As in, doesn’t matter at all to you.
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!
I will always use “who” because “whom” gives off too much of a Reddit vibe.
- Anyways instead of Anyway
- your instead of you’re
- their instea or they’re
and a couple others…
2 and 3 are horrible though. These completely change the meaning of a sentence :(
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
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.
Anything is acceptable if it’s for comedic effect.
Ending a sentence with a proposition is just fine. Picky people whom I’ve only seen parodies of on the Internet go “oh you ended your sentence with a preposition I have no idea what you mean by ‘He went in’ maybe you could explain what he went into? A jello mold? A ditch? What did go into?”
You asked if he went into the store and I said he went in, you know what I meant because of CONTEXT CLUES.
I’ve never met anyone who’s ever been this picky but I’m ready to bite them if I ever find one.
It’s not grammatically incorrect to end a sentence with a preposition. It’s a common misconception that it is a rule, basically because one guy argued in favor of it back in the 1600s and had some support for formal writing in the 1700s. But it’s never been a broad rule, and even in formal contexts it’s not a rule in any current, reputable style or usage guides (so far as I know, at least).
Some more info on the topic: https://www.merriam-webster.com/grammar/prepositions-ending-a-sentence-with
I only know of this “rule” because of a joke.
A new student is looking for the library and stops a passing professor to ask, “Excuse me sir, can you please tell me where the library is at?” To which the professor responds, “Here at Harvard, we don’t end our sentences with prepositions.”
The student without missing a beat says “I’m sorry, can you please tell me where the library is at, asshole?”
(Not sure if I remember exactly how it should be written it, apologies if I got it wrong)
I love to end my sentences with a proposition, you wanna fuck?
Did you mean to say, preposition instead of proposition?
I think that since you’re aware of typos and context clues you knew that was the case.
I think they are asking because many people don’t know the difference
Singular they. I’ve had this opinion since long before I even knew about non-binary people. Using “he or she” to refer to a person without specifying gender is clunky as hell.
but singular they isn’t incorrect in the least. anyone claiming otherwise has some agenda to push in spite of the facts of it’s use for a good long while
It’s not, but with… Political views as they are, it’s gotten a lot of pushback. People don’t even realize they use it regularly.
“Someone called for you”
“What did they want?”
Bam. Easy. I was stoked when magic the gathering changed card wording from “he or she” to “they” because it cleans up the wording so much.
Political views as they are, it’s gotten a lot of pushback
Yeah, the comment above mixed up grammar nazis with actual nazis I guess.
The word “muchly”
Kinda like aimee mann - deathly.
I’m of the opinion that so long as it is understandable it does not matter. English was once written as it sounded and there was no spelling consistancy. Those who were literate had little issue with it.
Some related reading: https://ctcamp.franklinresearch.uga.edu/resources/reading-middle-english https://cb45.hsites.harvard.edu/middle-english-basic-pronunciation-and-grammar
Edit: Okay my rant is more related to spelling than grammar but still interesting.
All of them, unless there’s need to be accurate.
Using commas, wherever you want.
They should be logical thought breaks, not adhere to any rules of grammar.
There’s places where a comma can cause psychic damage.
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.
This one I’m so guilty of, it just seems fine when used in moderation, even if I know it’s wrong.
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.
Found Christopher Walkin.
I can’t read things comfortably with too many commas. My internal monologue stops at each if them.
I mean commas can be used specifically for pauses in speech
Passive voice is completely fine to use.
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”.
Who says it’s not?
(/s)
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.”
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.
This is the one that still ends up in my technical writing.
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.
I’d’n’t’ve had a single issue with it. In fact, I quite enjoy multi-contractions
This looks aggressively welsh.
You all did not have
It would be “You all would not have” because “You all did not have agreed with me” doesn’t make sense.
I use this one unironically lol
Y’all’d’n’t’ve is one of my favorites
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”
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.
which is wrong
Which is also just prescriptive bullshit perpetuated by grammar nazis
https://www.sprachlog.de/2009/01/12/seit-wann-machen-wir-im-deutschen-sinn/
I think if something gets said a certain way for a period of over a hundred years, maybe it’s time to accept it as a normal way to say things
A calque.
Macht sinn to me.
