As in, doesn’t matter at all to you.

  • darthelmet@lemmy.world
    0·
    4 days ago

    My philosophy is that languages are made up to make communication easier and they change all the time anyway. So as long as you are understood, that’s more important than getting the grammar to be perfect. Getting it like 80% right is plenty and that last 20% consists of a bunch of obscure or ambiguous rules that would take up way too much of my processing power to keep track of while communicating, thus hindering the purpose of using language in the first place. Also, English is a stupid mess of a language. I don’t have enough respect for it to follow all of it’s rules.

    That said… what DOES bug me a little is people who make videos who regularly misuse words. Not because I think it’s that big of a deal, but… come on… this is your job and you have complete control over the work at every step of the way and have so many opportunities to correct mistakes. You write the script. You read it. You watch it again while doing editing and could easily re-record bits that are wrong or awkward. Although perhaps this is less about the language specifically and more about leaving mistakes and bloopers in videos in general. That’s what editing is for. We have more advanced editing tools available to the average person than ever before. USE THEM!

  • Jentu@lemmy.mlEnglish
    0·
    6 days ago

    I will always use “who” because “whom” gives off too much of a Reddit vibe.

  • simonced@lemmy.mlEnglish
    0·
    6 days ago
    • Anyways instead of Anyway
    • your instead of you’re
    • their instea or they’re

    and a couple others…

  • Meron35@lemmy.world
    0·
    6 days ago

    My pet peeve is people thinking they are being clever by complaining about the supposed incorrect usage of literally as figuratively.

    People, including famous authors, have been literally (not hyperbole) using the word as an intensifier, and therefore, figuratively, since 1847, e.g. F Scott Fitzgerald, Charles Dickens, and William Thackeray.

    Did we change the definition of ‘literally’? | Merriam-Webster - https://www.merriam-webster.com/grammar/misuse-of-literally

  • markovs_gun@lemmy.world
    0·
    6 days ago

    Y’all is completely fine to use. It was a mistake for English to lose its distinction between second person singular and plural. Either we accept the word “y’all” or we go back to saying thou and thee, either way we can’t just keep on awkwardly dancing around not having a distinction between second person plural and singular.

  • jenesaisquoi@feddit.orgEnglish
    0·
    6 days ago

    Using if instead of whether. For example: “I will check if the window is open”. This means: “if the window is open, I will check”. What people mean to say is “I will check whether the window is open”.

    Also, using was in hypotheticals instead of the correct were. For example: if I were going to check whether the window was open, I wouldn’t be standing here. Not “if I was going to check […]”.

  • RoadieRich@midwest.socialEnglish
    0·
    7 days ago

    Putting the punctuation outside the quotes (or parentheses) when the quote is only part of a sentence. I.e. He said “I need to go now”.

  • Hemingways_Shotgun@lemmy.caEnglish
    0·
    7 days ago

    I’m perfectly fine with pretty loosey-goosey interpretations of when to use semi-colons. I realize that there is a specific use-case, but in reality it’s just used for the most part as a sort of elongated comma; where the intention in the writing is to have a longer pause than a normal comma would.

    And I’m absolutely fine with that. No one is really clear on the real semi-colon usage anyway. I’m relatively sure that the last sentance in the previous paragraph is the actual correct usage technically, but who knows? And more importantly, who cares?

    • gwilikers@lemmy.ml
      0·
      7 days ago

      That’s not how you use a semi-colon; you use it when you want to show a logical connection between what would otherwise be two separate sentences.

  • fokker_de_beste@feddit.nlEnglish
    0·
    7 days ago

    In Dutch you’re supposed to write “Volgens mij” (“in my opinion”), but it’s pronounced more like it’s one word. So I feel “volgensmij” flows better

  • Dessalines@lemmy.ml
    0·
    8 days ago

    Using commas, wherever you want.

    They should be logical thought breaks, not adhere to any rules of grammar.

    • howrar@lemmy.ca
      0·
      8 days ago

      I’ve always just used them where natural breaks would be if the sentence was spoken. I know how it’s supposed to be used and I’ll do it correctly when writing papers, but it hurts inside to see it that way. I don’t understand how it improves comprehension.

    • overload@sopuli.xyzOP
      0·
      8 days ago

      This one I’m so guilty of, it just seems fine when used in moderation, even if I know it’s wrong.

    • SwingingTheLamp@midwest.social
      0·
      8 days ago

      I have to, take issue with this, one. The rules of commas are, pretty, easy actually: Use a, comma where you’d, pause when speaking. If, you read it out, loud and sound like Captain, Kirk then you put, a comma in the, wrong spot.

    • BassTurd@lemmy.world
      0·
      8 days ago

      I can’t read things comfortably with too many commas. My internal monologue stops at each if them.

    • evasive_chimpanzee@lemmy.world
      0·
      8 days ago

      Not only is it fine, but it’s the most common (and i would say most correct) way to write scientific papers.

      The tone of scientific papers is usually supposed to focus on the science, not the scientist, so you have “reagent A was mixed with reagent B”, not “I mixed reagent A and reagent B”.

      An added bonus is that it prevents having to assign credit to each and every step of a procedure, which would be distracting. E.G., “Alice added 200 ml water to the flask while Bob weighed out 5 g of sodium hydroxide and added it to the flask”.

  • dogerwaul@pawb.social
    0·
    8 days ago

    informal contractions are simply informal just because. there’s no real reason to consider them informal or not standard other than arbitrary rules.

    “You shouldn’t’ve done that.” “It couldn’t’ve been him!” “I might’ve done that if you asked.”

    • howrar@lemmy.ca
      0·
      8 days ago

      I consider the arbitrary rules that we call formal English to just be the set of rules that lead to the most widely understood texts, so if you want to reach a broad audience, both across the world and across time, then keeping to those formal rules makes sense.

    • overload@sopuli.xyzOP
      0·
      8 days ago

      I think if I took it too far and said that all contractions are basically acceptable, y’all’d’n’t’ve agreed with me.

    • Skua@kbin.earth
      0·
      8 days ago

      Isn’t formality itself a bunch of arbitrary rules? There’s rarely anything about any formality rule that makes the thing itself inherently more or less polite, the point is that choosing to follow those arbitrary rules communicates that you are (or aren’t) choosing to be formal about the thing. It’s like a giant tone marker for “respectfully”

  • DivineDev@piefed.socialEnglish
    0·
    8 days ago

    In German there’s the saying “macht Sinn”, which is wrong since it’s just a direct translation of “makes sense”. Correct would be “ergibt Sinn”, in English “results in sense”, but I don’t care, “macht Sinn” rolls off the tongue easier.