What. Howdy too pedestrian for y’all?
What gets my knickers in a twist are boobs who think ,“How are you?” isn’t just a greeting. And I’m not talking about saying, “How are you” to someone and getting a medical history. I’m talking about yahoos who pass me in the hall and say, “how are you” to which I usually reply with a simple “hi” or “hello.” At which point they stop in their tracks and look me in the eye and say, “but how ARE you?”
WTF?
Read the post in context, please. The subject is yours, a pronoun referring to Bryan Ekers’s sentence, "What up with saying ‘what’s up?’ ".
Why do I find it odd that I’m debating English with a Brit?
Yeah, what’s up with the “you understood” rule?
BLEEEEHHHHHHH!
Read the post in context, please. The subject is yours, a pronoun referring to Bryan Ekers’s sentence, "What up with saying ‘what’s up?’ ".
Why do I find it odd that I’m debating English with a Brit? **
[/QUOTE]
I have no axe to grind except that you pedantically corrected a (typographical) error in another’s post. One shouldn’t have to read outside a sentence’s boundaries to qualify the pronouns therein.
Re: What’s Up? - I’ve always preferred to respond:
“All of the above!” 
Sorry, I guess my sense of humor doesn’t translate well when it leaves the boundaries of my demented mind. Here’s a more thorough explanation.
When Bryan Ekers posted, "What up with saying ‘What’s Up?’ ", italicizing the “What’s” and opting for the “What up” construction in his own sentence, I took it to mean that he preferred the “What up” construction for these kinds of greetings, for reasons not stated, but possibly among the following:
[ul]
[li]Omitting the verb makes the speaker sound more hip and “from the hood”.[/li][li]The “What up” construction tends not to degenerate into such verbal atrocities as “wassup” or “sup”.[/li][li]Hi Opal![/li][/ul]
My response indicated that a valid reason does exist for using the “What’s up” formulation, and as a consequence appeared to pick on Bryan Ekers’s sentence. I did not mean to appear pedantic, even if that is the predominant impression my post would leave.
Then you spout this ridiculous piece of advice:
in an attempt to justify your criticism that my sentence had no subject.
Allow me to quote from the article you asked me to summarize in the Pascal’s wager thread, where this advice is completely ignored within the first two sentences.
Professional philosophers, among other writers with a strong command of the English language, will often use pronouns in sentences that do not contain explicit mention of their antecedents. As long as the antecedent is not ambiguous, any criticism that is made of this practice rests entirely on one’s concept of style, which can and does vary among different audiences.
By that same logic, the decision to include or exclude a verb from a sentence is also a question of style, again dependent on audience. But my post in response to Bryan Ekers did not have the obligatory force that your reply to my nitpick did, inasmuch as it lacked the word “should”, which you included. It merely stated that according to conventional standards of grammar, a string of words without a verb is not a sentence.
I’ll step down from my soapbox now.
Wait a minute. Why are you asking a question as a greeting if you don’t want an answer? It boils my potatoes when someone says “how are you” and keeps on walking. I never answer the question anymore because I realize people use it just as a greeting, but what the hell? You (theoretical you) asked me a question. Don’t want an answer? Don’t ask a question. Tain’t nothing wrong with “Hiya.”
And if I say “how are you” then I want to know, and I don’t think it’s unreasonable to do so.
My son customarily responded to “What’s up?” with “Hard dicks and helicopters” – which usually gave the questioner pause! 
I generally answer with, “An adverb or a preposition, depending on how it’s used.”
I don’t mind “what’s up” as an actual question, but it bothers me when people just use it as a greeting when passing a friend and don’t give said friend time to respond in detail.
Ever since someone informed me in a GQ thread a while back that the official motto of Providence, RI is “What cheer, netop?”, I tend to use that in lieu of “what’s up.”
WTF, indeed.
If you think “How are you?” a phrase which has a pretty specific, universally known (amongst English speakers) is the equivalent of a generic hail to a passerby, then you are the one who is mistaken and you shouldn’t be surprised when people point out the fact that you didn’t answer the extraordinarily simple question that they just asked you, calling into question whether or not you heard them or are capable of understanding three very short, simple words of English.
