[Magdalen] "Formal Speech"

[Grace Cangialosi]

Then there's "Me and him went to the store."  Like fingernails on
chalkboard!  (Now, there's an expression that won't mean a thing to anyone
in a few years...)

On Sat, Mar 7, 2015 at 7:59 PM, Jay Weigel <jay.weigel at gmail.com> wrote:

> And I just made one of my own, thanks to this keyboard....obviously.
>
> On Saturday, March 7, 2015, Jay Weigel <jay.weigel at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > I don't care too awfully much about split infinitives or ending a
> sentence
> > with a preposition, but there are some things that drive me absolutely
> > nuts. "Between you and I" will just about make me scream out loud, and
> > "between she and I" makes me want to hit someone or something.
> > "Irregardless" is merely irritating, but "flaunt" instead of "flout" is a
> > teeth-grinder. And don't get me started on spelling errors, especially
> > online ones....obiously proofreading is a lost art.
> >
> > On Saturday, March 7, 2015, Scott Knitter <scottknitter at gmail.com
> > <javascript:_e(%7B%7D,'cvml','scottknitter at gmail.com');>> wrote:
> >
> >> A lot of this depends on what genre of communication one is doing, of
> >> course. There are "house styles" for various publications that do
> >> employ various selections of rules that are no longer universally
> >> applicable: some may have a conservative style that would use "whom"
> >> (which I think is still a rule, if one is writing something formal
> >> like a dissertation or a documentary piece in The New Yorker).
> >>
> >> I'm on the editorial board at Hewlett-Packard; our main job is to
> >> update the HP Writing Style Guide every summer. We argue about things
> >> like our standing rule against using "over" when you really mean "more
> >> than." The chairman doesn't even care about this rule anymore, but
> >> it's been kept mainly to facilitate translation (aka "localization");
> >> more precise English helps translators translate more quickly and
> >> correctly.
> >>
> >> Other things that have often been thought illegal, like split
> >> infinitives, aren't forbidden in our style guide, but I do fix them if
> >> they sound bad and the fixed version would sound better. It's easy
> >> enough to change "The system helps users to more quickly create
> >> documents" to "The system helps users to create documents more
> >> quickly."
> >>
> >> More and more people are making case errors lately, like "Obama paid a
> >> visit to we who worked on his campaign," and that just sounds nuts to
> >> me. Case is much simpler in English than in many other languages, and
> >> that's one rule, or set of rules, worth keeping. Mainly I think that
> >> error comes from misjudging which part of the sentence is the main one
> >> and which is the relative clause. Diagramming still helps!
> >>
> >> On Sat, Mar 7, 2015 at 2:07 PM, Ann Markle <ann.markle at aya.yale.edu>
> >> wrote:
> >> > It must be that I'm in a different universe.  There are grammatical
> >> rules,
> >> > yes.  But it has been acceptable to end sentences with prepositions
> for
> >> > DECADES.  Where have some been during those decades?  Evidently not
> >> reading
> >> > nor writing, nor communicating with 20th and 21st Century grammarians.
> >> > Nobody uses "whom" anymore.  That's not about sloppiness, it's about
> >> > evolution (slower, but inevitable).  I am not an English class
> dropout,
> >> but
> >> > someone who keeps up on the (current, late 20th Century) formal rules
> of
> >> > usage.  Stay current, or accept one's status as a dinosaur!  Sorry,
> and
> >> no
> >> > disrespect meant to my (not so very, but also not very current)
> elders!
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >> --
> >> Scott R. Knitter
> >> Edgewater, Chicago, Illinois USA
> >>
> >
>



-- 
Grace Cangialosi
Ruckersville, VA

It's a good thing Mary didn't have to wait for a Doctrine of the
Incarnation
before she said "Yes" to God.