Hey Grammar Police!!!

LauraMax said:
OK, just so I have this straight..........the British bastardized the language (& I had a prof who spoke ye olde english, I could not understand a word of it!), then we bastardized their bastardization.

I think from now on I'm just gonna speak in acronyms. KWIM? LOL!
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Slang, of course, would not be included. Slang is a bastardization of the language, no matter what language is spoken! It isn't that we bastardized the bastardization. It is that the Brits, over the years, have bastardized it, while the Americans haven't. This means proper Englsh, not slang, not regional dialects and phrases. I actually read a book on the topic. Let me see if I can find it...here it is:

http://www.amazon.com/Origins-Speci...r_1_44?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1268859191&sr=8-44

Carrie
 
Very fun thread! I listen to the Grammar Girl podcast for fun and I also teach French and English Lit & Linguistics. I love thinking and talking about language, and also hearing everyone's thoughts on language issues.

Anyway, my comment is just that people are throwing around the word "bastardization" and I think that's a harsh way to describe language change. Most linguists view language change (caused by time, regional dialect, or lots of other reasons) as inevitable; they don't see it in terms of "good" or "bad," just a feature of all human languages. Punctuation conventions being different in the U.S. v. the U.K. isn't really bad--annoying sure--but not bad. Same with playing with the spellings of borrowed foreign words, and well, a million other things! The trick is just knowing the conventions for the language/dialect you are using. I help typeset a publication that's in both French/English so I'm always trying to keep straight the conventions used for each language. And to respond to an earlier poster, of course people in the U.S. follow American English standards! Why would we follow British English standards, or expect them to follow ours?

And slang is not a bastardization either--it happens in every language and always has. It's often where the really fun language games happen too. No it's not formal, but then it's not always appropriate to use the formal register. Depending on the situation sometimes slang is the more "correct" choice. I don't think it would be much fun if comedians spoke "perfect" standard English all the time and never used slang.
 
Liann said:
Apparently the British have it right and us Americans have messed up the language again. ;) I actually like it better the British way. It makes more sense to me.
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ITA!

The "British" way is also the French and Spanish (and probably other European languages) way as well. As is often the case, we Americans just like to be different! (I'm not sure off-hand if Canadian English uses the American or European way).

I find myself often using quotation marks the way the French do, since I do most of my writing (well, except on the Internet!) in French (and since it makes more sense to me as well!)
 
hawgwild said:
Hmmm... I`m in Canada. We use the British grammar. The WORD is in quotations. The period is the end of the SENTENCE.
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Ah, you answered my question (which I posted before I read this far).
So as far as punctuation goes, we Americans are like the cheese...standing alone.

Any other languages use a space before exclamation points, question marks, colons and semi-colons (as in French)?
 
EricaH said:
The music teacher took off a point every single time he did it, so he ended up with a low grade on the paper. I was furious - even an English teacher wouldn't have penalized him for the same mistake multiple times. He ended up with a B in the class as a result - he's a straight A student.
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Wow! That is harsh!
Like the Spanish teacher in a literature class who docked me each time I spelled a word with two consonants when it had one (French influence), and when I looked over at another student's test to see what she had gotten, and saw that I had the same number of points taken off in a section, even though the info on mine was correct, and she had written NOTHING!

I went to talk to the department chair about it, and the bonehead teacher ended up giving us lame multiple-choice tests after that instead!
 
EricaH said:
My son learned this the hard way. He had to write a paper for General Music class and put the period outside the quotes at the end of the sentence. The music teacher took off a point every single time he did it, so he ended up with a low grade on the paper. I was furious - even an English teacher wouldn't have penalized him for the same mistake multiple times. He ended up with a B in the class as a result - he's a straight A student. Crazy, but we won't make that mistake again!

Erica
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I had the same thing happen to me when I was in school, only it WAS an English teacher and I was penalized for every instance. But I never forgot!
 
LauraMax said:
Nope, the quotation marks go AFTER the period/question mark/exclamation point etc.

In the United States, periods and commas go inside quotation marks regardless of logic. Click HERE for an explanation (sort of).

http://grammar.ccc.commnet.edu/grammar/marks/quotation.htm
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Wow, where was I yesterday!? I am just now finding this thread!! I agree with Laura about quotes being OUTSIDE punctuation...

