Dr. Shades's Grammar Lesson of the Day

[_ludwigm]

Go ahead and use the search here on the words "horse" and "crap" as separate words and you can see a number of instances where people are spelling it incorrectly.

And if You google search "atheist" and "athiest"?

The "deity" vs "diety" doesn't count, because "diety" is the Parliament in Poland... Other way, it would produce the same result.

Spelling is a hard task for a language in which nothing to do the written letters and their pronounciations.

[Guest]

I wasn't kidding when I mentioned brain cells. For the past couple of years when I'm writing, I have to stare at a word and wonder if it's correct, and often need to use an online dictionary.

I understand exactly what you mean. Every once in a while I start to use or write some word or name that I have been using almost all my life and am all of a sudden (but temporarily) unsure if I am spelling or using it correctly. Thank goodness for free, online dictionaries!

See, when all you guys were passing around the dictionary, no one ever passed it to me!

:-)

As if you really needed anyone to pass it to you! We did have some fun with that bit of lighthearted, back and forth pseudo pedantry, though, didn't we?

But. no matter. Dr. Shades seems to be in firm possession of "the dictionary" on this forum, and as far as I can tell, it's in good hands.

[_Gunnar]

Speaking of grammar, I still find it remarkable how many otherwise seemingly literate, articulate and admirable posters to this forum mix up and improperly use "their", "there" and "they're"; "your" and "you're"; "to" and "too"; "its" and "it's"; and even "then" and "than." Also, it seems that more often than not people seem unaware that the the past tense forms of the verbs "to lead" and "to mislead" are not spelled the same way as their present tense forms.

[_ludwigm]

... seemingly literate, articulate and admirable posters ...

I don't know if I would fit any of them... but ...
In my life, I used to READ and WRITE in English and German --- far more than speak.
That means, I use structures I've read somewhere. For example here, on MDB.

There are words/compositions/structures are from Essential English of C. E. Eckersley I know.
Others, most of them from this site ...

[_JAK]

Speaking of grammar, I still find it remarkable how many otherwise seemingly literate, articulate and admirable posters to this forum mix up and improperly use "their", "there" and "they're"; "your" and "you're"; "to" and "too"; "its" and "it's"; and even "then" and "than." Also, it seems that more often than not people seem unaware that the the past tense forms of the verbs "to lead" and "to mislead" are not spelled the same way as their present tense forms.

Another construction problem is that of the split infinitive. While listeners seem to understand the meaning, “to” should be next to the verb.
The Error: He was told to not go near the water. “To go” is the infinitive which is split. Hence, the sentence should have read: He was told not to go near the water. The error is so common as to remain unnoticed especially in spoken communication.

[_Quasimodo]

Speaking of grammar, I still find it remarkable how many otherwise seemingly literate, articulate and admirable posters to this forum mix up and improperly use "their", "there" and "they're"; "your" and "you're"; "to" and "too"; "its" and "it's"; and even "then" and "than." Also, it seems that more often than not people seem unaware that the the past tense forms of the verbs "to lead" and "to mislead" are not spelled the same way as their present tense forms.

Another construction problem is that of the split infinitive. While listeners seem to understand the meaning, “to” should be next to the verb.
The Error: He was told to not go near the water. “To go” is the infinitive which is split. Hence, the sentence should have read: He was told not to go near the water. The error is so common as to remain unnoticed especially in spoken communication.

I love English and I understand why it grates on you when intelligent people make glaring mistakes in their (there, they're) written comments, but English is such a hodgepodge of other languages that the rules are pretty much arbitrary. Good men like Samuel Johnson tried to (too, two) standardize English, but it's still very confusing to non-English speakers and also to most native English speakers.

In the backcountry of the North of England, the word sheepen can still be the plural for sheep (like oxen). It's actually more correct than using sheep for the plural because that was the original way it was pronounced. The Frankish ending (as in sheeps) is also older and more correct than sheep as plural. Someone, somewhere decided that sheep was best and it stuck.

Often these things were decided by newspaper publishers and standard English in the North of England was very different than (then) in the South for a hundred years or so.

Generally, on a message board, if I can understand what someone is trying to say, it passes.

[_Jersey Girl]

off putting

off-putting

?

(I'm adding to the list as I'm writing posts)

[Guest]

Speaking of grammar, I still find it remarkable how many otherwise seemingly literate, articulate and admirable posters to this forum mix up and improperly use "their", "there" and "they're"; "your" and "you're"; "to" and "too"; "its" and "it's"; and even "then" and "than." Also, it seems that more often than not people seem unaware that the the past tense forms of the verbs "to lead" and "to mislead" are not spelled the same way as their present tense forms.

Another construction problem is that of the split infinitive. While
listeners seem to understand the meaning, “to” should be next to the verb.
The Error: He was told to not go near the water. “To go” is the infinitive which
is split. Hence, the sentence should have read: He was told not to go near
the water. The error is so common as to remain unnoticed especially in
spoken communication.

Hi JAK! It's good to hear from you again. It's been a long time since we last interacted. I always admired your comments!

On splitting the infinitive, however, that doesn't really bother me as much as it used to. It doesn't usually (if ever) change the meaning of what is being said. In some languages it is not even possible to split the infinitive, as the infinitive form of their verbs is just a single word. Perhaps the possibility of splitting the infinitive can be viewed as giving English a slightly additional bit of versatility that some other languages lack. I think splitting the infinitive is generally less severely frowned upon than it used to be (perhaps partly due to the great popularity of Star Trek with it's "to boldly go where no man has gone before."). Still, though, I always avoid splitting the infinitive myself.

[_Gunnar]

I love English and I understand why it grates on you when intelligent people make glaring mistakes in their (there, they're) written comments, but English is such a hodgepodge of other languages that the rules are pretty much arbitrary. Good men like Samuel Johnson tried to (too, two) standardize English, but it's still very confusing to non-English speakers and also to most native English speakers.

In the backcountry of the North of England, the word sheepen can still be the plural for sheep (like oxen). It's actually more correct than using sheep for the plural because that was the original way it was pronounced. The Frankish ending (as in sheeps) is also older and more correct than sheep as plural. Someone, somewhere decided that sheep was best and it stuck.

Often these things were decided by newspaper publishers and standard English in the North of England was very different than (then) in the South for a hundred years or so.

Generally, on a message board, if I can understand what someone is trying to say, it passes.

Thanks for that interesting tidbit of linguistic history! I wasn't aware of that.
I'm with you on this, but as you said, choosing the wrong word in these situations can be confusing and even change the entire meaning of what is being said. I have seen situations when even when viewed in context, it was not immediately obvious which meaning was actually intended, because the use of either word would have been a grammatically correct construction, depending on what the writer actually meant to say.

[_Doctor Steuss]

I wasn't kidding when I mentioned brain cells. For the past couple of years when I'm writing, I have to stare at a word and wonder if it's correct, and often need to use an online dictionary.

I understand exactly what you mean. Every once in a while I start to use or write some word or name that I have been using almost all my life and am all of a sudden (but temporarily) unsure if I am spelling or using it correctly. Thank goodness for free, online dictionaries!

Good ole jamais vu, and semantic satiation. The twin scourges of language.