Your opinions on English grammar and usage [Click on each arrow for more]

In My Humble Opinion
42

Along the same lines of Latin rules, let’s not even get started on splitting infinitives. Oh wait, let’s. Split infinitives are perfectly cromulent in modern English even unto the 23rd century (when people will be able to boldly go where no linguist has gone before). Putting adverbs before the “to” or after the verb sounds awkward in modern English. (“…the right of the people peaceably to assemble…”)

On contracting “it is” to “it’s”: Why not the good old " 'tis "? Who says that? 'Tis I who sez that.

What about “stanch” vs “staunch”? I get stabby every time I see one of those words used where the other is meant, which happens “a great deal”.

  • stanch: To suppress the flow of a liquid (but can be used figuratively meaning to suppress or inhibit other kinds of things).
  • staunch: Steadfast, reliable: A staunch ally.

BTW: I’m all in favor of declaring “cromulent” to be a standardly acceptable English word.

43

I wouldn’t say “on accident” because I am American. That sounds completely wrong to my ears and if asked I would have guessed it was a Britishism. I say “by accident.” Who says “on accident?”

44

TYL. (Today You Learned…)

45

Dude, I’m not new to the internet!

Eyebrows of Doom obviously didn’t know about the secret drop-down bullets either. Come and join me in the dunces’ room, Eyebrows.

46

Ha, well look at that. I did not see that in the OP either. (“On accident” still sounds foreign to me. I suspect it’s more regional than age-related.)

47

Drop the friends part. Would you say “Me was at the theater”? Probably not. That’s why “I” is correct.

Even “I and my friends” is better than “me and my friends”, by a longshot.

48

A shame if such a change ever happened comsidering it’s always been an immediately obvious distinction to me, like comprise/compose and stanch/staunch. (yeah, I can get a little crossbow-y at that laziness, too)

Oh dear that in bucket loads. Cumloads. Pretentious nurls - thinkng they’re erudite or just wanna douchily one-up you, or something - unloading that, um, incorrect type of quibbling. (“whom/whomever” being another of their hobby-horses)

The only time I use ‘alright’ is informally at the end of a sentence (always following a comma’ed word) for bombastic confirmation.

I was going to trot out the old Churchill axiom on prepositions, but in my search to get the exact phrase right, I came across this article calling to attention to all the permutations surrounding the phrase. Eventually it concluded:

Yeah, anyways, :slightly_smiling_face: add me to the camp for ending a sentence with a preposition, occasionally.

Quick de-rail-y mention - it was neat seeing Tony Randall being such an eager-beaver grammarian on Dick Cavett, only to be (repeatedly, and hilariously) shunned by the host for the apparently more interesting Willaim Safire, who was sitting on Dick’s other side. (heh - Safire related about a tense dinner he had one time with John Simon, Edmund Wilson and Gore Vidal, with everyone afraid to make the first grammatical error for the others to pounce on. When DC asked if anyone gaffed, WS very slowly offered “…it could have been me.”

ETA:

You’d actually say that?

49

No, but it would be more or less grammatically correct. I certainly wouldn’t say “me and my friends”.

Me went to the bar.
Me went fishing.
Me went on a trip.

Just no.

50

I’m not sure how effective those three examples are, considering they’re on a whole other plane of “off”.
Even as exaggeration - nah - tenuous.

51

Can they be used to refer to a single person?

Yes

What if the person is of unknown gender or is a known person who rejects gender labels like he and she?

Yes
Or is he the generic pronoun in all (or most) cases?

Not for me. I use “they” as the generic now

Is the reflexive themselves ever used to refer to one person? Or would you use the singular themself, which doesn’t appear in most dictionaries? Would you use a singular themselves? Or would you go with the generic himself?

I’d use themself.

So if people just use who anyway, and if people commonly misuse whom, what’s the point of keeping it around?

None of your examples seem stilted and formal to me, they’re just how me and mine speak.

Let’s start with the biggie–can you end a sentence with a preposition?

Yes.

Also, do you consider particles to be prepositions

No. But then, I also speak Afrikaans, which is lousy with clearly non-prepositional particles, so I’m used to them.

Next, do you say on accident or by accident?

By, and the on construction grates on me.

What about the construction try and (Try and lift this?) Shouldn’t it be try to?

I’m fine with both.

And lastly, are there any weird prepositional uses that you’ve noticed?

Not really.

[“A while or awhile”] Have the two forms become synonymous? Personally, I think they have.

Not for me.

Is alright a word? If so, how does it differ from all right?

Yes, it’s a word, and it’s synonymous with OK. or Okay, take your pick. It’s not always the same in sense as “all right” but can be.

