Official Bored at Work / Off-Topic Chat Thread II

[Aksannyi]

Re: Official Bored at Work / Off-Topic Chat Thread II

Happy Birthday! I'll mail it to you.

Haha, thanks. I don't like to make a big deal about birthdays anymore. My mom came down to visit and she was telling everyone we came in contact with, it was really annoying. I don't like to be fussed over. She does. It's amazing we're even related. My boyfriend met her for the first time, too, and afterwards he was like, "You guys are so different." I was like "told you so" lol.

[Aksannyi]

Re: Official Bored at Work / Off-Topic Chat Thread II

We've been so quiet here lately. What's up guys?

Amusing in-class anecdote, so today in one of my writing classes the prof was reviewing MLA format (English Department, lol) because a lot of the people in the class are not English majors (Gordon Rule course which doubles as a requirement for English and English Ed majors) and he’s talking about in-text citations and how MLA has now dropped the comma so instead of (Aksannyi, 34) you’d just write (Aksannyi 34), so he says something like, “So now there’s just a bunch of orphaned commas floating around in the ether.”

And I respond, “Good, they can go fill in for all the missing Oxford commas”

#EnglishDepartmentJokes

[Etra]

Re: Official Bored at Work / Off-Topic Chat Thread II

When people don't use Oxford commas, I feel things I don't like to feel.

[Aksannyi]

Re: Official Bored at Work / Off-Topic Chat Thread II

It annoys the crap out of me when people don't use them. I'm a huge grammar purist.

[cidbahamut]

Re: Official Bored at Work / Off-Topic Chat Thread II

Our education system failed to instill a good foundation on punctuation at every level including college. What little knowledge I've retained on the issue comes from having read a ton of novels earlier in life. Of course now I mostly just read things on the internet, so it's all going to fall by the wayside soon enough. My ability to spell is already deteriorating, so grammar and punctuation can't be too far behind.

[Aksannyi]

Re: Official Bored at Work / Off-Topic Chat Thread II

This is true. I took Traditional English Grammar last semester, which is required for English and English Ed majors, and helpful for foreign students, and holy crap I could not believe even the people in the English department who were totally lost, some of whom are planning to teach these things to kids. I am starting to think that there is no hope for grammar and spelling anymore. Extreme sadface.

I do find myself making stupid errors the more time I spend on line. And because I type so quickly, my fingers are moving almost as quickly as my mind so I'm not really thinking about what I'm typing and I sometimes won't see an error until several minutes later. Spellcheck helps, obviously, but it doesn't catch when you use "their" when you meant "they're." And then I end up feeling like a fuckhead for using improper grammar because I'm such a stickler for it.

Teaching will be its own challenge, but I'm really excited for it anyway.

[Yellow Mage]

Re: Official Bored at Work / Off-Topic Chat Thread II

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Gv0H-vPoDc

Relevant.

Fun fact: he intentionally inserted an unorthodox bit of grammar into this song (in fact, if you're attentive you can see where he did it another time, for the sake of putting emphasis on the right word), specifically as an Easter egg for grammar purists to catch.

[Aksannyi]

Re: Official Bored at Work / Off-Topic Chat Thread II

I have posted that before. It has kind of become my anthem. lol

[Feba]

Re: Official Bored at Work / Off-Topic Chat Thread II

If your idea of "unorthodox grammar" is a split infinitive, you don't speak English.

Honestly, the entire idea of spelling, grammar, and punctuation unification is pretty much a pipe dream to begin with; the fact that there are so many competing 'standards' even at the highest levels of writing shows that. And even with that standard, good writers will often diverge from it to illustrate or explain. English is a language like any other, always changing and adapting to the way people use it; there is no God of English that has declared "it's" is a contraction and not a possessive. In fact, it appears in this usage in the US Constitution; as do various other words which are considered "misspelled" by modern standards. Anyone who has read a book over 60 or so years old will have noticed some words spelled differently; many more before the 1900s.

Many of the prescriptivist grammar rules aren't based on any sort of correct English, but on correct Latin, which English is of course not derived from. The idea was that Latin was the One True Language, and all other languages should be changed to follow it's rules. This is of course ridiculous.

Likewise, spelling reform efforts shaped much of the difference in English orthography between the US, UK, and other varieties of English, but it's honestly pretty silly to honestly expect the average citizen to memorize "correct" spellings for tens of thousands of words, when writing is not vital to them in their daily life.

Nerds criticizing people for having bad grammar is sort of like athletes criticizing people for being unable to run an obstacle course. Sure, it would be great if everyone could do that, but it's not really reasonable to expect from people in our society. You have to see why you're in a position to think that's normal, not why other people can't live up to your standards.

