There's a gaffe going on in the "Article: Will a Gay Male Pro Athlete Ever Come Out?" thread right now that I've been biting my tongue over.

The word is "machismo" not "macho-ism." :mad:

"Momentarily".
It means "for a moment" not "in a moment". When someone tells me that they'll do something momentarily I want to scream.
Also, people in the library who ask for a book on a particular writer when they actually mean one by the author drive me nuts. How am I supposed to get them what they want when they tell me they want something completely different? If you ask for a book on Dickens you'll get a biography, if you ask for one by him you'll get Oliver Twist. Learn the bloody difference! :mad:

This has more to do with pronunciation than with grammar but I decided not to start another thread.

My partner often pronounces words differently than I do, not to mention using words differently to how I do, so not surprisingly he says caPILLary whereas I say CAPillary when speaking of the medical condition Arteriovenous Malformation - which has been in the news recently.

As is often the case we are both right of course. Though we still have not gotten around to breaking that 10-year old 5-5 tie (draw) we have playing Scrabble. Some things are better left as a mystery to maintain a relationship.

We also both agree about the result we would like to see for Senator Tim Johnson of South Dakota, both for his health and the welfare of the nation.

Hang on senator. Your nation needs you. The world needs you.

You think you have differences in phonology? Iain and I even spell the same words differently.

I am a Boston educated Georgia Cracker, he is a Brit Army educated Highland Scot.

Unfortunately, over the last two years I find myself starting to mix usages, and sometimes even use the Scots/English pronunciations.

When he CRAIC’s a joke, I sometimes don’t get it. It goes right to the CENTRE of our relationship.

Thank God we love each other, otherwise we would kill each other! To put a new twist on an old french saying "Vive la difference!!!!"

R

I am reminded of the Notice of Revocation of American Independence attributed to John Cleese and, particularly, the following:

Rob, I just need to know...how sexy IS the accent? I like men with British-based accents (i.e., Australian, Irish/Northern Irish, Scottish, South African, etc...), and I am just green with envy .

I hate "snuck"!! The work may have gained recognition in the dictionary due to general (mis)use, but "sneaked" will always be the correct word, in my opinion.

Can't speak for ITJock but my partner would be extremely annoyed with you. Can't recall the number of times he mentions to me that he spends five minutes explaining (or complaining - which he gets a huge kick out of with his Aussie-cum-British accent) only to find out that they've been listening to the funny way he talks instead of to what he is actually saying, resulting in having to explain the entire thing over again....repeat.

Still, I love the conversations he had with phone solicitators, before we got on a do-not-call list. Asking them for their number so he could call them in the middle of dinner, or their credit card number so he could charge for his time was only the beginning. And in that haughty accent and tone of voice it just cracks me up.

I almost pity some of them...almost...well no I don't.

Oh no...I'm completely serious. I think the British-based accents are among the sexiest, followed by Southern and New England. If you know any single gay men with those accents, please let me know.

Would it be "an universe"? or "a universe"?

Would it be "an university"? or "a university"?


We live in an universe.

I will be searching for an university this summer.


These two sentences do not sound right. Is the rule written to use a in front of the the word starting with the letter "u"?

Never Mind. I found it. Gotta love this Internet.



A or An?
Brought to you by the Purdue University Online Writing Lab
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"A" goes before all words that begin with consonants.
a cat
a dog
a purple onion
a buffalo
a big apple

with one exception: Use an before unsounded h.

an honorable peace
an honest error

"An" goes before all words that begin with vowels:
an apricot
an egg
an Indian
an orbit
an uprising

with two exceptions: When u makes the same sound as the y in you, then a is used.

a union
a united front
a unicorn
a used napkin
a U.S. ship
Note: The exceptions for the articles are based upon the orthographic or written representation of the word-initial letter not the phonetic or sound quality of the letter. So, if you consider the rule from a phonetic perspective, there aren't any exceptions. Since the 'h' hasn't any phonetic representation, no audible sound, in the first exception, the sound that follows the article is a vowel; consequently, 'an' is used. In the second exception, the word-initial 'y' sound (unicorn) is actually a glide [j] phonetically, which has consonantal properties; consequently, it is treated as a consonant, requiring 'a'.





I just love it when ITJock talks dirty. Grrrrrrrrrr!

Maybe 'a' before words beginning in 'u' follows from the pronunciation as you, treating the 'y' as a consonant.

It would probably be an ugly mistake to use 'a' before 'ugly'.