:cool: However (and this is where I get annoying)... I'd drop the quotes all together. I hate it when people write with "air quotes." Drinkability is a word, and it doesn't need quotes... If he wants to get even more creative, though... quaffable is a word used when referring to drinkable libations...

quaffable: adj. drinkable; easy to drink, esp. in quantity :)

Sorry... I couldn't help myself...:confused:
 
Stephanie0523 said:
Wow, where was I yesterday!? I am just now finding this thread!! I agree with Laura about quotes being OUTSIDE punctuation...

:cool: However (and this is where I get annoying)... I'd drop the quotes all together. I hate it when people write with "air quotes." Drinkability is a word, and it doesn't need quotes... If he wants to get even more creative, though... quaffable is a word used when referring to drinkable libations...

quaffable: adj. drinkable; easy to drink, esp. in quantity :)

Sorry... I couldn't help myself...:confused:
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Okay, I'll pipe up here, too:

According to the US News & WR Style Manual, "Commas and periods should always come before a close quote, even if they have nothing to do with the matter quoted."

I also hate those so-called air quotes (great term)... but I'll save that for another day. That seems to be more of a preference than a rule.
 
I knew there would be some grammer nazis who wouldn't like his sentence. ;) I didn't have all day to edit his paper though and DH is not a writer so I'm only worried about the punctuation at this point but I'm giving him the word quaffable. It's worth just throwing it in a paper somewhere. I'm proud of him for even getting this written to be honest and he was referring to a quote earlier where someone said something about the "drinkability" of the product - (did everyone just cringe when I used an "air quote" - oops, I did it again!). (hmm... now does that period go there???) ;)
 
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Liann said:
I knew there would be some grammer nazis who wouldn't like his sentence. ;) I didn't have all day to edit his paper though and DH is not a writer so I'm only worried about the punctuation at this point but I'm giving him the word quaffable. It's worth just throwing it in a paper somewhere. I'm proud of him for even getting this written to be honest and he was referring to a quote earlier where someone said something about the "drinkability" of the product - (did everyone just cringe when I used an "air quote" - oops, I did it again!). (hmm... now does that period go there???) ;)
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I like the word too, but quaffable isn't an equivalent of drinkability, since the former is an adjective and the latter a noun. So, he could change the sentence around and use an adjective (in which case drinkable would work too and isn't unconventional IMO) or he could use the noun quaffability, which sounds like an ever sillier nonce word to me! Let us know what happens!
 
Liann said:
I knew there would be some grammer nazis who wouldn't like his sentence. ;) I didn't have all day to edit his paper though and DH is not a writer so I'm only worried about the punctuation at this point but I'm giving him the word quaffable. It's worth just throwing it in a paper somewhere. I'm proud of him for even getting this written to be honest and he was referring to a quote earlier where someone said something about the "drinkability" of the product - (did everyone just cringe when I used an "air quote" - oops, I did it again!). (hmm... now does that period go there???) ;)
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Sorry Liann... Guess I just miss those editor days...:eek: I've never been called a grammar nazi though... :( Is that a good or a bad thing? :p I like quaffable too and plan on using it more often. :D It's true that quaffable is an adjective and not a noun like drinkability. So he could say.... "the quaffable nature of the brew..." etc.

Again, sorry... These threads draw me in almost as much as political threads ...
 
Lol, no it's not a bad thing Stephanie and if I was writing the paper, I'd be way more picky. I already was thinking it needed to be changed up. I just didn't have the time to deal with it. Once I get started, rewriting consumes me. I've actually been trying to stay out of it totally and make DH do everything on his own. I did go through and circle the word "its" though so he could see that he used it about 50 times on the first page. ;)

Amy - You'd laugh at the blank "wuh" look on my face right now after reading your post. LOL! It's hard to believe I minored in English. That was so long ago though and I have not retained anything!
 
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double t said:
I disagree that Americans bastardize everything.
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Of course you do. I'm sure if I said the sky was blue & grass was green you'd disagree w/that too. :D

Some people just can't seem to understand a joke even when it's staring them right in the face............:cool:
 
No, I agree, the sky is usually blue and most grass is green.
I just disagreed with your attempt at humor, which I didn't realize was actually humor until you barked at me.
Anyway, this detour notwithstanding, this was an interesting thread.
 
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