BS: Language Pet Peeves

Subject: RE: BS: Language Pet Peeves
From: Mrrzy
Date: 21 Jun 20 - 12:35 PM

Using definitions instead of the word so defined.

Using initials as in The w-word when avoiding saying Walk in front of your dog is fine, but doing that with any human over the age of spelling is infantilizing, condescending, and patronizing/ paternalistic. Either use the word or don't.

Subject: RE: BS: Language Pet Peeves
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 19 Jun 20 - 05:40 PM

I think I've used it a number of times before on Mudcat, Doug. I've known that word for many years. I hope that I'm generally seen as trying to express myself clearly. I don't mind being pulled up if my verbiage looks a bit too fancy...

Subject: RE: BS: Language Pet Peeves
From: Doug Chadwick
Date: 19 Jun 20 - 04:18 PM

Yes, that's it. You learn something every day!

DC

Subject: RE: BS: Language Pet Peeves
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 19 Jun 20 - 03:53 PM

I tend to use it in the sense of outstandingly bad, Doug. I hope your dictionary agrees!

Subject: RE: BS: Language Pet Peeves
From: Lighter
Date: 19 Jun 20 - 03:49 PM

> in clear, simple English.

Somewhere online (should be "on line," obviously), a filmgoer lamented that she couldn't fully enjoy the recent remake of "Emma" because it was too hard to "understand the old English dialogue."

Subject: RE: BS: Language Pet Peeves
From: Doug Chadwick
Date: 19 Jun 20 - 02:52 PM

.... you might wish to consider whether there's anything wrong with saying things in clear, simple English.

I am not trying to be funny, Steve, but I had to look up "egregious" in a dictionary.

DC

Subject: RE: BS: Language Pet Peeves
From: leeneia
Date: 19 Jun 20 - 01:09 PM

Yesterday I listened to a YouTube on 10 Things Narcissicists Do. One thing was correct others' grammar and usage. (This would be in personal settings such as conversation or social media.)

However, I think that when a person writes a book, he ought to maintain a higher standard. For example, know the difference between "definite" and "definitive." Also, give enough thought so that he isn't parroting weasel words.
==================
I find that I, too, have to be care about their, there, and they're. For some reason, 'their' is the one that wants to come out first, and that's odd, because 'there' must be more common.

And why do we so often use 'it's'
where 'its' should be
when 'it's', with its apostrophe,
is harder to type?

Subject: RE: BS: Language Pet Peeves
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 19 Jun 20 - 12:03 PM

I wasn't referring to you, but you might wish to consider whether there's anything wrong with saying things in clear, simple English.

Subject: RE: BS: Language Pet Peeves
From: Mrrzy
Date: 19 Jun 20 - 09:07 AM

Eschew obfuscation!

Subject: RE: BS: Language Pet Peeves
From: PHJim
Date: 19 Jun 20 - 08:23 AM

My sister bought me a lovely coffee mug with "Grammar Police - Don't make me use my red pencil!"
She says, "Jim, You'll have to decide between correcting grammar and having friends."

Subject: RE: BS: Language Pet Peeves
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 19 Jun 20 - 08:21 AM

And I made two errors in that post. :-)

Subject: RE: BS: Language Pet Peeves
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 19 Jun 20 - 08:19 AM

Well, you could always stop reading Facebook... ;-)

I guess some people post quickly and don't review enough before posting. That never really bothers me. Unless the poster has set out to deliberately obfuscate, by trying to be too clever and tortuous with his words, (we have one egregious culprit here), the meaning is nearly always easy enough to glean. What peeves me is when mean-spirited people try to make hay over others' deficiencies (such as typos, spelling mistakes or punctuation errors). Invariably, the attacker makes plenty of errors themselves, and that's when I feel that it's legit to go to town on him.

Subject: RE: BS: Language Pet Peeves
From: FreddyHeadey
Date: 19 Jun 20 - 07:56 AM

”dont overanalyze" you say,
"you really can't fight this stuff."

Yes, but

it really slows down my reading. I don't know how to skate over it.
On Facebook I'm getting so used to having to decide between there\their\they're ; your\you're ; to\too\two that when I read a perfectly well written piece I even find myself stopping to check - did they really mean 'their' or is there a different meaning to the sentence if they meant 'there' ?

