I used to and occasionally still do create subtitles for TV, so I am forgiving of real-time errors because the software makes them inevitable. However, given the number of times I was pulled up for a single typo or miscolouration (never a spelling error) in my submissions - I dare you to type several thousand words daily and never make even one typo a week - it does irk me to see people somehow getting them through on a much grander scale. Who are they working for, anyway? The ones with the most errors never have a company logo on the subtitles so are presumably in-house. Grr.
Also, its/it’s. NOBODY paid to write seems to get it right these days.
No, it’s not. In this context, after “given up” you need a noun phrase. You usually make a verb into a noun phrase by turning it into a gerund, which means adding “ing.” “Hope to lose [whatever]” is not a noun phrase. “Hope of losing [whatever]” is.
This wasn’t exactly a typo, but one of my coworkers once brought in a newspaper ad for Fun Gals infant clothing. Especially good if the little tyke is named “Candida”.
It regularly entertains me the number of people who get their panties in a bunch over pronunciations of caesar and veni, vidi, vici but don’t mind talking about Rome and Italy. If you’re devoted to original pronunciations, shouldn’t it be Roma and Italia?
If “given up” requires a noun phrase and people are following it with “hope to lose [whatever]” then ipso facto “hope to lose [whatever]” is either a noun phrase despite not using the gerund construction or “given up” does not actually require a noun phrase.
If enough people are doing it regularly enough that the usage changes, sure. But in current usage, given up requires a noun phrase after it and that is not a noun phrase.
Anything in language can change over time, and in the meantime there are things that people take for mistakes; meanwhile there are also simple mistakes. It looks like this is a simple mistake rather than anything signifying language change.
Descriptive grammar does admit that grammar exists. We need it for meaning. Otherwise men assign snag wish snug vegging bah. Or whatever else my predictive text wants to suggest as random words to put in a line.
And if a narrator said “snag wish snug vegging bah” what would the reaction of the general public be and how would that compare to their reaction or lack thereof to “given up the hope to lose [whatever]”?
If multiple people, including the writers and editors of that magazine, don’t see a problem with it, that’s pretty good evidence that the usage has indeed changed. Apparently, despite your proclamations otherwise, there is a regular practice to use that particular construction. Why else would it be so common as to evoke the ire of the poster in question?
And, yes, I did that on purpose, to see if it sounded wrong to my ears. It doesn’t. I’ve too often heard infinitives used as noun phrases for it to register as a mistake.
I don’t have an opinion on the validity of this grammar, but it sounds bad to me, if not wrong. If using the whole thing as a noun I would always say “hope of losing” rather than “hope to lose”. I think we could probably mostly agree it’s not ideal.
One lucky thing is that it happened on a Wednesday, so many people hurried home faster than usual (in the Italian North End, Wednesday is Prince Spaghetti Day).
A Quiz show in Aus (Hot Seat) stated that the word “Vociferous” meant “Glamorous”. I was so stumped as to how they came to that conclusion I reached for the old Oxford.
It gave the definition “Clamorous”.
So apparently the work experience kid could not differentiate between G and C and not a single person associated with the program (A F***ING QUIZ SHOW) noticed.
