Walloon, you pompous-assed prescriptivist grammar Nazi

The BBQ Pit
1

Look, man (or whatever you are), I’ve about had it up to here with your topically irrelevant, debatably incorrect, smarmily prescriptivist grammar-correction posts. Seems to me that each and every time someone dares to use the term “media” with a verb conjugated in the singular, you get your panties in a bunch and cannot resist chiming in with a brief message chastising the poster for his shocking – utterly shocking – butchery of the English language. Sometimes you even provide authoritative references to back up your anal-retentive behaviour. Like the internationally-renowned English experts at C. Johnson Enterprises Ltd.com, who spell “Latin” with a lowercase L, insert extraneous spaces inside parentheses and quotation marks, and freely mix hyphens with en and em dashes. But hey, they condemn the “media”-as-singular usage, so they must know what they’re talking about, right? Or how about this online English quiz you reference, which actually admits that “our language seems to be moving toward the acceptance of ‘media’ as a singular collective noun”? Did you not read that far down the page, or have you made it your life’s mission to halt and reverse the natural progression of the English language by self-appointing yourself the SDMB Grammar Police?

In case it hasn’t dawned on you yet, English, like all natural languages, is in a constant state of flux. We borrow extensively from other languages and anglicize their words. Once upon a time, “opera” was a plural. So were “stamina”, and “agenda”, and “zucchini”. Nowadays I doubt even someone like you would insist that we make a distinction between “opus” and “opera”, or always write “the agenda are” instead of “the agenda is”. “Media” as a singular noun has long been attested in formal and informal literature, going right back, according to the OED, to its very first known usage in 1927. Other descriptivist dictionaries, such as Merriam-Webster, confirm this viewpoint.

Sure, no one’s going to stop you if you want to be a pretentious git and insist on writing things like “octopodes” instead of “octopuses”. But don’t go around correcting people as if they don’t have a clue how to speak their own language. Many of us know damn well that “media” is properly a Latin plural, but we’re speaking English here, not Latin. Until the Chicago Reader mandates that all SDMB posts follow the GPO Style Manual you cite, don’t insist that the rest of us use it.

Oh, and as far as empirical evidence is concerned, Google returns 759 000 hits for “media is”, but only 465 000 for “media are”. I’d be surprised if the proportion would be significantly different for any other modern-day mixed-genre corpus.

You’ve lost.

Get over it.

2

Yah - that’s actually pretty obnoxious.

Walloon cut it out. There are lots of word usages that pick my butt. Pointing them out at every turn is really quite annoying.

3

Oh, man. All this time I thought it was “octopi.” I am seriously screwed.

4

Me, I’m still stuck on the ‘zucchini’.

[sub]zucchinus?[/sub]

5

That sounds really, really obscene.

6

Actually, I’m with Walloon on this one. Sure, some of my singular/plural form mistakes stem simply from haste in writing, but when it’s obvious (or even seemingly obvious) that I’ve made a mistake because of ignorance, then I encourage others to point out the correct form.

Same goes with spelling and mechanics. And from what I’ve read, it looks like Walloon wasn’t acting like an ass; in fact, he/she seemed to be rather perfunctory and polite with the corrections.

Besides, as has been oft-stated on the SDMB, we’re here to fight ignorance (except during Sundays–then I’m here just to troll for women’s underwear); encouraging others to use a noun form that is not accepted yet (even informally) by those who really, really like that sort of thing runs contrary, I feel, to the Board’s bandied about purpose.

That said, I don’t care much for the posts in a debate that are written simply to humilate the misspeller (or other language-sinner) instead of attacking his/her arguments.

7

Thanks, psychonaut. I’m one of the ones he “corrected,” and I found it annoying and pedantic.

8

But you’re assuming that those of us who use “media” as a singular are doing so out of ignorance. I’m certainly not. I use “media” as a plural in some cases, like when discussing mixed media artwork. I use “media” as a singular when discussing the mass media. I know that using “media” as a singular in the latter case is technically correct, but I choose to go with the more modern usage.

9

but in a good way… if you’re into that sort of thing. Just make sure you trim off all the spiky bits first.

10

:eek:

SkipMagic - I have to disagree. It’s kind of obnxious to continually point out what YOU consider to be a gramatical error.

Case in point. People on this board confuse “advice” and “advise” all the time. It picks my butt. I keep it to myself.

Unless the person is asking about the specific word usage it belittles their post to point out gramatical errors, IMHO.

If it bugs you that much, start a thread about it. And then let it go elsewhere.

