Cecil never said that anyway. If you read what he said carefully, what he said was that those who accuse Americans of misusing the term entrée are incorrect, because American usage of the term evolved from the same root, but went in a different direction. He’s being quite anit-prescriptivist in this. 
I might be mistaken, but I believe you will find that he does it the way he does so that, if you quote HIM, you don’t lose the quote he referenced in his post without having to undergo all sorts of obnoxious quote tag cut & paste gymnastics to retain it. Which actually I find preferable.
You are correct.
~
And I think some folks are reading an awful lot into the “baked beans” comment, never mind the fact that it likely was meant to be lumped in with other “oozy” things, such as Vegemite.
Not that one can compare easily the quality of the hits, but Googling on “baked beans” and “Australia” got me 147,000 hits - versus 199,000 for “England” and “baked beans.” I don’t know if that means anything or not; Cecil would have to tell you what was in mind. My educated guess is that Cecil asked some Australian residents about it; he knows so many people. But since it was a throwaway line, I would be very surprised if he did any serious research into that subject. I suggest someone mail into Cecil a question about baked beans, and see if he answers.
OK. I see your point. I guess that means that using “football” to refer to Aussie Rules or rugby is objectively wrong, then.
It has plenty going for it: it’s used by over 330 million people in North America. Considering that there are only 380 million native speakers of English in the world, if we’re going to try to compare words on an objective basis–which, I remind you, is your idea, not mine–the North American usage wins, hands down. But comparing dialect features as objective challengers to one another is a silly game anyway.
I don’t lose the quote he references. But I do my coding by hand anyway. Which is, again, not that difficult.
Then why don’t you do the same? And it doesn’t explain why he uses Usenet conventions instead of the bold/italics/underline tags.
Is the convention he uses difficult to understand? Does it lack clarity? Are you left wondering what he is doing?
Are we so sheep-like that we MUST do something everyone else does? :dubious:
I do what I do because in general, I don’t consider keeping the “inner quote” part of what I am displaying as the quote I’m referring to. If I did, I’d quite likely find another way of doing it. Kind of like how he does.
It’s not a question of following the herd, it’s a question of creating a single coherent format. I’ve said it before, but one of my favorite things about the Dope–and one of the reasons it’s the only part of the Internet I pay money to participate in–is because it has a clean, uniform format.
Then again, maybe he likes having his posts stand out. I certainly can’t take that away from him.
I don’t want to get sucked into this fight, but I have to say I was blown away by the restaurants in Sydney. Seriously, consistently, better than any other city I’ve ever been in the world, and I’ve been to many - and not just at the high end. The rest of the east coast, not so much - most of it was fucking awful, in fact. I’ve never been to Melbourne.
Anyway, my point re. the column, is that I saw a fascinating documentary a few years ago that said rather than “devised in France”, as Cecil says, this method of dining, with formalised courses, rather than a haphazard delivery to the table, was actually adopted in France from the Russian court, and was known as dining “à la Russe” when it was first adopted.
ETA: I now see I said the exact same thing in hawthorne’s thread last year. Consistency is a virtue, isn’t it?
Cite that it is used that way in Canada and Mexico? Otherwise you are talking about the USA only, so more like 215m native speakers. Even including Canada it comes to only 233m.
I don’t know why only native speakers get a vote, but the US has 215m out of 319m by my count. India and China have the largest number of English speakers in the world, the US is only third.
United States: pop. 303,006,000
Extrapolation from U.S. POPClock. U.S. Census Bureau. Population Clock
Canada: pop. 33,128,300
Statistics Canada. Canada’s population estimates 2007-09-27. Retrieved on 2007-09-27. http://www.statcan.ca/Daily/English/070927/d070927a.htm
English language: 380 million native speakers (liberal estimate)
The triumph of English. The Economist (20 December 2001). Retrieved on 2007-03-26. A world empire by other means
Because which meaning of the word “entree” is used, is only relevant in countries where the common first language is in English. That’s where it’s going to be on restaurant menus in a consistent and logical fashion, generally.
http://www.dine.to/dine_and_save.php?day=&range=all
http://www.oldmilltoronto.com/DinnerMenu.html
I can find many more. This doesn’t answer as to whether or not it’s more common in Canada, but is sure as hell isn’t unknown. I won’t address Mexico since that’s not an apples to apples comparison.
