Topic: Grammatical Grievances

@Magi

Correct as far as many pronounce the word "historical," but in fact it is often (particularly with certain accents) pronounced in such a way that the leading "h" is silent. Here's one explanation along those lines, and many others can be found when you look this one up.

History is pronounced by some with an /h/ and by others without an /h/. And often both ways by the same people, in different contexts. And so is historical. But the -ic(al) suffix is a stress-shifter; when it's added to a root the stress moves rightward one syllable (hístory vs históric, autómata vs automátic, térrify vs terrífic, etc). That in turn means the first syllable becomes unstressed, and in unstressed syllables in English there's a much higher likelihood of dropping /h/.
In fact, that's how I say it most of the time. I'd say a history professor because I say an /h/ in history, and an historical novel because I drop the /h/ most of the time in historical.

i So the stress is a factor, but the stress rule is just a description of some cases, not a rule to follow in all. The rule to follow in all cases is that the nature of the actual sound that comes out in speech controls whether we use a or an.

http://www-personal.umich.edu/~jlawler/aue/a-an.html

But, generally speaking, I agree with you, since I also pronounce the "h" enough so that "an" in front of it would sound awkward. Yet I have seen many, many documentaries with a proper (often British) voice consistently using the "an" in front of "historical."

Crazy Brits. The next thing you know they'll be trying to spell "armor" like "armour" and "flavor" like "flavour" while calling women "birds" and "queing" instead of standing in line. ::shrugs:: (I kid ofc)

Deleted my two previous posts as I was ranting, and would rather not get on the wrong side of the grammar fanboys. _{bit late for that machu, ha!} Instead, I shall post one of my favourite lolcats...

Whilst I do like people to make some effort with spelling and grammar I don't get worked up over occasional mistakes in informal situations such as Internet forums. I understand some people find it more difficult than others and also sometimes people just don't have the time to proof read their posts for grammatical errors (I am guilty of this often).

However, I am of the opinion that with Internet slang and text message talk being so popular now that a lot of peoples written language skills are deteriorating, I have certain friends who didn't exactly try hard at school, and spend all day texting on their mobile phone, and their written language skills are terrible. Here is a real example that was on my Facebook page this morning - id beta not do lol,dnt fink i wil tho - this is the point I start to worry, not when somebody misses a full stop.

One of my all time pet hates is the misuse of the word 'literally'.
For instance, if someone says, "I was so shocked, I literally died".
The word loses all meaning if used incorrectly.

Regarding 'an', apart from the general rule it's down to each person's discretion. There are some cases where an 'a' in front of a word just doesn't sound right (can't think of an example right now though).

I don't know if it was just my college or course, but we had to write 'was not' rather than 'wasn't' and the like.

I'm actually an English teacher. I'm expecting my medal to arrive in the post soon.

@Cowlaunch: Did you ask them what death was like?

I was talking to them in the afterlife. It's nice, there are no grammatical errors.

To me, language is all about communication. As long as I understand what is being said, I'm fine. It's easier to be understood if your grammar is flawless, of course, but you can still say something that's correct in every way and yet still makes no sense to someone else.

Y'know, like everytime I write a grammatically-correct post.

Language is an ever-changing thing and believing otherwise is neither healthy nor particularly sensible. And it makes you look a bit of a centipede if you spend your time pulling people up for misplaced apostrophes and sneering at a bit of incorrect tense usage when the writer's actual point is still completely clear.
I won't lie, I don't like people writing on forums like they're sending a text, but otherwise I don't mind so long as I can read it. The apostrophe thing gets on my nerves though - not people misplacing it, but the people BAAAAAAW'ing at those who do. Yes, you're right, there wasn't supposed to be an apostrophe in "apple's." But seriously, how devoid of fun is your life that you spend your time ranting at people's punctuation usage? Or worse, write a book about it? This is a woman I would quite like to use in my experiment to find out just how quickly someone can descend a mountain via aid of cannon.

Who cares? It's a video game forum for crying out loud. Turning in a resume? A college paper? Then you had better have your grammar/spelling double checked. An internet forum is informal.

I just hate it when people speak like they are texting. I don't mind the odd error [or common in some people] in a sentence, but I do mind when people say thing's like "ur, U, 4, h8" and things like that.

If you don't see a difference in "you're" and "your" or "they're" and "their" I pity you.

I'm with 'Chu on this one insofar as grammar not being of critical concern in the forums, generally speaking.

But if you're going to air out your grammatical grievances, you'd better do it with proper grammar. I've seen more errors in this thread than most, perpetrated by those who claim to know better.

Yeah, us crazy English people, speaking English, in England. Acting like English came from England, I mean, who do we think we are...

@Raylax I love that book!

@Xkhaoz As do I. That's also my favorite joke, and I have a "poopoo panda" that has those words on it in my collection [of panda things].

@some of the defensive comments above

I believe a few of you are misunderstanding this thread. If you take a look at the grammatical mistakes examined here, you'll see that none of them are picky grievances regarding comma placement or minor aspects of sentence structure. The particular example with which I started the thread ("then" versus "than") was actually less a matter of grammar in that sense and more a matter of using the wrong word entirely, and the contributions by others were generally in the same vein ("it's" versus "its" or "your" versus "you're").

Now, I agree that a certain level of informality--even perhaps at the level of incomplete sentences, some irregular punctuation, or common abbreviations--can be perfectly appropriate for a web forum, and may in many cases be an effective way of conveying a casual tone or using humor. Using "then" instead of "than," however, is not merely a matter of informality; it betrays an astonishing confusion regarding the language itself. Those two words have entirely different meanings and usage, and are in fact pronounced differently in speech as well, where mixing them up could never be defended as informality or stylistic expression. While "your" and "you're" are not always distinguishable by pronunciation (although for many they are, in fact, given different inflections), they are also entirely different words with divergent functions, and switching them in writing is nothing less than completely misusing the language and stating something different from what you intended to convey.

Add to that the fact that this thread is all in good fun, and aimed at those of us who get a little annoyed by repeated, severe misuses of the language, and who might even get a little laugh out of pointing these errors out with a tone of comically heightened severity. I believe my half sincere yet half farcical tone in the opening post should be clear enough, given the over-the-top references to sacrificing small animals and whatnot every time the language is abused.

In short, have a sense of humor, instead of lashing out in bizarre defensiveness.

@warioswoods you always seem to have a perfect argument that no one can deny. How do you do it?

Without diminishing Wario's eloquence in the slightest, 110, not having an opposing argument does aid in advancing one's position. In this case specifically, I have seen no one "lashing out in bizarre defensiveness" of either their ignorance or misuse of the language.

Keep in mind, as if it even bears mentioning, that I am a staunch defender of lingual propriety.