Some common errors I keep noticing:

"laid" for "lay"-->I lay down because I was tired. I laid the blanket over him as he slept.
"laid" for "lain"-->I'd only lain down for a hour when you came by. I had laid a few clothes by the bed.
"sunk" for "sank"-->The ship sank. A lot of ships have sunk.
"stunk" for "stank"-->The rotten meat stank up the entire house. If he hadn't bathed, he'd have stunk.
"swum" for "swam"-->We swam across the Hudson. I will have swum sixty laps by 1 o'clock.
"rung" for "rang"-->I rang her yesterday. The phone had rung twenty times before I heard it.
"shined" for "shone" (though now both are acceptable)-->The sun shone. I shined the table.
"showed" for "shown" (though both are now acceptable)-->He showed me how to get to Indiana. I'd shown you more than you needed to see.
"bored" for "bore"-->I bore a heavy weight because of the secret. I'd borne more than I really could. I bored a hole using the adze.
"binded" or "bounded" for "bound"-->She bound up the books with a rubberband. The rabbit bounded into the room.
"lead" for "led"-->[Present tense] I lead a group of 13 divisions in the company. [Past tense] His bad habits led to his firing.
"betted"/"casted" etc. for the invariable verbs "bet," "cast" etc.-->I bet you'll win. I bet $100 and lost it. I cast my ballot tomorrow. I cast my fortunes to the wind and drove off to Las Vegas.

Most of these errors result from a lack of knowledge about the English language and its irregular verbs, which are also irregular and make similar consonant shifts in other Germanic languages. (Cf. German schwimmen, schwam, geschwummen, etc.). The simple past/preterite has a different vowel from the past participle. I.e., sing/sang/sung, ride/rode/ridden, eat/ate/eaten, etc. Sometimes they're the same: hide/hid/hid(den), hang/hung/hung, string/strung/strung, bear/bore/borne, find/found/found, etc. A dictionary usually clears up the confusion.

I'm always curious about the two past tenses of "to hang". There is "hung," as in "He hung the pictures on the wall" or "those sneakers have hung from the telephone wires since last Wednesday," and "hanged," as in "Saddam will be hanged in a few days." So often now I hear "hung" used for "hanged," but I gather both are acceptable for the second sense of the verb.

[quote name='ITJock' date='Nov 4 2005, 12:29 PM' post='291768']
My biggest grief is that the spelling and grammar checkers in most word processing programs are totally pathetic. I use MS Word frequently, and it is just so limited in its ability. Adding to the dictionary just assures that it ignores more mistakes when you do make them.

I couldn't agree more. Some of the people I work with cry "But I used spell check!" when I catch a spelling error in their stories, and I have to explain that spell check won't catch every mistake - especially if the word itself is spelled correctly but doesn't fit the context. (That doesn't sound right, so I'll give an example: Using "their" when the author means "there" or "they're," as in, "They're going to the store today." I know words that sound alike but are spelled differently have a name, but I can never remember what it is.)

I hate to sound like a spelling snob (and I bet I'll get lots of irritated responses to this comment), but in my opinion, the best spell checker is a decent dictionary in book form. I used to have a colleague who would rather ask me to spell a word than crack open a dictionary, and she drove me up the wall!

One of the funniest homonyms I found was when I was a reality show writer and working on the Bachelor. In one of the transcriptions of one of the confessionals, one girl had called another girl a Prima Donna and the transcriber had written Pre-Madonna. It made me laugh.

"Oh my God! She's such a Pre-Madonna"

I agree Eric, although I swear, it's NOT that hard to use proper punctuation, sentence structure, and how much knowledge, and of what I may ask, is so important in someones mind that they cannot wrap THEIR brain around basic spelling and conjugation, before THEY'RE sitting THERE in front of the computer? My biggest issue is the fact I can barely type... God help me when I am not looking at my fingers tapping away at the key board. Ih my naem is Jim, wgats shshakin?

Oh and Maddog.... check out overheardinnewyork.com funny funny stuff like pre madonna on there.

That reminds me of being back in high school. One night my sister was trying to complete an essay, and kept asking my mother (yelling, actually, as they were in two different rooms) how to spell various words. Finally, after about the fifth request, my mother yelled back "How do you spell dictionary?" and my sister replied, "M-O-M!"

But I agree with you about the spell and grammer checkers, sometimes they are just wrong. I notice whenever I try to avoid ending a sentence with a preposition, MS Word thinks I've made a mistake, because I use the word which, as in, "the location to which I am going" versus "the location I'm going to." MS Word, unfortunately, seems to be programmed only with the rule that you always use a comma before a phrase starting with "which," as in, "The building, which was designed by IM Pei, is five blocks away." It drives me crazy when I see MS Word actually suggesting incorrect grammar "fixes" when it finds these "mistakes."

Let's remember that 'spelling' isn't a law; but really just somebody else's opinion. OK, more at, a convention.



In typical email composition, I always spell night as nite, since it just make phonetic sense to do so.



TRL

After seeing one critical mistake that just gets me going, I have had to post it on here. I hate the run-on sentence created by the use of the word "however".

Example: I enjoy reading the newspaper, however, when the newspaper cannot catch this blatant misuse, it annoys me.

What it should read as: I enjoy reading the newspaper. However, when the newspaper cannot catch this simple mistake, it annoys me.

Yes, it is a pet peeve of mine. However, it drives me insane to know that copy editors across the country allow this grammatical error to stand, time and again.

UCLA, that's a good point. I was always taught either to precede "however" with a period or a semicolon. Example:

It was lunchtime and I was hungry, but I was in a rush. However, I didn't eat until 10 p.m. that evening.
It was lunchtime and I was hungry, but I was in a rush; I didn't eat, however, until 10 p.m. that evening.

