So if you misuse an apostrophe, she shoots you through the head and then bludgeons your elderly parents to death? Does she murder children if they make spelling errors?

Anthony Burgess, “A Clockwork Orange.”

Chocolate Chip, please.

- Jack

I didn’t really want to cry, and to be honest, it was more of a sad shaking of the head kind of reaction. I have no doubt that some people who saw it think there is nothing wrong with it. Sorry for being over the time.

As for the slang in the last line — nye znayu, droog.

You have to think about it for a minute.

Seriously, are all of you folks *this* sensitive? Literacy rates have been trending ever upward since there has been writing. The global literacy rate today is 82% and rising.

Remember one of the tenets of skepticism: do not project from anecdotal evidence?

Languages also evolve and change. Kids using internet slang is just a reality. Deal. It’s a facet of tribalism that’s deeply wired into us, and another facet that absorbs the tribal lexicons into the greater monkeysphere. IOW, it happens every generation, and the better words become mainstream. How many educated people here, without even thinking about it, proclaim “cool!” when Phil posts something neat. You’d better be prepared for “leet” becoming more common.

So stop blubbing like a gruppa of baboochkas, and viddy some radosty in the cultural evolutioning.

(Ten points and a cookie to anyone who can identify the slang in the last line)

I wanted to cry.

It depends on the forum. In a written essay in a college setting, no. In a formal publication on the newsstand, no.

On a message board where posts are generally hastily typed conversation, yes, you are completely wrong. It is going to be first draft, and the first draft even of professional writers is going to contain errors. I’ve lost count of the number of articles by famous authors where they profusely thank their editors. It’s just not worth the man minutes to sit there and revise a message board post.

“What price would you pay for excellance?”

Yep, spelled exactly like that. Har!

You’re right about split infinitives, though. A silly, old fashioned “rule” made up to give pedants something extra to complain about (as if it was needed).

My mother was an english teacher, so I had this stuff drummed into me from an early age. I’m going to send her that link.

Inquiring minds and all.

I tried (and still do) to encourage people to mistrust the things. Just because every word in a sentence is spelled correctly does not mean that the sentence makes sense. To highlight this, I used to write out the following sentence on the board and get the whole class to copy it letter for letter, then run it threw – oops, sorry, through the spell checker. Even my current copy of Word (U.K. dictionary) has no problem with the following, either with spelling or grammar:

“PUTT KNOT YAW TRUSSED INN SPELL CHEQUERS”

Go on, try it. No errors. Now say it out loud.

It made my point every time!

Also Douglas Adams had them in his black book: “to boldly split infinitives that no man had split before”.

Well, a grammar fascist-feminist would insist that it be rephrased as: …to go boldly where no person has gone before!

As in: “Tom and myself were present at the meeting”.

Ironically, and amusingly, someone using it incorrectly is invariably trying to sound more sophisticated.

Of course, now that I can meet (too) many examples of bad grammar and styles on the web, I feel differently. It’s no longer easy find out which writers to use as examples. In fact, a non-native writer likely initially tend to be conscious of spelling et cetera (as I believe some here comments on) but after a while may adopt the native writers mistakes!

This post prompted me to finally find out what “split infinitives” and “spelling bees” are. And luckily the Wikipedia entry explains the humor in the Star Trek example!

Hmm. Seems to me that the split infinitive is a fairly common construction in my native language, say if “[it is a good idea] to not buy [that item]” (sw: “[det är en god ide] att inte köpa [den saken]“) is a proper, albeit badly styled, example? So at a guess I use it all the time.

Oh, and I recently learned about the full stop style (“two spaces after a sentence”) – also a time waster if done manually, but if it improves readability on average in tests I’m all for it. But none of my text editors seem to support it.

“less” is used with amounts, i.e. things you can’t count: less milk, less flour, less sand, less cake. for things you can count (numbers) you have to use fewer: fewer cakes, fewer items, fewer children.

or to make it easier

if you want less of something that’s singular (cake), it’s “less”
if you want less of something that’s plural (cakes), it’s “fewer”

so it should be “10 items or fewer” or better yet “up to 10 items”, because the former sounds awkward.

>> the “10 items or less” drives me batty! 10 is a number, not an amount

What is wrong with “10 items or less”? I don’t get it. What should it be?

J/P=?