I never(not for the last fifty years) used to think about it but now I even find myself writing a 'their', then stopping to check that I really did mean 'their'.

Subject: RE: BS: Language Pet Peeves
From: leeneia
Date: 19 Jun 20 - 12:53 AM

It's easy to make fun of the language of people without much education. Yes, there are high-school dropouts who haven't thought through "I could care less." or "between you and I." Criticism of them is boring.

Subject: RE: BS: Language Pet Peeves
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 18 Jun 20 - 01:18 PM

Anyway, people will continue to use very dodgy words irregardless of what we literate types might think... ;-)

Subject: RE: BS: Language Pet Peeves
From: Donuel
Date: 18 Jun 20 - 12:59 PM

Caring less is less caring than carelessly ignoring the whole damn thing.

Subject: RE: BS: Language Pet Peeves
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 18 Jun 20 - 12:17 PM

Just take the expression as a single entity and don't over-analyse by breaking it into its individual words. We know that "well I'll go to the foot of our stair" hasn't got anything to do with stairs, or going anywhere at all. Just think of it as one big word that expresses utter gobsmackedness. I could care less, when you hear someone saying it, doesn't convey that they care quite a lot but that their caring might conceivably drop off, not to me anyway. I don't like it but there it is. Honestly, you really can't fight this stuff. If lots of people say it over a long period of time, then it's standard English. It's fine to say that you don't like it but there's not much point. I mention my hatred of albeit, prior to and on a daily basis only in these threads. They're all standard English and I use them excessively in knowing company with as much sarcasm as a I can muster.

Subject: RE: BS: Language Pet Peeves
From: PHJim
Date: 18 Jun 20 - 10:41 AM

Steve,
If we preface anything with "it isn't possible that...." it could also care less.will change the meaning to the opposite, but we can't just assume that everything we say is understood to be prefaced by "it isn't possible that..." or what we say would have no meaning.

You know that literally, "could care less" tells us nothing about how much you care except that you do care. A person who cares deeply about something could care a bit or a lot less, but a person who cares just a little bit could also care less.
Someone who doesn't care at all, couldn't care less.

Many folks say, "I haven't got no bananas" when they mean, "I haven't got any bananas." It's in common usage and I know what they mean, but it still makes me cringe.
Many also say, "Give your report to John or I when it's finished," when they mean, "Give your report to John or me when it's finished."
I know what they mean, but it still doesn't sound right.

I guess what I'm saying is that although I know I'll never be able to change the way people misuse the language, it can still be a "BS:Language Pet Peeve"

Subject: RE: BS: Language Pet Peeves
From: Mrrzy
Date: 16 Jun 20 - 12:23 PM

They used to hang sheep, too.

I like (unpeeve, if you will), that people are hanged while pictures are hung.

And I don't mean During the time that.

Subject: RE: BS: Language Pet Peeves
From: Nigel Parsons
Date: 16 Jun 20 - 06:53 AM

"They gone done in Caesar, albeit he was getting to big for his boots".

Nah, doesn't have the same ring to it.

Subject: RE: BS: Language Pet Peeves
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 16 Jun 20 - 06:41 AM

I don't see snobbery of any kind in preferring plainer alternatives. Albeit stretches out to "athough be it," which we then have to rejig as "although it be," which isn't English at all. Whilst I acknowledge its antiquity (and regret that it didn't die out in Victorian times, as it threatened to), I can't excuse it on those grounds from being plain daft. They used to hang little boys for stealing sheep in those days too.

Subject: RE: BS: Language Pet Peeves
From: Doug Chadwick
Date: 16 Jun 20 - 06:31 AM

I don't see 'although' and 'albeit' as being direct equivalents. Depending on context, I feel that there are subtle differences. 'Although' acknowledges that there is an alternative or condition; 'albeit' is more of a reluctant acceptance of the same.

Even if the two words are directly equivalent, why is one better than the other. I do not accept that 'albeit' is pompous. Reverse snobbery is no justification.

