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#grammar

5 posts5 participants0 posts today

I shared this post a few weeks back which included a grammatical error. By the time I shared, the comments had already turned into a dogpile of teacher's pets climbing over each other to point out the mistake or congratulate themselves on having caught it. But here's the thing:

Less vs Fewer is the pedantry of those who have gained the first inkling—no more—of an appreciation for the English language. They wield it gleefully like a yardstick across the knuckles of their peers. These are people who never properly mourned the death of their master, and are thus condemned to a cycle of perpetually unattainable gratification of the master in their head.

What's more, they also miss an important evolution of language that is revealing in its implicit critique. Less vs Fewer reflects not merely the degradation of instruction or of the culture of literacy, but is inextricably linked to the massification of economy, culture, bodies, and therefore language. One may speak of "less cops" because cops are in an important sense not individuated. They are a mass, and treating them as such is an essential part of understanding what they are, and how they operate symbolically. It is also necessary to understanding them as individuals.

Yes, it is incorrect in a sense (and I'm hardly one to point the finger for agonizing over grammatical minutiae). But to grasp what's happening linguistically it's necessary to look further than the fact that an error has been committed, to look instead into how and why language has been detourned in this way, and what latent meaning its misuse might reveal.

#linguistics #grammar #cops

todon.eu/@RadicalGraffiti/1143

Todon.euRadical Graffiti (@RadicalGraffiti@todon.eu)Attached: 1 image Anti-cop poster spotted in Seattle

This is how you do it.

My original comment was in reference to an article about RFK wanting to ban artificial food coloring. The Times said "The data shows". The NYT has been pretty good about posting my replies. Hopefully they will continue.

Is there a Firefox add-on that could help me learn proper use of commas?

I think commas are used differently in German and English but I'm always unsure. A little add-on making suggestions would be great.

#WritersCoffeeClub #WCC 2504.21 — In honor of @johnhowesauthor who doesn’t really like coffee: what “established” writerly traits don’t really apply to you?

Forgive me for inverting this question. I like positivity.

  1. Drinks whiskey and whisky and bourbon. Check. See photo.
  2. Has a pet cat. Not currently. Historically, tho.
  3. Drinks gallons of coffee. Decaf cappuccino please, and only a cup or two. Extra credit: I've only written in a coffee shop a few times; I prefer the tables outside because drinking with a N95 mask is difficult.
  4. Depressed and melancholy. I was depressed, then I realized I held the illusion that I was in control of events in my life. (Thank you Wayne Dyer.) When I gave up on the illusion, literally became disillusioned, I kicked the depression. Let's give that trait a half-point for historical reasons.
  5. Is eccentric. I feel rather symmetrical, even if I was always a square and never a rounder. If this means hyperbolic, count me in! Maybe I should ask my spouse? Um, maybe not.
  6. Has a god complex. That's kind of a sexist question. What about goddesses? Not answering.
  7. Is reclusive. Does shy count?
  8. Unkempt. Not describing my current state of clothing, current lack thereof, grooming, or smell status. Nope.
  9. Broke. I had a day job. Not stupid.
  10. Chain smokes. The only time you smell smoke around me is when I tend a barbecue. My mum was the chain smoker, which I think accounts for my asthma.
  11. Writes longhand. Are you flapping nuts? I was obviously destined to be a doctor if you believe that about bad pen craft. I learned on a mechanical typewriter, progressed to a Smith-Corona, then an Apple ][ and haven't looked back since. (11½. Writes with a fountain pen. My writing greatly improves with a nibbed pen; I studied calligraphy. Still, I think faster than I can talk, let alone type on a keyboard, so why would I do something so cripplingly ridiculous to my productivity?)
  12. Procrastinates. Um. Here I am replying to an Internet prompt. Again.
  13. In a state of continual angst. Maybe. Depends on the day, or whether what I am writing might contradict the conservative social climate fomenting in my country of origin. Okay, likely. Very likely. Oh noes!
  14. Eschews adverbs. I definitely use adverbs. Whether they survive revision is another matter.
  15. Is a literary snob. Whiskey snob, maybe. Okay. I confess it! I love Charles Dickens. The rest of them, never read 'em. I'm not well-read literally. [Is that the right word?] Even in my genre(s), I like what I like not what other readers hold up as the best. Another good reason to be shy. I can't even carry on small talk about literature!
  16. Writes under various noms de plume. Yes.
  17. Cuts a dashing figure. That kind of implies a gender, doesn't it? Nobody can accuse me of being pretty or rugged. Average. Which may explain why I write about average looking people. In any case, I do know a few things about clothing and fabrics; I can put together a nice ensemble, with accessories and shoes. I even own a turtleneck. Hats are good. I can package well. Maybe true.
  18. Swears and curses a lot. Ask my computer. The people in my life would say, "Incapable." I'm reputed to be "delicate." I use my computer when nobody is around, and self-censor when they are.
  19. Has a giant vocabulary. Word choice counts and I will use the exact word. See item 14.
  20. Is a grammarian par excellence. Me! Ha! I often write in grammar B and perpetrate grammaricide with glorious glee, enough so that any self-respecting high school English teacher would not only fail my purple prose ass, but send my sorry hind-part to the principal's office on principle for a paddling!

