Consistent? I urge you to take a look at English grammar some time. I have never been confused or distracted by informality in what amounts to an informal setting. What is perhaps more important in a conversation is that the parties approach each other as equals, rather than combatants. This is an argument I hear a lot. A couple of posts up, in fact, someone (don't remember who) compared a project log to an academic paper on string theory. This is a flawed argument; a forum is simply not a formal setting. The aims and audiences of both an academic paper and a forum post are entirely different, and so, therefore, must be the language. I often note basic grammatical errors in many of these posts that does not seem consistent with the level of language employed elsewhere. I suspect that for many, or at least for some, the aim of presenting themselves in this way is simply to make an impression on others. This explains the derisive attitude toward those less linguistically able: on a forum, after all, what is written is quite literally 'the measure of a man'. Some people—myself included—have difficulty paring down their words in a concise and efficient manner. I tend to waffle; this often leaves me in the position of authoring long, pretentious-seeming posts. One might consider them eloquent (I consider them verbose). Does this give me an advantage? In some settings, yes; on a forum, not really. Nobody wants to read a page and a half of text—after all, the less your peers read, the less of the meaning is conveyed. In trying to pare down my paragraphs, I often leave out crucial information. For others, the reverse is true; attempting to 'fill out' a paragraph results in nothing more than lots of padding around the original point, as more effort is spent tweaking language than on developing the viewpoint being expressed. What I am saying is that communication is communication, no matter the form; one gains nothing from the ridicule of another human being for petty reasons. Furthermore, to claim superiority in the level of your language before debasing yourself in childish, passive-aggressive attacks suggests, in truth, a lack of the wisdom and intelligence affecting such mannerisms is intended to suggest. It is laudable—even virtuous—to insist upon a high standard of grammar for yourself. The same can be said of informing others of their errors, where appropriate. I do not think the same can be said for using literacy as an 'aggressive' intelligence filter. 2¢.
I'll go back to the purpose of this thread, though; I don't want to derail it too much. In all likelihood, you will never achieve 'perfect fluency'; this is almost impossible in anyone who does not otherwise study linguistics. The standard of your English seems fine in terms of vocabulary and grammar generally, but you will always be clouded by the syntax and phraseology of your other languages. This is true even for me, as a multilingual native English speaker. I wouldn't agree with Sloth. I think that 'though' is much better in this context; 'however' appears unnatural and stilted. Probably better if you omitted though altogether, to form: Further, instead of using a full stop here, you can use a semicolon: Lastly, the use of the conditional in 'a real teacher who could tell me' doesn't really fit and seems influenced by your French (see?). Instead, I propose: You should use 'most other French Canadians'; use of a definite article here is confusing if you do not then define them (The French Canadians? Which ones?) So: Furthermore, 'consider myself as' seems wrong. I'm not entirely sure if it is grammatically incorrect—though I suspect it is—but using the infinitive 'to be' is a better option, or you can even omit it entirely: The goal of language in an informal setting is to streamline your words, and to remove that 'formal' feeling that often comes when setting out to write. 'Despite the fact that' can be substituted thus: Those are my suggestions. I have probably missed out some things (I'm tired). I don't really like 'to make + negative', particularly—'make me not want' just seems clumsy—but that's just personal preference. My suggestion for you, if you are really interested in improving your English, the level of which seems already to be very good, is to study grammar; pick yourself up a good grammar book with exercises. Once you understand the grammatical framework of the language in a conscious manner, as opposed to just subconsciously, you will be able to deform it to your liking.
Count me among that fine and verbose company, sir; I adore the written form with a passion that veers towards impropriety I don't really get this "as long as you can understand, it's fine" thing, not when it becomes the preference. As far as I'm concerned, if you can use language properly you may as well do so. It doesn't cost anything. If it does - effort, time, stress - then fair enough, it can be dropped in most circumstances. But I will take it as a reflection on a person, that they can't be bothered to write properly. It says that they're too lazy, busy or inattentive to write full sentences, which is pretty damn lazy/busy/inattentive. If they're on a boat in a storm, or being accosted by people IRL, or they're not a native speaker, or their fingers aren't working properly (I have days like that) then it's understandable; but by and large they're just sat in chairs wasting time on the internet, and claiming efficiency as their motive for being crap at English is contradictory. This is true, but a separate issue. Brevity is a virtue, but it's distinct from good language. You can use the English language well without being verbose. What I see more often in forums is people simply using language badly, with constant spelling mistakes and limited, stretched vocabulary that acts as a barrier to communication just as the verboseness you describe can. That said, This is also true. I take note of peoples' language skills, but I do the judging and assessing in my head. Using it as ammunition in a debate is a weird, illogical leap that marks you out as petty and insecure. On to the thread's purpose again: how are you meant to use plural apostrophes? Is it when there are multiple subjects, or multiple objects? Or only for both, or for either? Example: Assume there are 3 men and 3 meals. John stole the men's meals. John stole the mens' meals. For a single package of food owned by all 3 men, John ate the mens' food. John ate the men's food. For one man who owns a whole load of meals, John ate the man's meals. John ate the mans' meals. (I'm fairly sure this one is "man's") Which is right in each case? I never understood what the rule is.