DC

Subject: RE: BS: Language Pet Peeves
From: Nigel Parsons
Date: 16 Jun 20 - 06:29 AM

Merriam-Webster on 'alright' Here
All right, everyone: listen up.
If you were listening when your English teacher said that, you probably learned that all right is the only way to write the word that is also sometimes spelled alright. Pete Townshend preferred the tighter version when he wrote the lyrics to The Who's famous song, The Kids are Alright, and James Joyce thought alright was better (in one instance out of 38) for Ulysses too.

Interesting that when they are trying to be correct they describe 'all right' as a word, rather than a phrase. Probably another example of variant American usage.

Subject: RE: BS: Language Pet Peeves
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 16 Jun 20 - 06:24 AM

The thing on iPads that decides that it knows better than you do what you want to type often either inserts or omits apostrophes inappropriately, Nigel. Whether I spot such absurdities in my posts before sending them depends on whether or not I'm wearing my reading specs, which I oft misplace.

Subject: RE: BS: Language Pet Peeves
From: Nigel Parsons
Date: 16 Jun 20 - 06:19 AM

Doug:
Having said all that, the thread title is "Language Pet Peeves" - it's all about the words and expressions that you can't live with, the one's that make you miserable.

One of my pet peeves, which I share with many, is the misuse of apostrophes ;)

Subject: RE: BS: Language Pet Peeves
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 16 Jun 20 - 06:15 AM

As for "I could care less," if you preface that with "it isn't possible that...." it makes perfect sense. I see the expression as an economical way of saying just that, though, arguably, it would be linguistically more efficient, and less likely to have the recipient doing some puzzled mental processing, just to say "I couldn't care less." But here's the rub: both variants are informal and both are widely used, so we just have to suck it up. In formal writing you wouldn't use either unless you were quoting dialogue. We sometimes have to let the lingo take wings and fly, though I'll always argue against pretentious words when there are perfectly good plain alternatives.

Subject: RE: BS: Language Pet Peeves
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 16 Jun 20 - 06:03 AM

I agree with most of that, but the point about "albeit" (when you think about it, and look at the word closely, the stupidest word in the language) and "prior to" is that they are pretentious. Not only that, they both have perfectly plain and clear alternatives that may be used in every case, namely "though" (or "although" if you like) and "before" respectively. Whenever I see either of these horrors in print I go straight into prize cock red alert.

Subject: RE: BS: Language Pet Peeves
From: Doug Chadwick
Date: 16 Jun 20 - 05:48 AM

When millions of people say something, and have been doing so for a long time, then that something is standard English. Either live with it or make yourself miserable. Your choice.

So Steve, by that reasoning, will you accept 'prior to' and 'albeit' or are they still making you miserable?

Unlike physics, which is governed by laws, grammar is governed by rules. Rules are for the guidance of wise men and the adherence of fools. All that is required for good communication is that it is clear and unambiguous.

"I could care less" is the exact opposite of what is intended and is intrinsically wrong;

"British schoolgirls evacuated in their pyjamas ....", given above, is a good example of ambiguity. It seems to be a feature of headline writing;

Using 'who' instead of 'whom' is grammatically incorrect but the meaning would, in most cases, be perfectly clear

'Hopefully', for me, is a perfectly good alternative to 'it is hoped'.

Good communication should also be concise. Waffle and buzzwords suggests that the user doesn't understand the subject; deliberate obfuscation is the tool of the politician. Allowance should be made, however, for the poetry of the language. There is more than one way to skin a donkey and there are more ways to express ideas than being limited to a restricted set of approved words. Variety is the spice of life.

Having said all that, the thread title is "Language Pet Peeves" - it's all about the words and expressions that you can't live with, the one's that make you miserable.

DC

Subject: RE: BS: Language Pet Peeves
From: BobL
Date: 16 Jun 20 - 02:43 AM

Reinhard - same with Y and Þ (thorn), although that substitution can at least claim to be well established, dating back to Caxton's time.
Unforgivable though is printed cod Olde Englishe (Engli?he?) with a capital F - as in YE OLDE CURIOFITY FHOPPE...

You know you're getting into historic lettering when you read Psalm 8 with its reference to "sucking babes" and don't notice anything.