11

My point, though, is that it’s not a mistake. At least not unless you’re writing something up for publication and your publisher’s style guide insists upon one usage or the other. The English language was not created by decree, and there’s no official academy overseeing its usage. What is and is not correct is collectively determined by its speakers as a whole. And as far as I’m concerned, the people have spoken: using “media” as a singular noun, at least in informal speech or writing, is not only widely regarded as correct; it’s significantly more common than the plural usage. Only pedants would “correct” someone speaking in an everyday situation such as we find here.

If Walloon wants to proselytize his ideas for what is proper English, fine, but he should restrict himself to doing so in those threads where the English language is the topic. I don’t want to read the uninvited, irrelevant opinions of some grammarian pedant in a thread about the Dixie Chicks.

12

Using “media” as a collective noun is still, at this point in time, technically incorrect–as you have pointed out. True, you’re not using the wrong form out of ignorance, but Walloon (or most anyone for that matter) may not know that. And, well, it’s still the wrong form. As long as the correction focuses on the mistake and the amateur (or professional for all I know) is polite about it all, I feel that the correction is warranted.

In addition, corrective posts like Walloon’s may not be helpful to you, but they are helpful for those of us previously unaware of the correct form.

Overall, it’s no skin off my back which form you actually use–as long as I can understand your intent.

Then it mainly comes down to personal preference and interpretation. I don’t see Walloon’s corrections as belittlement, intentional or not. Like I mentioned, from what I’ve read, his/her corrections aren’t rude or derogatory in any fashion. The corrections are given and the thread goes on; there’s no mention (not that you said this) of the post or poster’s worth because of the mistake.

Because he/she isn’t rude about it all, I find the corrections rather helpful.

Once again, I think it comes down to opinion, humble or not. You may find it pedantic (and I’m assuming you’re using the derogatory meaning of “pedant”), but I find it helpful.

Besides, if appeals to the masses carry enough weight to be the sole deciding factor of our English usage, we’ll soon be inserting apostrophes in nearly every plural ending in an “s”; forgetting about colons and semi-colons entirely; and switching “they’re” with “their” and “there” without relevance to the proper usage.

13

Amateur or professional grammarian is what I meant to write.

14

My rules for correcting other posters’ grammar and spelling:

  1. Don’t do it, you asshole!
  2. Okay, if some asshole starts correcting other folks’ spelling and grammar, you’re free to tear into them.
  3. If you tear into them, make damn sure it’s for a real mistake, and not just over a legitimate difference of usage.
  4. If you tear into them, make damn sure your own post is free from error. That means proofreading!
    4a) A single typo deliberately placed in your post as a sacrificial offering to Gudere is acceptable.

I’m a total grammar goob – I love studying it. But it pisses me off royally when other people, unprovoked, go on a Schoolmarm rampage through a perfectly good thread.

Daniel

15

No it’s not:

There are plenty of authorities today who recognize the use of “media” as a singular collective noun; saying it’s technically incorrect simply betrays a lack of understanding of how language is formed, how it evolves.

Of course, you elaborate on that misunderstanding:

:confused: What, besides how English is used, can possibly decide what constitutes correct usage? Are physicists studying the properties of apostrophes? Perhaps naturalists are observing the behaviors of semicolons in the wild? Or are mathematicians even now devising a proof of the They’re/Their/There" Theorem?

English has not central body that declares a usage correct or incorrect. The closest we can come is to ask folks familiar with the language whether a given usage is standard or nonstandard, with the understanding that standard usages will be more effective at communication than nonstandard uses, since more people understand the standard uses.

But, and I’m sorry to tell you this, some day it may become proper to pluralize word’s with an apostrophe and an “s.” Ain’t nothin we can do about it. Language changes.

My favorite example of this is how you say the plural of “child.” My guess is that you don’t use the proper plural “childer,” do you? No, you probably learned it incorrectly: centuries ago, some poor fool didn’t recognize that “childer” was a plural form, because it looked so much like a singular form. So that poor fool started pluralizing the word as “children,” a proper plural form of a singular noun ending in “-er.”

And nowadays, there are folks who don’t recognize “children” as a plural form, because they know what makes a plural: an “s” at the end of the word. “Childrens” is the common plural of child in some regional dialects.

Language evolves. Quitcher bitchin.

Daniel

16

Well, then, in my opinion, you just spelled “focusses” incorrectly. In your past postings, I also note thirteen instances where you used “color” instead of the more correct “colour”, a couple places where you wrote “traveled” instead of “travelled”, a post where you had “sidewalk” instead of “pavement”, and probably several thousand more places where I would have spelled a word differently or used an altogether different one. Please be more careful in the future.

