasons. It's long gone.

[Nanohedron]

You know, it occurred to me yesterday that to a degree we've been talking about registers almost as if one would or should supplant the other. I think it's a mistake to go that far. It's plain that we need and will continue to need stable, standard language for at least such matters as law, resource materials and the sciences, but even though the more fluid and variable casual spoken language doesn't hold to the precision and consistency needed for such things, it isn't going away. It appears to be veering off rather wildly these days, but nevertheless it has its own job to do. By the same token, the so-called static and formal registers aren't going away, either; there's too much need of the language it takes to express them, and in any case there will always be those of us who swim in those waters. I think the question then should be: To what degree does crossover profit better communication? It is in those areas, I think, that language changes and moves forward.

Having said my piece for a more holistic approach to English, I still maintain that a better journalistic standard needs to be revisited and upheld. Call me a throwback.

BTW, I can and do talk street in my fashion too, you know. I blow Lilith Sternin out of the water.

[Tunborough]

Usually the tech catches up, audio reasserts its primacy, and norms return until the next tech shift.

Of course ... that's the next step: audio SMS, or packet-switched audio. Like SMS, and unlike a phone call, you don't have to deal with it right away, but more immediate and easy to use than voice mail. And a lot faster than typing with your thumbs on a wretched touch screen.

Brilliant, my good man.

[david_h]

You know, it occurred to me yesterday that to a degree we've been talking about registers almost as if one would or should supplant the other. I think it's a mistake to go that far.

A mistake 'to talk to a degree almost as if' or to believe that one should supplant the other?

OK, being a bit picky there, but on forum we can ask for clarification or not worry about the precise meaning if we understand how the view expressed moves the discussion forward. So the style can be a little lighter than 'consultative register'

Thanks for introducing me the language registers. Where do articles in 'serious' newspapers (Financial Times) about important issues (a fair chunk of public sector health provision costs) fit in ? What do we expect?

[Nanohedron]

You know, it occurred to me yesterday that to a degree we've been talking about registers almost as if one would or should supplant the other. I think it's a mistake to go that far.

A mistake 'to talk to a degree almost as if' or to believe that one should supplant the other?

To believe that one should supplant the other. Looking back, I can't follow that with "of course", of course. Nicely caught.

Where do articles in 'serious' newspapers (Financial Times) about important issues (a fair chunk of public sector health provision costs) fit in ? What do we expect?

I've always expected serious news articles to fit within the formal register. We shouldn't take "formal" to mean stuffy; it means that standards of form (grammatical, not necessarily stylistic) apply. Of course mistakes happen, but it shouldn't be to such a degree that they are taken for granted.

That list of registers I found has a typo, BTW.

[s1m0n]

Where do articles in 'serious' newspapers (Financial Times) about important issues (a fair chunk of public sector health provision costs) fit in ? What do we expect?

The newspaper biz is a dying trade and standards are under strain all over. No paper can afford the editing apparatus it had 25 years ago, because of cost and because of time. When you've got lots of copy editors and only produce a couple of editions a night, its easier to get every detail right. Now, stories go live as soon as they're filed after what have been seen back then as only cursory editing.

[Nanohedron]

The newspaper biz is a dying trade...

But internet articles are evidently alive and well. To my thinking this doesn't change things for the purposes of our discussion.

...and standards are under strain all over. No paper can afford the editing apparatus it had 25 years ago, because of cost and because of time.

Then it's a better investment to hire writers who are competent at proofreading their own work. When news agencies abandon good professional standards merely for the sake of their ease and wallets, then the Idiocracy is upon us. You won't find me excusing that. If it puts me in the minority these days, so be it.

[benhall.1]

That list of registers I found has a typo, BTW.

If you mean "reserve" instead of "reserved" then yes, I spotted that. Are there more?

[benhall.1]

That list of registers I found has a typo, BTW.

If you mean "reserve" instead of "reserved" then yes, I spotted that. Are there more?

Yes, there are indeed more. I've found two more plus one which is arguably a typo:

1) Under "Casual register" there is a missing indefinite article: "One must be member" instead of "One must be a member".
2) Under "Intimate register" there is an error right at the start: "This communications".

The one which is arguably another typo is in the following list: "e.g. husband & wife, boyfriend & girlfriend, siblings, parent & children". I suspect that the writer intended to write "parents and children". However, with that one, there's no way to know for sure.

So, three and a half typos altogether, in a very short piece. They really should have proof-read it.

[Nanohedron]

Dis communicayshunz iz privat. We r privat kittehz. Bai.


I just sent an email with a typo. #$@&*%.

[david_h]

I suspect that the writer intended to write "parents and children"

I suspect "parent & child" and that the list did not originally have the pairs linked by ampersands.

Getting back the apostrophes. My untrained keyboard fingers have got a stage where I can leave them to get on with putting on screen words that say what I am thinking. But they need supervising because they get words that share the same pronunciation mixed up. I would never mix up there/their where/were it's/its when writing 'longhand' but the wrong ones are for ever appearing on the screen. I wonder if others have the same problem. They can't spell becuase either.

I think it is getting worse. It could advancing years, it could be I am delegating more to them. But I wonder if it could be related to them getting better at finding on a flute the notes that are in my head.

[s1m0n]

The newspaper biz is a dying trade...

But internet articles are evidently alive and well. To my thinking this doesn't change things for the purposes of our discussion.

Alive, to be sure. Well? Not if you're comparing them to the standard achieved by the press of 25 years ago (Mind you, at no time could the press pass the standards of 25 years earlier.) Times change, and norms with them.

...and standards are under strain all over. No paper can afford the editing apparatus it had 25 years ago, because of cost and because of time.

Then it's a better investment to hire writers who are competent at proofreading their own work. When news agencies abandon good professional standards merely for the sake of their ease and wallets, then the Idiocracy is upon us. You won't find me excusing that. If it puts me in the minority these days, so be it.

Tee-hee. Papers do hire competent proofers, but they don't have the same standards as middle-aged fogies of the likes of us. Proof readers and copy editors are young and poorly paid, and always have been. You're now a generation older and quite rightly feeling left behind. Every educated person gets here eventually. What you - and I - need to do now is to find the grace to give up resisting [some of*] the new norms, because those are the future. Sometimes it hurts.

*We need to be able to decide what's actually important (ie, conveying meaning) and what merely exists to signal that the author knows the forms. I'm one of the few writers I know who regularly (and correctly**) deploys the relative pronoun 'whom'. I do so purely to show off. Whom is dead. Sometimes it's fun to be able to prove that I know how it worked, but that doesn't mean that my use of whom alters the meaning of anything I've said.

**If you're curious, test whom in constructions in which you might use him. He (subject) and him (object) are exactly congruent to who and whom. The similar endings telegraphs the fact that these were once part of a regular noun declension system. That system began dying with the shift from old~ to middle english, 1000 years ago. The fact that it's still around for me to play with shows how conservative language can be. English abandoned noun declensions for good a millennia ago, but they're hanging on just fine in our pronouns (him), and were only recently lost in our relative pronouns (whom).