Freelancer, using a hyphen instead of an em dash is a typography issue. I find that hilarious coming from someone who thinks that all fonts are the same .

This thread just showed me a new way a civilized society can fall: perfecting grammar.

That is not a problem as I happen to have a significant other removal kit.

It was a close call, but I managed to survive it due to my superior comprehension skills. In the future, your resraint would be appreciated. I am not worried, as your words above express an appropriate level of concern.

Hm.

I dislike most people's casual conflation of grammar and usage. Being able to write impeccable formal prose is a nice skill to have in situations where it's appropriate, but certainly the internet isn't the place for that. (It does reflect poorly on businesses to put up flawed signs, but on the other hand, advertisements in a more colloquial register are understandably less likely to put the common folk off.)

Getting all worked up about someone else's usage only serves the one function it has ever served: proving that you're in a certain social class because you've learned and adopted its arbitrary rules.

Two of those comma's should not be there. I'll let the grammar whiz figure out which one's.

'In future' and 'in the future' do not mean the same thing.

'In future' means 'from now on', starting immediately, usually discussing an action that will now be put in place.

'In the future' means 'at some point in the future', but not immediately, usually discussing some event at an arbitrary point in the future.

Those two apostrophes should not be there. I would let you figure out which ones, but there's only two.

It's not a question of style, it's a question of meaning. There are lots of ways to construct a sentence that means one specific thing, and choosing how to construct this sentence is a matter of style (and may indeed reflect social class and level of education). But style is irrelevant if the sentence doesn't even mean what you intend it to. If I consistently used the word 'potato' in place of 'house', you'd be justifiably confused. Eventually, you might understand the mistake I'm making from context, but it would be a matter of meaning and not style. It is precisely the same with it's and its, and all the other examples we've discussed.

Writing is an arbitrary code that's used to represent language visually. A person who writes "its" for "it's" is failing to make an orthographic distinction required by the most formal level of that code. But, really, why bother making that distinction in print if your own speech doesn't?

It's impossible to tie down a specific utterance of language to a specific meaning. In fact, I challenge you to define what a specific meaning could even be. We adumbrate our intended meaning as best we can, but it's indefensible to claim that there's a one-to-one correspondence between sentence and meaning. Many things do simply come down to style.

To use a tired example:

"To boldly go where no one has gone before"
and
"To go boldly where no one has gone before"

mean exactly the same thing, except one is rhythmically less elegant, and the other is considered more normative usage.

When I'm communicating with you now, the flow of information is completely irrespective of speech. We're communicating purely through written language, how that language might manifest itself in speech is irrelevant. I don't speak your posts out loud. As such, it is vital that the written language encodes the information I'm trying to convey.

Language is like an encryption algorithm. I have some sort of idea, I encode it into language. I give you that language, and you decode it back into some idea. Ideally, the idea you recieve should be identical to the idea I concieved of originally.
Now, there's sort of a two-way relationship here. Either I can put in the effort to encode my idea so that my language represents one and only one unambiguous idea, or you can put in the effort to decode my language and deduce which idea is the one I meant to convey. The more effort I put in to encode my language unambiguously, the less effort you have to put in to decode it; the idea should transfer from me to you without losing any information in the encryption process.
Of course, in real world discourse some information is always lost (mathematics is the only pure, unambigious language), but it really isn't difficult to minimize that information loss. How do we minimize it? Grammar.

actually, those are two perfectly acceptable uses of commas.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comma_(punctuation)

[quote=Wiki Grammar: Parenthetical. first two examples even.]Parenthetical phrases in sentences may include the following:

* Address: My father ate the bagel, John.
* Interjection: My father ate the bagel, gosh darn it![/quote]

and in the order they appeared on the blog post as well!

Also, talking of style (or rather, writing of style); in my house, it is utterly forbidden to use party as a verb. I'm considering making a big sign with 'to party' crossed out in red. I make an exception for prostitutes.

I was actually just razzing the site Ford. Although, that wiki article did have some things in it that were complete opposite of what my college professor taught us. I think I'll have to show her that and tell her to re-mark all my assignment's.

Invite me over. I want to try something.



Yeah, you might get a higher grade on your assignment's.

I agree. That's kind of ridiclous that a college professor in english didn't even know about that. I'll be going after more than higher marks, since this wouldn't be the first, second or third incompetent teacher in my program so far.

I think you missed Latis' point. You may regain some marks for correct use of commas, but you'll lose them all for your use for apostrophes, so it'll all cancel out.

I really feel the need to address this. The correct word is "loves," because it's referring to "one."

Now I'm one of a tiny minority of people that loves grammar.

Obviously when I'm writing a final essay assignment or a proposal for a film, I'm sure to check my spelling/grammar more than thrice. I don't write on message forums in the same manner I would write one of these said proposals.

shoul;dnt it be "who" love/loves grammar not "that"

Latis's

Actually either way is fine. I prefer Mort's version because it's less cluttered.

So you all should start taking pictures of examples of bad grammar (that you see outside the Internet) and post them here. One day I'll get a copy of the "revised" version of The Gunslinger and post a horrible sentence I saw in there...

I was always taught that it's more proper to leave off the S when apostrophising words or names ending with S.

I'm always a little dubious when I see apostrophes used purely to indicate plurals of acronyms, like "DVD's" or "PC's". I see no reason why this apostrophe should be there and I'd personally write "DVDs" or "PCs". I can understand why some people might stylistically prefer the apostrophe, but I think it causes unnecessary confusion between possession and plurality.

Same.

You and Stuart Hall would get along great. (I agree a lot with the encoding/decoding thought as well).

Also, mathematics is a relatively limited language -- there are a lot of things that can't be expressed through mathematics. Not to say that other languages aren't limited, just that mathematics does indeed have a "weakness" for being a "pure, unambiguous" language). Just felt like pointing out that different languages have different uses, strengths and weaknesses, etc. etc.

The only time I use apostrophe's the way Mort-Hog mentioned is when showing plurality of a single letter. Writing B's instead of Bs is a lot clearer. Especially S's vs Ss. I have a writing book somewhere that says B's is correct.

What are the 'weakness' of mathematics?

Can you repeat your question in the language of mathematics?

x = lim (math) -> 0

x = ?

But anyway, I'm not going to address the question of what mathematics is because that's an incredibly deep and difficult issue, but I shall only say that mathematics is perfect. Mathematicians deal with perfect truths, universal truths, things which are true not because we observe them to be but because they must be and they must always be. These truths may be entirely abstract and have no physical meaning, or they may describe the very fundamentals of existence, but they are always perfectly true. Mathematics cannot have 'limitations' or 'weaknesses' in the sense of any other language or field of study because of the perfect nature of its study.

For a moral relativist, you spoke with religious zeal there.

If you think mathematics is the only language needed, great. I'll continue using other languages (like English and visual arts) myself.

Math has weaknesses.

I follow a very Decartes view of the mathematical/universal language.

There isn't anything that can't be represented through mathematics. Some things may be so complicated that practical representation is not feasible at this moment (for example, human emotions or thought patterns), but it's possible.

In terms of language, all natural languages can be completely broken down using formal language theory. You could, in theory, create a finite state machine that accepts any valid sentence from the English language.

No, he spoke with truth. He's right. When something is proven in mathematics, it's proven.

Math is weak only insofar as it is not the ideal way to relate a lot of stuff, such as spoken language.

Grammar is awesome, and Geb's sister is one of my new favorite people. Her writing style reminds me of Gregg Easterbrook, oddly enough.