Let’s stick to native English speakers, otherwise we also get to count everyone in the US who passed high school Spanish and French as being Spanish and French speakers who use entree in the US manner. And if we stick to native English speakers, the majority are in the US - 67% or so.
If 67% of people do something one way, you should at least be open to the possibility that it might be an accepted practice.
It’s more like following consistent rules of grammar. And following the conventions of a community seems to me to be the polite thing to do.
Nonsense, frankly. Style conformation in grammar is done for specific purposes, none of which are applicable to style of posting. And style prescriptivism in grammar is as equally to be ignored as needed. :dubious:
You want sheep? You are at wayyy the wrong forum. 
So, it’s sheeplike to wear clothes, keep soda around for your guests, and make small talk in the way that’s accepted in your community?
It’s sheep-like to insist that the guests wear the proper clothing, that they drop their calling card off in the foyer on the silver tray, etc.
Really, don’t you see just how incredibly small-minded and petty it is to say that someone has to use YOUR preferred method of quoting someone? As if you had the right to determine what bad manners consist of around here? Get real. :dubious:
It’s not MY preferred method, it’s the community’s preferred method. And standards in how we communicate are a good thing; it helps make us understandable to each other. Sure, WW’s Usenet conventions aren’t hard to figure out, but if everyone started using different styles, it would increase the difficulty in understanding each other. This is no different than style conformation in grammar.
Yeah, it’s a small thing, but there’s not a real good reason why he doesn’t do it the accepted way.
It isn’t polite to adhere to the communication standards of a community you’re part of?
Ok, this is the last on this I’ll contribute. I think that you are quite incorrect to assert that just because most people do a thing a given way, everyone HAS to do it that way to be polite. Hell, I don’t really care what method anyone uses as long as it’s easily understood. The minute you can explain how there would be some sort of mass confusion from having people use that old method, feel free to convince me. Otherwise, all you are doing is making him wear his pants the way you want him too, and I will assert with some confidence that that’s not an idea most of the members here are likely to be comfortable with.
And who says it is the “accepted” way? Just because it’s what the software does by default? Get real.
Do you travel and just run roughshod over the customs and language of other cultures?
That’s not what I said. Enough people using their own method would lead to many different methods with would hinder communication. I agree with Hostile Dialect, following the convention here leads to cleaner reading.
How her wears his pants has nothing to do with communication. It’s a poor analogy.
Others have already posted from encyclopedias and such so I’ll add this quote, taken from The Table-Talk of Samuel Marchbanks , by Mr. Robertson Davies and published in 1949:
“…I do not mean a great dinner, for such things are almost impossible in private houses in our day; I mean a simple seven course dinner, consisting of a Soup (I like a choice of thick or clear), a Fish (I am very partial to lobster for this course), an Entrée (where the cook shows her utmost skill with a soufflé or some other complex and ingenious dish), …”
To be followed by a Remove, a Sweet, a Savoury and a Dessert. Clearly, Mr. Davies, a Canadian to his marrow, did not consider the entrée a mere appetizer and also consider that his usage was quite common in Canadian society.
I am not overly familiar with dining conventions in Mexico, Puerto Rico, Barbados, Nicaragua, Guatemala, El Salvador, Costa Rica, Trinidad, Jamaica, Belize, Honduras, Haiti, Tobago, the Dominican Republic, the Bahamas, and Panama. (One can also include Greenland and Cuba plus I suspect I’m missing some that are St. Someone-or-other.) I’m willing to wager, though, that the majority of residents in those North American countries are not native speakers of English.
I think it’s pretty obvious that by North America I meant Anglophone North America. I didn’t think I had to say that.
As for current usage, I don’t think a cite from 1949 is necessarily that useful, especially since we’d already proven it wrong before it was offered.