In a series of three or more items, is there a comma just before the conjunction?

Only if there’s going to be ambiguity. If it’s a bare list, like “Pick up some milk, cheese, bread, coffee and sugar” it is unnecessary.

Is the construction _______ is comprised of _______ horribly, totally wrong?

I don’t object, although in your particular example, I would just go with “has”, because albums are always made up of multiple tracks, so there’s no need to delineate multiplicity.

Some people might not pick up on the subtle difference because I haven’t heard this bit of guidance in years and years: “Don’t use a lot–use a great deal, instead.”

I think it’s ridiculous. Were any of the rest of y’all ever taught this?

No. Although a lot has associations for me.

Do you consider the two terms to be interchangeable? Are they definitely different? Can flaunt be used for either, but flout always has one meaning?

Different, and I would not use flaunt in the second example. John is flaunting his disregard for the rules, not the rules themselves.
 

Is it okay to write John could of won if he’d tried harder? Can of ever serve as an auxillary verb?

No, it is not OK.

I say “write” because there’s not usually any distinction between could of and could’ve in spoken English. They sound the same.

In your dialect, not mine. The vowel in of is not elided enough to make them the same.

BTW, I hated the format of the OP, it made responding very time-consuming.

52

Bizarro say that.

53

The point of those examples is that to work out whether “my friends and I” or “my friends and me” is correct, you should remove the “my friends” bit, then it becomes much clearer which is correct. “Me and my friends went…” is not wrong because the speaker is first in the sentence (etiquette), it is wrong because “me” is the wrong word, it should be “I”.

“Could of” and “would of” are wrong because they are the wrong words. The correct words are “could have” and “would have”. Informally this is contracted to “could’ve” and “would’ve”, but never “could OF” or “would OF”. The problem is that the lazy, who don’t bother thinking about the words they say, assume the contraction they hear, “would’ve”, is actually the words “would of”. What’s worse is that some of these people grow up and become journalists, then it becomes mainstream. Before long it will be “correct” because most people do it.

54

You should learn German, you would love it. Seriously.

Why did I read faeces instead of faces?

As a foreign user of the English Language my position is simple: credo quia absurdum. But its nice to see that you folks take it kinda like seriously. I mean:

Respect! I will try to be more correct in future too. Now I wonder what the rules concerning the use of emojis are and who codifies them…
When you think about English generally being thought as having a very simple grammar compared to most other European languages it makes me long for this discussion being replicated in those other languages. Except French, I reckon, they are way too effete, gramatically thinking.

55

I’m reminded of the poem “The Chaos”:

https://ncf.idallen.com/english.html

The language is probably like an F4U Corsair “Widow maker.” It may kill inexperienced pilots, but in the hands of those who master it, it becomes a formidable war machine.

56

Yeah, nominative “me” used as a single/simple subject in at least American English is considered quite nonstandard (it does show up in Carribean English, though.) However, as part of a compound subject, like “me and my shadow,” it is common and shows up in many/most dialects in all but formal registers. (In my case, in casual speech, I will jumble up the nominative[subjective] and accusative[objective] with constructions like “me and him went to the store,” which I know clearly is not “correct” but in my dialect among my peers, saying “I and he went tot the store” or “he and I went to the store” sounds a bit stuffy. It all depends on my audience.)

57

Some mathy stuff about _____ accident by age group and locale.

58

As I said, it’s dialectal. Standard American English–what’s taught in most high schools and basic college classes–would want I there.

That’s generally what people think of as correct or incorrect, but that’s not really a valid assessment since there’s not a single US dialect that conforms to Standard American English. Dialects have their own internal rules, and Me and _______ falls within those rules, so it’s correct for that dialect.

Now certainly, people who use it shift to a more formal register and say _____ and I when they need to, so it’s not a matter of them not knowing the difference. They just prefer to speak or write like everyone around them.

59

Those are hilarious!

Sorry about the formatting. I thought it’d make things easier.

60

Grammar doesn’t mean spelling and punctuation, it doesn’t mean word choice or style, and has nothing at all to do with semantics.

Grammar is syntax. A sentence is a machine to convey thought. Grammar, i.e. syntax, is the assembly method to build a working sentence. The machine works right only when the parts fit together right. Spelling and punctuation are like the paint job and chrome trim.

“Colorless green ideas sleep furiously.” This sentence is grammatically perfect—even though it doesn’t mean a damn thing.

61

Do you use home in on or hone in on? The missile _____ in on the target.

I prefer home since it feels more akin to what a pigeon would do. I can see the sense of “refining, sharpening” from hone, as well. But I think home is the better choice.