For those who like to point out grammar mistakes...
Discussion
B'stard Child said:
gooner1 said:
Toyoda said:
It is finest?
I have a surplus of apostophes I need to get rid of, before the New Year.Please help yourself to as many as you need.
I was taught English language by two different teachers and both were, to put it mildly, fastidious. It has stayed with me all my life. I'm not stuck in the past, although I do resent the degradation of some words, such as decimate and literally, as they go from precise meanings to woolly waffle. Nice has a specific meaning that it has retained to an extent.
For English literature I had one teacher throughout my school days, and she brought the pages of poetry anthologies alive. We would have a task, such as; Compare Auden's 'Stop All the Clocks' to Frye's 'Do Not Stand at My Grave and Weep,' focusing on the point of views, attitudes to death and . . . etc. This might seem, to quote another great poet, an attempt 'to shovel the glimpse Into the ditch of what each one means', she made it interesting by bringing out the possible meanings of the poems.
She would have made a great historian as she came to no decisions, and indeed criticised us should we be so presumptuous; only possibilities were allowed. She showed us that poetry is, like the universe, observer centred.
We compared WWI poetry to the letters intended for home consumption that were written from the trenches. All of a sudden the bland, mildly heroic, sentiment of the latter became clear. You could see the same person writing both.
Punctuation is important, some might say vital, in poetry, but it does not, necessarily, follow the rules. However, the rules help the punctuation to function.
The English language has the ability to entrance, excite, entice and lots of other things beginning with e and other letters of the alphabet. Its abuse is like putting wheel arch extensions, wider wheels and a high spoiler on a Scaglietti-bodied, swb, 250GT Ferrari. For some that would be fine. For most of us it would be desecration of a thing of beauty.
Is it too much to ask for those who want to use the language to make a bit of an effort and learn the basics?
For English literature I had one teacher throughout my school days, and she brought the pages of poetry anthologies alive. We would have a task, such as; Compare Auden's 'Stop All the Clocks' to Frye's 'Do Not Stand at My Grave and Weep,' focusing on the point of views, attitudes to death and . . . etc. This might seem, to quote another great poet, an attempt 'to shovel the glimpse Into the ditch of what each one means', she made it interesting by bringing out the possible meanings of the poems.
She would have made a great historian as she came to no decisions, and indeed criticised us should we be so presumptuous; only possibilities were allowed. She showed us that poetry is, like the universe, observer centred.
We compared WWI poetry to the letters intended for home consumption that were written from the trenches. All of a sudden the bland, mildly heroic, sentiment of the latter became clear. You could see the same person writing both.
Punctuation is important, some might say vital, in poetry, but it does not, necessarily, follow the rules. However, the rules help the punctuation to function.
The English language has the ability to entrance, excite, entice and lots of other things beginning with e and other letters of the alphabet. Its abuse is like putting wheel arch extensions, wider wheels and a high spoiler on a Scaglietti-bodied, swb, 250GT Ferrari. For some that would be fine. For most of us it would be desecration of a thing of beauty.
Is it too much to ask for those who want to use the language to make a bit of an effort and learn the basics?
citizensm1th said:
B'stard Child said:
gooner1 said:
Toyoda said:
It is finest?
I have a surplus of apostophes I need to get rid of, before the New Year.Please help yourself to as many as you need.
Derek Smith said:
Is it too much to ask for those who want to use the language to make a bit of an effort and learn the basics?
Well said Mr Smith. Sadly, too many are happy to abuse rather than use the language.Too many also appear happy to celebrate their illiteracy as some badge of honour, which I find somewhat perverse.
Apart from those who come to pistonheads as a source for an argument, most people come here to learn new things about cars and the world in general.
The use of spelling and grammar is the topic that appears to have some of the most entrenched opinions.
I'm willing to get involved in the occasional debate and happy to have my knowledge base expanded and even change my opinions on some subjects.
Those who are unable to spell however seem particularly unwilling to learn; getting a few fundamentals correct really shouldn't be that difficult.
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