Enough fun. Forgive me. Please!

More in #altText.

[Author retains copyright (c)2025 R.S.]

#BoostingIsSharing

#gender #fiction #writer #author #grammar
#writing #writingcommunity #writersOfMastodon #writers
#RSdiscussion

Today, in a fit of absolute rage, I turned off grammar check in my word processors. Spelling check still remains, but I was doing a basic check in Microsoft Word for someone else the other day to show someone how it worked and it kept suggesting wrong suggestions! Seriously! For example, whenever the dude would write, Friday morning, it kept wanting to capitalize morning and put a dash between Friday, and, morning when morning wasn't a noun. There are other little things I spotted too, so either my grammar is getting better or this new machine is dumb enough to think it knows better than me.

I'm keeping my autocorrects on though because I love the magic of typing two letters and having it transform into ten sentences.

But grammar? I've decided I'm leaving that to the editors. More work for them, but honestly, some of these suggestions are outright incorrect. This is especially ironic because I know some form of ML, Machine Learning, is behind these suggestions. Damn. You couldn't even code how fucking American English works, tech bros?

#Grammar exploration for today.
While reviewing a document at work I encountered this phrase: "do's and don'ts"

The pedant in me wants this to be either "dos and don'ts" or "do's and don't's".

I'm not the only one this bothers. According to this well-researched page, all three are considered acceptable to different constituencies:

vocabulary.com/articles/wc/dos

I will therefore resist the urge to mark up the document with a correction for this phrase. 😉

Grammar annoyance from the past couple of days: worse vs. worst.

Worse [the comparative form of bad] is used to compare two things that are both bad/low quality.

“This event is worse than the last one.”

Worst [the superlative form of bad] is used to describe something that’s of the lowest possible quality.

“That was the worst event I’ve ever attended!”

Read recently: “It only got worst when the event was over.” 😖

Correct: “It only got worse when the event was over.”

After the boat race, one of my rowing coaches was saying on our WhatsApp how much he hates Oxford, but doesn’t know why. People started listing things:
“Marmalade”
“Brogues”
“Bags”

We should make a list, I said. “Marmalade, brogues, and bags”

Nothing. Not a single reaction.

Pearls before bloody swine. I ask you.

This piece makes the good point that "suspicion of the em dash also speaks to our mounting paranoia over automated communication" — we know there are people passing off AI crap as their own writing, and we want to be able to spot it. But the em dash "cannot be a reliable metric of AI reliance for the simple reason that it is a case of the software mimicking *human* writing patterns."

h/t @raganwald

rollingstone.com/culture/cultu

Extreme close-up of the end of a pencil resting on a blank sheet of white paper.
Rolling Stone · Are Em Dashes Really a Sign of AI Writing?By Miles Klee
Continued thread

On the thorny issue of the Oxford comma I'm personally on the team that says any sentence where it noticeably increases or decreases ambiguity is poorly constructed. Redraft time.

I use it sometimes but generally prefer to avoid it for aesthetics reasons, it's certainly not something that should ever be load-bearing.