The point is not that 'anything goes', so much as 'the meaning of a paragraph is more important than the way in which it is conveyed'. Technical proficiency is really not necessary beyond being able to express yourself at a level adequate enough to make clear your point. Too many people believe that padding out an otherwise simple message is the key to good communication, that the number of clauses is equal to the quality of the argument. Some people simply cannot use language effectively, whether it is because they never learned or because of other issues; though it may come easily to us, it is not an innate skill. This is my point. If you are thinking this way, then you are not considering the value of their words, but the value of the presentation thereof. This is not communication. To expect a level of language means you are not entering a communicative situation as equals; you are measuring your peer by your own standards. It is true, but never to the extent people often assume. I don't remember the last time I saw somebody typing as if they were machine gunning a dictionary and pasting together the remnants. ( It's verbosity, btw ) This is deceptively simple. Look here.
Does Norwegian have a lot of capitalization within the sentence? It's annoying for Me to read Sentences that have Random Capitalization, it looks Strange if anything other than a Pronoun is Capitalized.. Seems like some natural English speakers do this as well, bugs me. @English grammar being consistent Why do you think immigrants tend to mangle the language in such a predictable way, even after a long time speaking? English has many strange exceptions and rules. It's better than Arabic according to a couple of Arabic-speaking relatives. The language was historically pretty consistent and easy, but once Islam came around the language was changed to eliminate every spelling and grammar mistake in the Qur'an by making exceptions and random rules. Back to English Can someone explain to me how dashes should be used? Arabic-speaking, forty-thousand, well-built, etc. edit: 1800th post
I can't formulate a rule for the numbers from the ones I know. I know double-digit numbers are hyphenated: thirty-three, eighty-two. But I thought thousands and so on weren't: twelve thousand, nine million. Maybe it's just arbitrary...
Hyphens are pretty random, really. There are no consistent rules regarding their use. @boiled_elephant: Some people don't hyphenate numbers these days. You tend to find it more in older literature; same with to-morrow, etc.
Not really. However, what I was getting at is that some tend not to even bother capitalizing the first letter in new sentences, names or "I". This is made even worse when they can't even find the will to burn the miniscule amounts of chalories required to put a space behind their periods or their commas. Agreed.
Do you mean pronoun or proper noun, because pronouns are she, he, it, etc. It looks strange to me if all pronouns are capitalized, unless of course it is at the beginning of a sentence.
Just in case any of you think that I've been avoiding this thread for any reason, please know that I've been reading it and am not only impressed with the wide range of opinions regarding the necessity or requirement of "proper" English for online use, but also the very helpful replies from people stating correct grammar. What I'm saying is, it's great to see a thread that could just as easily have offended many people (although I fear it has done so for a few) and started a flame war actually turn into an interesting discussion and a helpful reference. I can think of many other forums where such a thread could have been started and would not have been well accepted. The fact that it turned into what I would call an interesting intellectual discussion is a credit to the members of this forum and bit-tech in general [edit] Just as a side note, my user title is meant only as a joke. Yes, I do care more about the use of proper English more than most others and do pride myself on being able to write (and speak) it properly, but I'd never think any less of someone who struggles with the language or has been brought up to use it incorrectly. Just in case any of you think (to quote a previous post) I'm an "elitist" ***, I'm really not
I think a lot of the poor grammar, spelling and puctuation we see online and within text messages today is due to convenience more than the inability to write correctly. I also think that this situation was mostly created by mobile texting, where it was a pin in the posterior typing using the phone keypads. It's just evolved into everyday usage for some now, no matter on what electronic format they are writing. Whether this is correct or not, no-one here can really say. The thing about the English language is that there are only conventions and no hard and fast rules as to how the English language is used. France on the other hand has the Académie française which acts as an authority on the use of the French language (albeit without any legal powers). What is slang today will almost certainly make it's way into our dictionaries tomorrow. Just look at the one of today for evidence of that. The English language is always evolving, and always has. What we consider poor English now may not be in the future. I have been sitting a module at uni on technical writing, and part of that module was to learn about the English language and how it evolves etc. It was very interesting. I think that using bad English for convenience is something that we are all going to have to live with more and more, the same with people not holding with existing English language conventions, but I don't see that as a bad thing myself, I see it as a natural evolution.
Very good post . I'm surprised my French is influencing me so much and I'm especially surprised I didn't notice before. You're probably right, perfect bilingualism may not be attainable and now I understand why. My brain has been 'constructing sentences' following specific French rules my whole life and, instinctively, keeps on following those rules regardless of the language. Oh and thanks for helping the thread back on tracks. It was never meant to be a bitching fest in the first place
Yeah, Orwell noticed that back in 1948. He wasn't happy about it. Politics and the English language Cacti
That's what I though, but it sounds strange. Thanks. Also, what's the rules about commas in English? I suspect they are a bit different that in Norwegian.
One thing I noticed while working in a lab with Germans is that they would use commas where we would use decimal points, and would use points where we would use commas in large numbers. It caused no end of confusion.
I know. It's frustrating as hell because Norwegian keyboards have a comma on the numpad, not a point. I had to remap my keyboard at work because of this.