Do you see my point yet? The rules for English are not universal. Many constructions have several different yet acceptable forms; we do not require a consensus in order to say that any one of them is “correct”. Walloon is not pointing out bona fide mistakes so much as imposing his linguistic preferences on others.

You mean we don’t do this already?

I’m perfectly willing to tolerate such substitutions in informal communication so long as they don’t introduce an obvious ambiguity. “They’re”, “their”, and “there” are all pronounced the same in my dialect, but I never have any trouble distinguishing the senses in spoken context, so why should I complain when someone confuses them in off-the-cuff writing? (I do admit that for consistency’s sake, it’s nice to have a standard for formal written English within a single document, or a collection of related ones. That’s what publishers’ style guides are for.)

Remember that English writing was not standardized until relatively recently, but we all got along just fine until then. Shakespeare, that widely-acknowledged master of the English language, himself wrote his own name in up to a dozen different ways.

17

Or a Lovecraftian Old One, the great dread Zucchinus- he who stride through the land of black stone buildings built with nightmarish geometry. . .

:wink:

“media are” just sounds stupid.

18

Despite your protests, DanielWithrow, I’m perfectly aware that language evolves–whether for good or bad. In addition, you’re right in your assertion that there are plenty of authorities out there who accept “media” as a collective noun.

At this point, however, there are many more who disagree.

(Just for kicks, you can see plenty of people face off here.)

“Media” as a collective noun is still in the stages of language evolution–but judging by the sheer number of current, printed grammar/writing guides which don’t accept the collective noun usage as a viable alternative, I’m sticking with the notion that the collective noun idea is still, yes, technically incorrect.

You disagree? That’s fine. It’s a subjective decision, anyhow. I no more suffer from a lack of understanding on this matter than you do. YMMV, of course.

(That said, Daniel, I am perfectly willing to admit that I recognize the seemingly inevitable future of employing “media” as a collective noun. In fact, some of my cites concede that possibility, too; specifically, Bartleby does so.)

And just for clarification purposes, I’m not bitchin’ about any of this. I understand that you may find the corrections annoying; I understand that you’d rather them not show up in threads unrelated to proper grammar; I even understand that you automatically assume a person is an asshole for bothering to correct misspellings and other language mistakes–regardless of his intent or phrasing. But I disagree with you. Period.

Even though the legitimacy of “media” as a collective noun is an interesting side-debate, my main point in my first response was simply that Walloon wasn’t sinning in my eyes. Largely, I don’t find correction posts as the ones listed for him to be annoying or too much of a stray from the OP of whatever thread in which his comments appear. (Sorry, Walloon–I’ve given up on assigning both sexes to you.) I think that too many people pop into nearly every thread with enough one-liners and pot-shots for you to keep on asserting that one seemingly irrelevant post is a rampage.

As I just mentioned to DanielWithrow, psychonaut, I understand that you don’t care for what Walloon is doing; especially if he attempts to correct a poster on the debatable form of a word such as “media.” But, again, I disagree with the notion that he’s acting like " pompous-assed prescriptivist grammar Nazi". And since I also disagree with you on whether his interpretation of “media” is correct, I feel he is pointing out bona-fide mistakes as opposed to “…imposing his linguistic preferences on others.” Aside from which, the examples you gave are based off of interpretations that are no longer evolving. “Color,” “sidewalk,” etc… have been settled on as accepted terms. Not so with Walloon’s “media.” Not yet, at any rate.

[Speaking of interesting asides…]
As for Shakespeare: part of the reason that he is celebrated is that he intentionally (and masterfully) dissected the current English language and then sewed it back up into a creature of such art that Herr Frakenstein would have been maddingly jealous. One of the reasons that worked so well because there was a standard from which he could purposely deviate.

This is why authors of fiction are given creative license to play with the language as much as they’d like–as long their final works are understood (or at least pretended to be understood). Which is why I feel that using Shakespeare (as well as others such as James Joyce, William Goldman, Vonnegut, Jr. and Tom Robbins) doesn’t exactly bolster the view from either side.
[/Aside]

Finally, I agree with elf6c in that “media are” does sound stupid. It sounds about as linguistically undexterous as one can get with improper helping verbs.

19

How the fuck is something both “technically incorrect” and “a subjective decision”?

And how the fuck is it appropriate to correct someone’s decision when that decision is subjective?

Daniel

20

No, the choice of which definition to use is the subjective decision. That’s what I meant by “It’s a subjective decision, anyhow.” Mea culpa… I should have written that better.