I've very careful to ensure I can still conjugate 'thee' and 'thou.'

Dost thou have a problem with me, interloper?

One of my (many) gripes is the gross interchanging of the words 'effect' and 'affect'.

And here is one for the books: I used to have a manager who would call our fiscal year the 'physical year'. Angels of mercy, defend us!

_________________
author of Syncing Forward and other stories...

It's a dog-eat-dog world, and I've got my Milkbone underwear on.

Fair enough. Physical year is just embarrassingly illiterate.

My gripe, by the way, is the misuse (and disuse) of the term 'disinterested.'

The distinction between interested and disinterested parties is fairly significant.

'Disinterest's' decay into synonymity with 'apathetic' or 'bored' would seem symptomatic of a larger social problem.

In short, there is a social 'interest' in being able to measure degrees of 'disinterest.'

Agreed. Most people confuse disinterested (impartial) with uninterested (not interested).

The it's/its is a growing problem, and the main culprit in killing punctuation is texting. The average teenager sends/receives 100+ texts PER DAY. I'm by no means a literary expert, but I know that when I read a menu, sign, or doctor's brochure with creative spelling and terrible grammar, I feel obligated to point out to the person how dumb they look.

_________________
author of Syncing Forward and other stories...

It's a dog-eat-dog world, and I've got my Milkbone underwear on.

That's because disinterested and uninterested are conventionally backward.

No, really. 'Un' is almost always used to mean "lacking in" or "without" (unpopular, unapproachable, unemployed). 'Dis', on the other hand, often carries implications of opposition to the original word (disincentive, dystopia (I know it's of a different etymology, not the point), disappear, disallow).

Logically, the term for "impartial" should be 'uninterested' (without interest). The term for "I don't give a shit" should be 'disinterested' (I am negatively interested). Popular usage is merely beginning to reflect this logic.

Thank you for your time.

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The Horus Heresy 0.5
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thing is, if you didn't have people to write/ spell/ use grammar properly, you wouldn't have fun cartons pillorying them:

http://theoatmeal.com/tag/grammar

language can clearly evolve, often for political means such as the concerted effort to simplify English and make it their own by the nascent US (I'm sure Moscovian will be along to correct me soon enough ), however it's hard if not impossible to distinguish between decay and evolution as the process is happening around you. E.g.

Bob the Fish: "nice pair of legs you got there mate"
Fred the Fish: "it's called evolution, stupid"

The other thing that texting is destroying (or, at the very least, impeding) is the ability of many writers to construct logical, disciplined arguments or points. That may sound boring and dull, but I don't mean it in a pedantic way. When you are used to conveying a point in short bursts, the skill and mental discipline needed to put together (for instance) a careful explanation of something, becomes difficult.

In my case, I see it in undergraduate essays (I am an English professor), but it is noticeably affecting business and government, too (I am also a professional editor and writer). People simply don't know how to get from Point A to C (going through B) in a way that readers can follow. Instead, it is the "shotgun approach": lots of points thrown together with no guiding principle. Well-constructed paragraphs are something that many can't even explain, let alone construct.

Part of the problem is certainly poor education when they are younger (in Ontario, students can't be graded for spelling or grammar), but I do believe that texting, chat, etc. is affecting the way we think about language. It may very well be hardwired. I don't know.

I don't mind too much if people use slang in internet forums, or if there are errors in their grammar, syntax, etc. As long as I can understand them, then it is okay. What people need to realize is that language is like clothing: just as you would dress differently for the gym than you would for a business meeting, you need to speak (or write) in a way that is appropriate to your audience or your purpose. If you can't (or won't) do that, you are doing yourself (personally and professionally) incredible harm. You may have the best point, product, or service in the world, but if you can't express yourself, why would I care?

I do have one pet peeve, though: the misuse of semi-colons. Drives me freakin' bonkers.

The semicolon bear made me wet my pants; I must go change them. Titivillus, you must go read Matt's link.

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author of Syncing Forward and other stories...

It's a dog-eat-dog world, and I've got my Milkbone underwear on.

A fair point, except that I'm not sure popular usage is actually repurposing 'uninterested' to fill the gap -- rather, the entire concept of interest seems to be falling into an abyss of ignorance and apathy.

As to the larger point that the English language should be logical: please... the mother tongue is a Cad child of intercultural collision... long, long before ebonics: e.g. we've got multiple words for the same types of meat (e.g. pig and lamb). Latin is far more logical. And see where it got them.

Clearly, however, this is an inflammable topic.

;-)

Hena

The rule doesn't actually have an exception to the exception. He's just expressing it badly (I find many of those posters needlessly confusing).

What he should say is:

Is it indicating possession? Use an apostrophe + s.
Is it a plural that ends in an s? Put the apostrophe after the 's'.

There's an even more ridiculously simple way to do it:

If it ends in an s, use only an apostrophe to denote possession. Otherwise, use the apostrophe and an s.

This ignores the existence of a bunch of optional exceptions, but since they're optional it's OK.

Carrington



True. Though I think you'll find that when you do use interest in that sense, people will understand what you mean better with "uninterested" than with "disinterested".

I don't think it's something that comes up that much outside of certain contexts, really, and so I'm not surprised that it has so fallen. Ah well. Things falling away doesn't bother me, as long as people don't then go and replace them with other terms that had perfectly good meanings already.



Actually, we don't have multiple words for the same kind of meat. We have separate words for the animal and their meat (nobody goes into a butcher and asks for pig. Unless they're being intentionally weird). Pork and pig mean different things.

If QI is to be believed, this is because the Saxons saw them in the field and the Normans saw them on their plates. Much like the whole story of how the v-sign originated, this is too wonderful not to be the unambiguous truth.

As a rule, I think people will naturally force a language toward a certain degree of logical consistency. Fighting that is silly. Save your energy for the bits where they make it worse.



I see what you did there, and I approve.

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Rogue Trader Expedition 0.4
The Horus Heresy 0.5
Night Lords 0.1
My Trade Thread

... except when it's duck. Or chicken. Or lamb, but not sheep.

Sometimes we have separate words for something, sometimes we have one. As long as we don't have two for the same thing, I'm calling it a win.*

*No pulling out various colloquial terms for livestock! I'm watching you!

_________________
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Rogue Trader Expedition 0.4
The Horus Heresy 0.5
Night Lords 0.1
My Trade Thread

I loved the dinosaurs. "Nothing can stop true love. Use a semi-colon, you fool!"

Speaking of English anomalies, I love the word CLEAVE, which has definitions that are antonyms unto each other.

To cleave meat in two.
To cleave to a mother's bosom.

_________________
author of Syncing Forward and other stories...

It's a dog-eat-dog world, and I've got my Milkbone underwear on.