Subject: RE: BS: Language Pet Peeves
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 15 Jun 20 - 08:41 PM

This is the trouble with grammar police who desperately try to cling to some past meaning that probably never existed anyway. Could care less and couldn't care less have nothing much to do with the individual words. You simply have to take the constructions as a whole. I won't dwell. The other thing is that both expressions are wot millions of people say. When millions of people say something, and have been doing so for a long time, then that something is standard English. Either live with it or make yourself miserable. Your choice.

Subject: RE: BS: Language Pet Peeves
From: Mrrzy
Date: 15 Jun 20 - 08:17 PM

But could and couldn't do *not* mean the same thing. What politician tried to argue that they did?

Subject: RE: BS: Language Pet Peeves
From: Reinhard
Date: 15 Jun 20 - 07:05 PM

Next try with that quote:

They which take ſhippe, & inſtead of paying their fare, do the duties of Mariners.

Subject: RE: BS: Language Pet Peeves
From: Reinhard
Date: 15 Jun 20 - 06:43 PM

well, in the preview of my post the long s was shown correctly. But in my post it's been replaced with question marks. Does anybody know if there's a HTML entity code for the long s?

Subject: RE: BS: Language Pet Peeves
From: Reinhard
Date: 15 Jun 20 - 06:39 PM

I absolutely hate it when someone wants to appear cute and learned by using the long s letter '?' in historic quotes but then actually substitues it with the letter 'f' ('eff'). For God's ?ake, it's a fake!

For example in the current thread 'Maritime work song in general', it's not

They which take fhippe, & inftead of paying their fare, do the duties of Mariners

but

They which take ?hippe, & in?tead of paying their fare, do the duties of Mariners.

Subject: RE: BS: Language Pet Peeves
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 15 Jun 20 - 05:21 PM

"I could care less" instead of "I couldn't care less."

Well, most Brits would rail against the former. The trouble is that both expressions are in use and have been for many a decade, the latter for longer, admittedly, and they mean the same thing. It's a another battle that you'll lose if you can be arsed to join it. Whether we like it or not, both expressions are standard English. Let's just enjoy life.

Subject: RE: BS: Language Pet Peeves
From: gillymor
Date: 15 Jun 20 - 02:24 PM

Wha ever, Mrrzy.

Subject: RE: BS: Language Pet Peeves
From: PHJim
Date: 15 Jun 20 - 02:18 PM

"I could care less" instead of "I couldn't care less."

Subject: RE: BS: Language Pet Peeves
From: Mrrzy
Date: 14 Jun 20 - 11:39 AM

Gag me with a spoon, gillymor!

Subject: RE: BS: Language Pet Peeves
From: gillymor
Date: 14 Jun 20 - 10:35 AM

Grant's childhood tormentors pronounced it "Useless".

Subject: RE: BS: Language Pet Peeves
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 14 Jun 20 - 10:23 AM

My Fowler is from the early 1980s and I can't find any reference to hopefully or sentence adverbs... :-(

I have a few guides to English usage (my favourite is Mind The Gaffe by the late Larry Trask). Each one of them has the infuriating habit of not containing at least some contentious point or other that I want to look up, and each one has its own hobby horses and various idiosyncrasies. My starting point is whether the expression in question is in common use and for how long it has been so, then the decision has to be made as to whether a degradation has taken place. The distinction between disinterested and uninterested is a valuable one and I'll fight to my last breath to keep it. I can't abide the (mainly American) habit of confusing alternate and alternative, and it will never be alright on the night... But English is not determined by professors or grammar police, and never has been.

Subject: RE: BS: Language Pet Peeves
From: G-Force
Date: 14 Jun 20 - 10:21 AM

Regarding 'hopefully', many years ago I invented the word 'hopedly' (to be pronounced with three syllables). But I don't think it's going to catch on.

Subject: RE: BS: Language Pet Peeves
From: Thompson
Date: 14 Jun 20 - 06:49 AM

Ulysses S Grant? YOU or LISS?

Subject: RE: BS: Language Pet Peeves
From: Vincent Jones
Date: 14 Jun 20 - 05:43 AM

Ah, interesting, Steve (at least, I think so). And didactic. Ta. Your mention of Merriam-Webster made me reach for my Fowler, as I suspect what Fowler calls MWCDEU (Merriam-Webster's Concise Dictionary of English Usage, 1995) is a little US-centric, possibly a prejudice of mine: Fowler treats it as an important resource. As you pointed out - MWCDEU's disjuncts (Fowler calls them sentence adverbs) are commonplace: actually, basically, usually, although thankfully and hopefully are contentious, perhaps because they differ in their formation, and in aspects of how they resolve grammatically.