[Yellow Mage]

Re: Official Bored at Work / Off-Topic Chat Thread II

Honestly, I chose the word "unorthodox" because it was the least pejorative word I could think of to describe its history. I am not at all opposed to split infinitive personally and acknowledge it as an evolution of the language, but it does still seem to somehow bother some people (thus the reason for Weird Al's purposeful usage).

"Its" vs. "It's" as a possessive, though, I cannot overlook. I am all for any rule that reduces ambiguity.

[Aksannyi]

Re: Official Bored at Work / Off-Topic Chat Thread II

Not to mention, people are going to judge you hard if you use "you're" when you meant "your." Obviously, as an English teacher, I'm going to have to learn which grammatical errors I'll have to let go when it comes to evaluating if, on the grander scheme of things, a student has demonstrated learning took place. So while it may make me inwardly (and probably outwardly) cringe when I see students misusing commas and ending sentences with prepositions, if their essays demonstrate not only that they've read whatever piece of literature I've assigned, but that they've analyzed it enough to reasonably prove that higher thinking has happened, then I can't really harp on grammar too much, though I'll certainly point out consistent errors and give lessons on the most common mistakes.

Unfortunately, there just isn't enough room in the curriculum to harp on grammar. There really wasn't ever enough room in the curriculum for it, honestly. We assume that because students are reading, they will pick up on proper conventions, and for some - myself included - that works out just fine, but for others, those connections aren't readily made. So grammar tends to be glossed over. It sucks, but that's just how it is, I guess. As much as I like to call myself a grammar Nazi and state that becoming an English teacher allows me to legitimize that, I'm in it more for the love of literature and writing than I am for the nitpicking.

[Feba]

Re: Official Bored at Work / Off-Topic Chat Thread II

I am not at all opposed to split infinitive personally and acknowledge it as an evolution of the language...

And this is really the thing. The stuff that we all describe as "correct" and "incorrect" grammar, unless you're talking about non-native speakers, really all comes down to "I like that/I speak like that/I think that sounds more correct by the standards I was educated with*", and not any actual standard of correctness. "Correct English" is about as logical as "Correct Art".

"Its" vs. "It's" as a possessive, though, I cannot overlook. I am all for any rule that reduces ambiguity.

This sounds good in theory, but it's pretty much impossible for languages to be completely unambiguous (simply from a logical/grammar standpoint), and attempting to reduce ambiguity has to have limits and tradeoffs. One good example of this is CJK orthography, where all of the languages (DPRKorean excluded) keep the Chinese characters to more or less of an extent, because homophones are so numerous that it is thought that simply using phonetic systems would be even harder to read. On the other hand, systems with high levels of ambiguity tend to resolve themselves in other ways -- for example, as Chinese moved away from a more complicated sound system to a simpler one with more homophonic collisions, words were modified, for example by adding two words with the same meaning together to clarify (For example, if the English "Book" were to simplify in the way Chinese has, as it may well do over time, it would replace the ending "K" sound with a tone, and at the same time, merge with words like "Boot", "Boob", "Bush", etc.; we would then feel compelled to combine this "Bu" stem with other words to clarify which "bu" it is)

If we're being honest, having " 's " be a possessive in every situation BUT "it's" is simply backwards. If anything, "its" should be the contracted from; or if confusion is an issue, change the contracted form to "itz" or the like. Therez no reason we should allow a rule which could ALWAYS apply ('s as possessive) take a backseat to a rule that is only going to apply to a very to a small subset of words ('s as contracted "is").

Clearly I'm not ignorant to these rules, and I don't seriously expect to change them or see them be changed in any meaningful way within my lifetime; but the point is that we can't expect a system which is literally nothing more than thousands of completely arbitrary decisions, based on nothing more than personal opinion, tradition, and unrelated dead languages (themselves based in personal opinion and tradition) to be memorized fully and utilized accurately by the average person. Even professional authors and writers make a huge number of "mistakes" (by their own standard); it's near psychotic to expect most people to write at a high level when most people don't have any real need to write.

*if you would honestly only ever say this as "the standards by which I was educated", kill yourself. 'Up with which I shall not put', etc.

[Feba]

Re: Official Bored at Work / Off-Topic Chat Thread II

so last night on her way to my place (after not having been able to spend the night for weeks due to the holiday), some asshole comes up to my girlfriend all "Hey little girl, it's late, you should come back to my place".

Really makes me frustrated to know that even if I were there, I wouldn't be able to give this fucking creep the beating he deserves without risking deportation

[cidbahamut]

Re: Official Bored at Work / Off-Topic Chat Thread II

Today at work: my coworkers debating whether I would set fire to the office directly or whether I would set fire to one of them and use that to spread the fire.

[Jarre]

Re: Official Bored at Work / Off-Topic Chat Thread II

Must be the "I like fire" t-shirt your wearing.