Nice straw man you’ve knocked over there. Feels good?
Did your sudden, uncaring attitude and ad hominem attacks coincide with a stroke?
I don’t think anyone here has said that, only that people who place as much importance on it as you apparently do are gigantic tools who don’t know half as much as they think they do.
We’re not the ones afflicted with fits of apoplexy over the -ly suffix.
English was a subject I excelled in, by the way. As for beating up a smart kid every day, well, I was never able to catch myself so I had to leave myself unmolested.
I wouldn’t dignify his infantile flailing by trying to defend my knowledge of English via grades or degree or career. That’s just playing into his game.
Meh, he brought Chutes and Ladders to a Canasta fight.
Useful distinctions in meaning can be lost when the language loses its distinctions in grammar.
Regarding adverbs losing their “ly” endings, for example, recall the kerfluffle over the grammar in Apple’s “Think different” ad campaign.
There is, of course, nothing wrong with it, grammatically or otherwise, despite all the Miss Grundys of the world condemning it.
But aside from that, there is a distinct, if suble, difference in meaning between “think different” and “think differently.” Across the board, the language is made poorer when such differences are lost, which would have been the case had adverbs never ended in “ly”. Indeed, the ad campaign, which played upon the difference, could not have existed had this been the case.
I’m not extolling the virtues of those ads. I’m using them as an example of English losing distinctions in meaning when unthinking fashion takes on a life of its own.
As someone who has done a lot of professional proofreading for publication I’d just like to point out that there’s nothing new to this kind of error in writing, and I can assure you that the sky isn’t falling.
By starting this thread you chose to place yourself in a finger-pointing position about a common, long-standing, and relatively minor issue with everyday writing, as though your great understanding of punctuation (and yes, that’s all it is, a question of punctuation) would serve to enlighten those who are destroying the very core of communication in English. With further bloviating you revealed your own ignorance of language, and instead of getting off your high pony you just blew the whole thing way out of proportion.
Personally I would say that this isn’t even a question of prescriptivism vs. descriptivism (which I believe pertains more to speech than writing, and that’s another issue, hashed out before in other threads, so let’s leave that alone), but you should know better that that’s always going to come up here in just about any thread about perceived “rules” in language.
By starting this in the pit you guaranteed that it wasn’t going to turn out to be the back-slapping praise of your fine knowledge of punctuation that you were looking for.
Oh, subtly distinct near-synonyms are a good thing? Great, it’s lovely how language keeps churning out more of them: “reveal” vs. “revelation”, “cite” vs. “citation”, “service” vs. “serve”…
No,
If you must know…three beers, a hot fucking Sunday mowing the now overgrown grass and a bitchy assed SO. Its like the perfect storm 
And when, BTW, is butthurt an ad hominem?
If they’re truly useful, they won’t be lost. People don’t purposefully hobble themselves.
Beat me to it.
Language is self-correcting. If “think different” has a significantly different meaning from “think differently,” then English speakers are going to keep making that distinction, because when someone tries to be ‘lazy’ and leave off the -ly, it will cause confusion. If there is no meaningful difference, then nothing is lost.
Well, to be fair though, if his writing was near perfect and he had assumed a pretty good intellectual position he might have had a fighting chance. Neither of those? Shit yeah it was piranha week on the Discovery Channel fur sure.
Of course, people might gradually switch to communicating the same connotational difference by different means. It’s not that the ability to express the distinction is ever lost; it’s just that the manner of expressing it may shift.
This from a user whose name is Indistinguishable.
It has been awful for vanity searching… I had no idea that word comes up so often.
Sudden observation (which I’ve perhaps had and forgotten before): written language fails to distinguish between “it’s” = “it is” and “it’s” = “it has”. But people usually get by…
One language dilution that makes me sad is the use of “literally” to mean “figuratively”. As in “the guy was literally eight feet tall”. I believe that some dictionaries now have it as an accepted usage. It bothers me because I don’t know of a word --or even a short phrase-- that conveys the meaning “literally” with similar efficiency. “Actually” underwent a similar dilution and won’t suffice.
I have a mental image of the people of who use literally to mean figuratively and it’s not a flattering image.
I can’t believe THIS thread of all things has gone on for 300 posts. Is *someone wrong on the internet *again?
We do have a word that means that. Here, let me tell you it: literally. It certainly isn’t the first word to hold two contradictory meanings and it won’t be the last. Check out Indistinguishable’s post 205 for a wicked demolishing of the idea that what’s happening to literally is unusual or remarkable.