Fowler's viewpoint (2013) differs from MWCDEU: in speech, "proceed with gay abandon" (I love Fowler!), but when writing or presenting then consider the audience, as rearguard actions exist against its use, not least by language faddists and by those who are simply irritated by it.

An even more authoritative resource, my missus, who teaches in one of the London University colleges, objects because it sounds ugly and can, on rare occasions, be ambiguous, and then she referred to the urban myth of it being a slapdash translation of the German "hoffentlich". Now, the good professor would not mark students down for using the word in that way, but she suspects that other academics may do so (presumably with a "see me" in red next to a mark out of ten at the bottom of the homework).

So I wouldn't agree (add sentence adverb of your choice here) that the battle is lost, but I wouldn't put money on a victory for the people who don't want it as a disjunct.

Subject: RE: BS: Language Pet Peeves
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 13 Jun 20 - 06:43 PM

If you believe that standard English is wot people have been using for hundreds of years, you have to accept the use of "hopefully" in the sense we're arguing about. It's been used that way for at least three hundred years, though its use in that sense burgeoned in popularity in the 20th century. Here's an extract from Merriam-Webster's piece on the word:

Hopefully when used to mean "it is hoped" is a member of a class of adverbs known as disjuncts. Disjuncts serve as a means by which the author or speaker can comment directly to the reader or hearer usually on the content of the sentence to which they are attached. Many other adverbs (such as interestingly, frankly, clearly, luckily, unfortunately) are similarly used; most are so ordinary as to excite no comment or interest whatsoever. The "it is hoped" sense of hopefully is entirely standard.

I don't like it any more than you do, Vincent, but, hopefully, we can at least agree that the fight is lost...

Subject: RE: BS: Language Pet Peeves
From: Vincent Jones
Date: 13 Jun 20 - 05:10 PM

Steve, gotta disagree about "hopefully", e.g. "They'll get beaten tomorrow, hopefully." The word references the folk getting beaten, not the speaker. But what the hell... as mentioned above, language is not something under glass in a museum, innit?

Regarding "whom" disappearing. You may well be right in your prediction of the word disappearing in Britain, but in a country like, say, India, where the standard of English in all their English language newspapers is superior to that in any British news medium of any kind, "whom" will hang around a lot longer in such places.

Something that amused rather than peeved: The Daily Mail, when reporting things happening as a result of the eruption of Eyjafjallajokull in 2010, had a headline "British schoolgirls evacuated in their pyjamas as Iceland volcano erupts during school trip", to which I thought, the filthy beasts.

Subject: RE: BS: Language Pet Peeves
From: Nigel Parsons
Date: 13 Jun 20 - 02:45 PM

YouLISSaise, may be the pronunciation which goes down in history. As used by Allan Sherman:
All the counsellors hate the waiters
And the lake has alligators
And the head coach wants no sissies
So he reads to us from something called Ulysses
I can mentally 'hear' him singing it, with the emphasis on the second syllable.

Subject: RE: BS: Language Pet Peeves
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 13 Jun 20 - 10:36 AM

Then there's the stating of the bleedin' obvious: way back in the annals, just as Jack Nicklaus was lining up a fairly short putt, the commentator declared in hushed tones: "Jack wants to hole this one..."

Subject: RE: BS: Language Pet Peeves
From: gillymor
Date: 13 Jun 20 - 10:13 AM

Nobody tortures language like this nitwit.

Subject: RE: BS: Language Pet Peeves
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 13 Jun 20 - 10:02 AM

And years ago we had a weather presenter, Helen Willetts (who's still on telly) informing us that a passing cold front with its rain belt "had washed the humidity out of the air." :-)

Subject: RE: BS: Language Pet Peeves
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 13 Jun 20 - 09:57 AM

My favourite sports commentator quote of all time was made by a diving commentator explaining why Tom Daley had scored below another diver even though Tom had done a good dive. We were informed that the other chap, in selecting a more technical dive, "had out-degree-of-difficultied" Tom. :-)