If I say “How are you?” then the appropriate response is not “Hi.” or “Hello.” Neither of these words are answers to that question. The appropriate response to “How are you?” is some word or brief phrase which addresses the specific inquiry. “Good.” “Fine.” “Eh.” “Ya know.” Even a shrug of the shoulders would suffice.
Are we really so self-absorbed now that we can’t listen and respond to people who are trying to treat us politely?
This is so much fun. Are you having fun?
The “Pascal’s Wager” example you gave had the pronoun “it” referring to the subject noun of the previous sentence, hence its relative lack of ambiguity. However, when you said,
“Yours” referred to a heretofore unmentioned noun, Bryan Eker’s sentence.
Most importantly, you made a not very funny pedantic correction, which itself succumbed to a not very funny pedantic correction. I would love to spend a great deal of my time discussing the finer nuances of this flawed exchange, but regretfully, I have a life.
On the subject of the OP (as if to justify this rediculous hijack): in the UK, “What’s up?” is used idiomatically to mean, “What’s the matter?” (or “What’s wrong?”) – barely a day went by of the time I spent in the US without me being “knocked out of my stride” by this apparent non sequitur.
If I’m booking down the hall on my way to a meeting and I pass someone going the other way it is not polite or expected to stop and answer a pop quiz. If someone were seated in my living room and asked, “so, how ya doing?” I would not just say, “hi.” If I pass someone who I know slightly in the hall, “How are you” is no longer a question. It is a greeting. Answering anything other than, “hi” or “hello” would be the same as ansering, “the ceiling” if instead they had said, “what’s up”
Where do you think “howdy!” came from. Or do you consider that a question as well?
When I’m in a hurry to get somewhere and someone sees me and says, “hey, how you doing?”, I usually turn sideways so I can see both them and my pathway (for any innocent bystanders in my way ;)) and keep walking whilst saying, “Hey! I’m pretty good, but I gotta run. I’ll see you later!” with a smile and a wave. That way, I’m answering the question, (hopefully) not sounding/being rude because of my smile and wave and still greeting them.
That said, just “hi” is a common-enough response to “what’s up?” or “how’re you?” that it doesn’t really bother me.
The critical difference is that his not very funny pedantic correction was actually correct. Yours was not.
So you concede that your suggestion,
is ill-advised? In that case, I can offer yet another example from the same article, where the pronoun may be considered even more ambiguous than the pronoun “yours” that referred to Bryan Ekers’s sentence.
To what does the emphasized pronoun in the last sentence refer? The “temptation … to refuse to take the Wager seriously”? The entire objection summarized in the previous paragraph?
The acceptance of this construction in professional writing, despite a pronoun ambiguity that dwarfs the ambiguity of the pronoun “yours” referring to the only noun in the previous sentence*, indicates that your objections are without merit. Even if “Bryan Ekers’s sentence” had not been explicitly introduced as the antecedent in question, the nature of the pronoun (second-person possessive), in the context of a post where I am responding to Bryan Ekers in reference to his sentence, should dispel the notion that the pronoun “yours” could refer to anything other than his sentence.
*To recap, here is the relevant part of the disputed post:
The worst is when someone asks “how are you?” and they expect an encyclopedic response. Inevitably, if I tell the truth and say “oh, not so great” I will be forced to answer an ever-expanding tree of questions. Ergo, inevitably, I am forced to lie and answer “oh fine”…which effectively negates the usefulness of their question.
I concede nothing.
I believe the highlighted pronoun refers to the whole preceding paragraph, however, you are right – there is some ambiguity, precisely because the pronoun “this” is insufficiently qualified. It (ha!) is bad writing.
I lied about how much fun I was having.
Start a new thread if you must, I may join you, I may not.
Quite so. This should’ve been MPSIMS, my bad.
Nonetheless, some amusing replies have shown up 
Why not simply, “Greetings. How do you do?”