Pedants United

[MJMcCready]

Well, accordingly to Ammon Shea, syntactic drift is part of the language and not something we can avoid, despite it normally being annoyingly ingratiating. You might want to have a look at his stuff on bad English, he's very good at detailing the extent of it.

[John Clarke]

My last post here for a wee while (promise).

Does anyone else have my particular trouble with having the unorthodox become damn nearly orthodox? Two examples will suffice.

One: vocal chords/cords. I've seen the incorrect version so many times, the correct one now appears wrong, at first glance, anyway.

Two: nuclear/nucular. The incorrect pronunciation is so bloody all-pervasive these days, I sometimes realise to my horror that I've inadvertently used it myself!!

[Paul Habershon]

My last post here for a wee while (promise).

Does anyone else have my particular trouble with having the unorthodox become damn nearly orthodox? Two examples will suffice.

One: vocal chords/cords. I've seen the incorrect version so many times, the correct one now appears wrong, at first glance, anyway.

I must admit to getting that one wrong well into adulthood. It's the musical connection between vocal and chords that deceived me. Luckily it's not a phrase you often have to write.

[Michael Farthing]

There must be literally millions of other examples.

This is a very dangerous thread to write in! I doubt that there are literally millions of other examples when the vocabulary of English is almost certainly only in the hundreds of thousands

[David Sedgwick]

This is a very dangerous thread to write in!

It is also a very dangerous thread in which to write.

[Neil Graham]

I doubt anyone would ask the question "Which Staffordshire cricketer won Sports Personality of the Year"?

No need to - https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m ... us-failure, about 1 minute into the programme.

In those days the award was given to the "Personality of the Year" which meant it wasn't limited to a list of high achievers it now features. So when we vote this year it will be Lewis Hamilton, as usual, plus a few more. It ought to be Marcus Rashford.

[MJMcCready]

Correctness isn't applicable to language. It is not owned by anyone and there isn't a dominant variant, so standardization is problematic on a number of levels. Unfortunately prescriptivism had a long lasting impact on English, and lingers on still. Some of which emerged from that was so pedantic it's embarrassing. The claim that you should not start a sentence with a conjunction is nothing more than a ridiculous Victorian overreaction by teachers who didn't like how children spoke in the playground when literacy was on the rise. So they decided that in written English you can't begin with words like 'And' and 'But', yet this was pushed forwards from being merely a whim to a rule with no basis. When it was pointed out that such implementation was problematic because we have texts such as 'The Bible', in which we can find sentences beginning with conjunctions, such as 'And god said let there be light'. They went all quiet.

[MJMcCready]

The idea that you can't begin a sentence with a conjunction is absolute nonsense by the way. The function of an adverb clause, is to explain the preceding or following clause. They are interchangeable. It's perfectly okay to say 'because it was raining, I took an umbrella', or 'I took an umbrella, because it was raining.' But are grammatically correct although one is in violation of what prescriptivists tried to push through, so that we wouldn't sound like the kids in the playgrounds they got annoyed with.

[Michael Farthing]

This is a very dangerous thread to write in!

It is also a very dangerous thread in which to write.

Knowing you as I do David (and also knowing that you know where I attended university) I am confident that you are expecting the reply:

"This is the sort of nonsense up with which I shall not put".

[Paul Habershon]

At my golf club: several directional signs with an arrow - BUGGIES and TROLLIES

Several of these need renewing and I've unsuccessfully tried to establish who will eventually write the new signs. Unimportant error for many, I guess, but if it's easy to get it right why not get it right? Prescriptive maybe, but it doesn't give a good impression.

Unfortunately 'trollies' are obscure American slang for underpants.

I keep a marker pen in my golf bag for writing identification initials on my golf balls. It also came in useful for inserting the apostrophe on the Captain's Bunker sign. That valuable aid to meaning needs renewing occasionally, especially after heavy rain.

[NickFaulks]

inserting the apostrophe on the Captain's Bunker sign

Can you be certain that it shouldn't be Captains' Bunker?

[David Sedgwick]

I have just written "you will need formally to declare" in an email.

Gmail suggested that I might wish to amend this to "you will need to formally declare".

I did not adopt the suggestion.

[Michael Farthing]

The English-speaking world may be divided into:
(1) those who neither know nor care what a split infinitive is;
(2) those who do not know, but care very much;
(3) those who know and condemn;
(4) those who know and approve;
and (5) those who know and distinguish.

Those who neither know nor care are the vast majority, and are a happy folk, to be envied by most of the minority classes

H.W Fowler - The rest of the article (in Fowler's Modern English Usage) is a delightful read but far too long to reproduce.

I think we may infer that David belongs to class 3.

[Paul Habershon]

inserting the apostrophe on the Captain's Bunker sign

Can you be certain that it shouldn't be Captains' Bunker?

Absolutely certain, Nick, because the Senior Captain and the Lady Captain were not involved in choosing the charity to which 50p should be paid every time your ball lands in that bunker.

[Ian Thompson]

H.W Fowler - The rest of the article (in Fowler's Modern English Usage) is a delightful read but far too long to reproduce.

If Fowler is too long, I recommend you to boldly read this article instead.