In the second sentence, I actually followed another "rule"--which was really just a convention--of never starting a sentence with "however." One of my English teachers had a fixation about this, and it sank in, at least for a while.

I had a boss a few years ago who'd gotten her Ph.D. in English from Columbia and was a real know-it-all. She was also a drunk, but that's another story. Anyways, her particular bête noire was that you should never, ever break up auxiliary verbal phrases with adverbs. EVER. She automatically and reflexively corrected any such "error" by me and my colleagues to such an extent that I had to actively reorient myself once I stopped working for her. For example, she'd always say that

"I'd slowly walked up the hill" was incorrect; it'd have to be "I'd walked slowly up the hill" or "Slowly I'd walked up the hill."

But sometimes, you want the emphasis to be different, and English allows you to do this. Yet she would freak out if she saw it in documents, so all of us who worked for her reflexively made this change. I wonder if my former colleagues are still doing this? (Or should I write, I wonder if my former colleagues still are doing this?)

[quote name='TRL' date='Jan 5 2007, 06:24 PM' post='314091']
Let's remember that 'spelling' isn't a law; but really just somebody else's opinion. OK, more at, a convention.

Granted, but it's a convention that makes life a little bit easier for readers. English is confusing enough as it is; it would be even worse if everyone made up their own rules.

Pull over, buddy! Let's see your poetic license, registration and proof of insurance!

I've never been a big fan of Madison Avenue spelling. "Nite" and "lite" are okay for product names, but not for legitimate prose in my opinion. I even go so far as not to use "u r" for "you are" in cell phone texting. It takes a little longer, but it scans better.

I agree. That is just the dumbing down of America, with which we are doing just fine as it is. (See, I read the complaints of others.) Even on my text messages, I have my preference for actual words not the cutesy substitutions, such as "4" in place of "for" or "2" for "to".

One of my biggest pet peeves: the total misuse of the word "further" when "farther" should be used! I rarely, if ever, hear "farther" even used at all anymore. It's as if that word has disappeared from the English language. The latter is supposed to be used when talking about distance or something measurable, the former when talking about something conceptual or abstract. From the news anchors to even the History Channel narrators, "further" is the only word they use.

About 2 years ago, I was taking a required licensing exam, and the question was a bit of a run on sentence, with no punctuation. There were 4 multiple choice answers. There also were 2 possible corrections to the punctuation. If I had placed the comma in one of 2 possible places, both of which technically correct, there were 2 correct answers to the question. When dealing with a question regarding real estate law, it is ridiculous to think that the test giver did not catch this. When I confronted the examiner about which answer was the one they wanted due to incorrect (and non existant) grammar, they had to throw the entire question out. Since I was the only person in the room that even KNEW there were 2 correct answers, it was kind of a moot point. But it's important to teach grammar for just this reason. Of course the woman that created the exam was looking at me like I was a trouble maker. Sometimes I hate doing it, but I am tired of dumbing myself down because other people don't feel that anything like that matters.

I deal with houses that almost exclusively sell in the $1-10 million range. An incorrect comma, redundant sentence, etc can cost my clients a deal. I once recieve a contract with a triple negative in a clause, and a second clause that negated the triple negative. I refused to have my client sign, mainly because the buyer had no idea what their own agent had done, and it was extremely confusing to my seller. So for 10 days, I attempted to have it corrected, and finally I paid for a lawyer drawn up contract, just to make the whole thing go away. I know that I got a perfect verbal on my SAT's, yes I have a degree in German and English Lit, but these are things that I learned in 3rd grade. Do people not remember diagraming a sentence? I don't know, but I don't hold out great hope for the beauty of the written word when it comes from the masses.

As long as we're talking about news readers and other talking heads, I'd like to add one of my favorite peeves. I cringe every time I hear "February" pronounced without the first "R" -- "Feb-you-airy." Arrrgh! That first "R" has all but disappeared in voice-overs, TV program teasers, news broadcasts, you name it.

Okay, "Feb-you-airy" isn't a grammar error, but...

Puschkin, yes, pronunciations have varied in English for quite some time. Despite the best efforts of the BBC and the major American broadcasters respectively, the variations in British regional and American regional pronunciations remain, which actually isn't a bad thing. I also have to say I have never heard anyone pronounce that first "r"--I've always heard people I know or people on TV say "FEB-you-air-ee" or some version thereof, with the sole exception of some Southerners I know who say "FEBber-urr-ee." "Library" is quite different; "lie-berry" isn't really standard, is it?

On NPR a few weeks ago, someone was talking about variations in British pronunciation, and made the point that once upon a time, the northern Engliish pronunciations of "bath" and "butter" were "baath" and "boo-tuh," and were standard, while in southern England, they said "bahth" and "buh-tuh." Interestingly, standard American English retains the northern British pronunciation for "bath" (the a is flat) and the southern English pronunciation for "butter" (the u is flat), though the final "er" tends to be sounded.

The missing first "R" pronunciation is a fairly new phenomenon in broadcasting. It started about 10-15 years ago.

If the man on the street says "Feb-you-airy," I don't really care, but it tells me something about his background. If a professional broadcast announcer says it, to me it speaks of sloppiness/laziness.