Spelling and grammar: An article for all at letsrun

Things change!

The grammar police and Roger O’Neil should realize that words are created, deleted, and modified every day. As long as we are still able to communicate, our world will be just fine. With the advent of technology and a changing way of life, people have begun to modify languages, but I would argue that communication hasn't suffered much as a result. Whether you type/write "for" or "4" does not signal a massive communication breakdown. As long as the idea is transferred, communication has been a success.

I ask anyone who upholds today's standard of correct English to justify why today's version is not necessarily a breakdown of a more efficient system of grammar in the past; a time where communication was achieved at the highest level.

Vanamee wrote:

Things change!

I ask anyone who upholds today's standard of correct English to justify why today's version is not necessarily a breakdown of a more efficient system of grammar in the past; a time where communication was achieved at the highest level.

I ask anyone who upholds the language skills seen on this site to interpret any Sol Richard post for me.

And rules for the message boards:

Capitalize everything properly. If your submission lacks proper capitalization, it will be deleted... unless it's really, really, really, really, ridiculously awesome.

The plural of "Chuck Norris" is "Chuck Norris'", not "Chuck Norris's"

Don't use run-on sentences. I don't like having to go through every post fixing stuff. Call me the Grammar Nazi if you must, but that's the rule.

If your fact contains a horizontal ellipsis ("..."), make sure there's a space after it, not before it, and that it's three periods long. No more, no less.

On this site, there will be only one space after a period. I don't care what you were taught. Continuity is king, and that is the way it will be.

If you are including a quote, as in something someone said, a comma goes after "said" and before the quotation. If the quotation goes at the end of a sentence, the period goes inside the quotation.

Example:

My physics teacher once said, "Stop asking me questions or I will kill you."

If you are using quotation marks to note a term you made up yourself, or something other than dialogue, the period goes outside of the quotes and, depending on the situation, a comma before the quotes are not needed and/or the first word in the quotes is not capitalized.

Example:

Everybody knew Bobby was "fabulous".

For the love of God Chuck Norris, use spell check. Even if you have to copy and paste your fact into Microsoft Word (or the word processor of your choice) before you send it.

It may take up to a week for your fact to be added and you might not even see it anyway.

If you don't know the difference between "you're" and "your", please leave this site and get yourself educated.

If you don't know the difference between "two", "too", and "to", get on that.

Don't submit a fact your friend told you. Chances are that it already exists and I don't need to read it again.

"chase me with a saw," like we need you or your cronies's to tell us how to spell and say other stuff right to ....And its not you're place to tell us to leeve the board.

Despite our best efforts, grammar and spelling can still have ambiguities. For example, if you wanted to refer to the nose of the Queen of England, writing "the Queen of England's nose" would be correct, even though it might appear that you are talking about the anatomy of England rather than that of the Queen.

Another "hard-and-fast rule" which irks me is the one that states that when using quotes, the final punctuation mark must come before the closing quotation mark. There are obviously cases in which this would be inappropriate. One might be as follows: Who here knows that Jack Armstrong has been saddled with the joke middle name of "Offengeture?" In this case, it is incorrect to have included the question mark within the quotes, as it implies that the question mark is itself part of Jack's joke middle name.

Phaedrus wrote:

"chase me with a saw," like we need you or your cronies's to tell us how to spell and say other stuff right to ....And its not you're place to tell us to leeve the board.

It should be...

"Chase me with a saw," like we need you or your cronies to tell us how to spell and stay stuff correctly. Its not your place to tell us to leave the board.

Plural is Chuck Norrii

Vanamee wrote:

Things change!

The grammar police and Roger O’Neil should realize that words are created, deleted, and modified every day. As long as we are still able to communicate, our world will be just fine. With the advent of technology and a changing way of life, people have begun to modify languages, but I would argue that communication hasn't suffered much as a result. Whether you type/write "for" or "4" does not signal a massive communication breakdown. As long as the idea is transferred, communication has been a success.

I ask anyone who upholds today's standard of correct English to justify why today's version is not necessarily a breakdown of a more efficient system of grammar in the past; a time where communication was achieved at the highest level.

Keep thinking this way son and you are going to have a problem. I posted this story after throwing yet another resume in the trash.

On the cover letter the person wrote: I hope to speak to u in person soon. He also used the "4" abbreviation.

You would be amazed at the amount of resumes sent to me that look like the person is sending a text message to to his buddy.

"Then" and "than" is another good one that seemingly NO ONE on this site knows how to use.

Here's another word that most of us have no clue how to spell.

Definitely

Look at that a few times. It's not that hard to spell, so spell it correctly!

i agree there's a time and a place for proper gammar like a resume or a formal paper. Letrun's message boards, however, are neither of these. It doesn't matter on these boards so the grammar police should still find something useful to do like solving a differential equation. I understand they're bitter becasue they have useless english degrees, but that's their fault.

You practice like you play.

say stuff correctly. It's. Not its.

picker of nits wrote:

Plural is Chuck Norrii

I was thinking the same thing, but then I assumed that would be true only if he were from Latin America.

Vanamee wrote:

Things change!

The grammar police and Roger O’Neil should realize that words are created, deleted, and modified every day. As long as we are still able to communicate, our world will be just fine. With the advent of technology and a changing way of life, people have begun to modify languages, but I would argue that communication hasn't suffered much as a result. Whether you type/write "for" or "4" does not signal a massive communication breakdown. As long as the idea is transferred, communication has been a success.

I ask anyone who upholds today's standard of correct English to justify why today's version is not necessarily a breakdown of a more efficient system of grammar in the past; a time where communication was achieved at the highest level.

This attitude is the reason both you and Sol Richard will remain unemployed and unemployable.

Try out that little theory on your next job application.

Employer wrote:

On the cover letter the person wrote: I hope to speak to u in person soon. He also used the "4" abbreviation.

Yeah, but I bet he like threw in a couple of smileys to show he was kidding, right? Cut the dood some slack dood.

Employer wrote:

You would be amazed at the amount of resumes sent to me that look like the person is sending a text message to to his buddy.

I hear the use of "double prepositions" is becoming quite the fashion.

STL_Runner wrote:

Definitely

Look at that a few times. It's not that hard to spell, so spell it correctly!

I don't understand why this is so hard either.

Just think "de" + "finitely" (NOT de + finately).

PDUBS wrote:

It doesn't matter on these boards so the grammar police should still find something useful to do like solving a differential equation. I understand they're bitter becasue they have useless english degrees, but that's their fault.

Scientists and mathematicians generally write very well (although I've known some engineers who could have used a few technical writing courses).

Face it: smart people write well and take pride in communicating clearly and concisely. There's as much beauty in an elegant sentence as there is in an elegant mathematical proof.

Revisit this thread:

http://www.letsrun.com/forum/flat_read.php?board=1&id=1029284&thread=1029119