Rant The state of written English in university

Word 2007/2008 (Mac) does that already to an extent.

 

WTF? That's awful, if I were marking something like that I'd just mark it as zero due in illegibility, when I did GCSEs we got about 5 SPAG marks for most exams that required essays.

 

My pet hate is 'off of'. I also detest 'could of', 'would of' and 'should of'. It's could've, or could have.

I'd love to be a copy editor. Maybe one of these days..

 

Then the smooth flow of information is interrupted. Ambiguity may arise. Communication is less effective.

The cause for concern is why the author is making certain frequent mistakes. When it's some form of perverted 'street cred' then society has another division.

 

Daily Mail?

 

Nope, it's allowed up to three times in a paper, it was told to me by a lecturer.

 

You would hope those that write in a paper of any kind would be the ones with the best grammar
And yes, to a certain extent Office 2007 does do a certain amount of contextually spag checking.

 

The spokesman obviously does not understand that ideas and language are largely inseparable.

 

To be fair, no-one's allowed into the SQA unless they're retarded, quadriplegic, and have been shot at least 34 times in the face.

As far as I'm concerned, when a relatively uneducated peely wally Scottish kid starts spotting errors in the BBC's English, the country = fooked. It's a shame, proper English is such a lovely language.

 

That it is, I love listen to it and although I don't master it, I do try to do my best when speaking, not butchering it completely.

 

But first we need to define "proper English". For too long there's been the doubtful standard of "as spoken at court"; in other words, by an inner sanctum of inbreeding foreigners. "As spoken in the Home Counties/BBC English" is no better, the English of Yorkshire (or Birmingham or Scotland) has just as long a heritage, as much right to word patterns. Shakespeare broke rules. The rules are outdated, built on quicksand and must change. We can decide to boldly go. English is not Latin, Latin rules don't apply.

But that doesn't mean 'your' can have the same meaning as 'you are', or that 'to' = 'too'. Homonyms in speech can be clarified in response to an instant "Uh?" but in writing one needs to try a bit harder. Little conventions like starting a sentence with a capital letter, ending on a period, using paragraphs, all ease communication.

We can't expect golden prose every time from the products of the UK Comprehensive system, but please, read what you've written before pressing 'Submit'. It's the only indicator we readers have of your intelligence.

 

Proper English is very different from a dialect. No one disputes that dialects have a long heritage and are a perfectly valid form of communication, but that doesnt make them proper English... (btw I totally dispute the fact that the brummy dialect has any right to anything apart from being giggled at by me )

 

While we are talking about language:

Could someone please tell me what "innit" means (and where it come from)? I though it was just slang for "isn't it", but it seems to be used for way more than that.

 

It's a subtle way of saying 'please point a gun at my face and tap dance on the trigger whilst you're at it'.

 

I'm pretty sure sure that's all "innit" means. But out of curiosity where di you get the idea that it was used for more than just "isn't it"?

Thats harsh, are you seriously saying you've NEVER used "innit"?

 

This thread puts me in mind of the news story I saw just in the last couple days. Some writer is translating a few of Shakespeare's plays into chav-speak. I believe that's the sixth sign of the impending apocalypse?

Ah, and here it is:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2008/04/24/nshakespeare124.xml

 

Loose and lose

I just cannot read past a sentence containing such an error.

 

i caught a prof making that mistake once writing on the whiteboard. i made him stop the lecture and correct it.
my grammar isn't the best and i make typos fairly often, but that one really, really pisses me off. probably because it's so common that it's in danger of becoming acceptable.

 

What the eep?

I can see updating Shakespeare's work into more modern english to make it more accessible, but this nonsense?

I'd rather read it in the original, it's more understandable.