Hard News: A Full Sense of Nationhood
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Just to push things along a bit, who finds themselves compelled to use actual sentences with proper grammar and spelling when mobile texting?
The iPhone has helped me a lot in this ...I can't bear to write in text speak. With decent predictive algorithms and web2txt it seems almost easier to write in flowing english too, though I frequently double up on text messages. On a related topic, I've never figured out - besides greedy corporate monopolies - why texts aren't essentially free.
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On a related topic, I've never figured out - besides greedy corporate monopolies - why texts aren't essentially free.
I don't think you need look further than the greed angle. Even when txt first started, the bandwidth used was tiny compared to voice.
I find predictive is really good, until I want to use a word it doesn't know. Then it's humorously annoying in the ways it goes completely wrong.
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The truth is that people who have learned how to use apostrophes have a vested interest in maintaining them. Its like correct grammar. Learning all those rules has to mean something doesnt it?"
I see why people feel this way, but good grammar sings to me in the same way that, say, a well-tailored suit does. Yes, really. I don't think I have a vested interest because my own grammar is fairly poor. I don't know why I can recognise it but not implement it.
Just to push things along a bit, who finds themselves compelled to use actual sentences with proper grammar and spelling when mobile texting?
The iPhone has helped me a lot in this ...I tend to write for my txt audience. My dad gets the good spelling and grammar, my friends get whatever I'm can be bothered writing, my daughter gets the ur in sooo mch trbl yng ladi.
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I don't think you need look further than the greed angle. Even when txt first started, the bandwidth used was tiny compared to voice.
I've worked out that, on the corporate plan I've got, it's mostly cheaper for me to call than use SMS. Mostly. The calls I make a usually pretty quick and cost a few cents but two or more SMSs and I'm up to a buck...
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Paul, that's so my experience of it. But even more important to me is the time. Things can be said in 15 seconds that it can take 5 txts to get through, over 5 minutes.
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I can understand why te young'uns prefer text. If you remove all the "like"s and "you know"s and all the other redundant expletives and similes then you are left with something that can be adequately expressed in a shrt txt 2 b undrstd.
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Id be happy to see apostrophes die. Theyre a relic of grammatical forms that dont exist any more and in English at least, their raison d'etre is long gone.
I do write well-formed SMS messages where possible. Having a Treo with an alpha keyboard makes this much easier :)
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English becoming progressively simpler would be a good thing for everyone.
I don't know if that is actually what is happening though. The new things which are working their way into the language seem to be just more and more piecemeal, as naturally evolving languages tend to be. English is a language in which the same thing can be said in many different ways. Which is good for the person talking, not so good for the listener. Attempts to deliberately simplify English have their issues too, usually because a huge lexicon is actually useful, and compound words don't really cut it. Too long and really, if you have to learn the compound word, is it really that much harder to just learn a shorter word?
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I have learned that using 'alt' and some 3-digit codes will give rise to copyright or trade-mark symbols - is there a similar combination for macrons, umlauts, etc?
In MS Word, if you type 0101, then hit Alt and X together, the numbers transform into the macroned " ā ". If you go into the Insert -> Symbol menu you can look up the codes for whatever non-standard letters/symbols you want, or set up your own shortcuts (if you don't like inserting them with the mouse each time, and who would?).
Personally, though, if I expect to use words with ā in them a lot, I just copy and insert the letter at each instance in the document.
The Unicode + Alt-X thing doesn't seem to work here on PAS, so I've been copypasting to get the examples in the paragraph above. I assume that's what everyone else did above - or is there a trick I don't know?
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Just to push things along a bit, who finds themselves compelled to use actual sentences with proper grammar and spelling when mobile texting?
I do a bit, thanks to predictive, but not if it slows me up too much.
On that subject, in an earlier job I used to get emails from a colleague who used "dae" for "day".
What the?? I wondered... that's not even an abreviation! Same number of letters dude!
Someone pointed out it may have come from text-habit, as "d.a.e" is quicker than "d.a.y" on a non-predictive mobile. Four character selections instead of five. Sheesh.
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The Unicode + Alt-X thing doesn't seem to work here on PAS, so I've been copypasting to get the examples in the paragraph above. I assume that's what everyone else did above - or is there a trick I don't know?
I guess if you use a Māc you're a bit of a softy anyway (not that I'm suggesting for a moment that you do), but I use the real softie's Māc method:
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Id be happy to see apostrophes die. Theyre a relic of grammatical forms that dont exist any more and in English at least, their raison d'etre is long gone.
When I'm listening I can distinguish between apostrophicised (that's a word, right?) singular words and plurals, but I process written and heard information differently and lack of a written apostrophe can temporarily trip me up. Perhaps that's just habit. In some cases apostrophes inform sound (Id, I'd) which can inform meaning and I think I'd find it difficult to adjust to a missing sound cue. I certainly have that trouble in textspeak. Don't know why I need a sound cue for a written word, but I do.
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Heh, worse is when the txtese is actually longer! Like using "eye" instead of "I". But of course a large part of the point of txt seems to be the amusement caused by the restrictive form, and the liberation from grammatical normzzzzzzz.
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Okay, I'll bite.
I've obviously wrongly assessed my audience. I did not say the sign needed perfect grammar. I never mentioned grammar. I said the sign needed to be fit for purpose, and specifically mentioned that a minor spelling mistake would not make it unfit for its purpose.
Your Indonesia example is just strange. You made some bizarre comment about having to write in every language before as well, so I'll spell it out: A.u.d.i.e.n.c.e. Write for your audience. If they care about macrons, use macrons. It's in your interests to do so.
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Id be happy to see apostrophes die. Theyre a relic of grammatical forms that dont exist any more
Has the difference between it's and its been abolished somehow?
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Ill/I'll
Were/We're -
As some luminary on the Internet once said:
Correct punctuation and caps make the difference between "I helped my uncle, Jack, off a horse" and [...]
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[Janet Holmes]: “The truth is that people who have learned how to use apostrophes have a vested interest in maintaining them. Its like correct grammar. Learning all those rules has to mean something doesnt it?"
[Mrs Skin]: I see why people feel this way, but good grammar sings to me in the same way that, say, a well-tailored suit does. Yes, really. I don't think I have a vested interest because my own grammar is fairly poor. I don't know why I can recognise it but not implement it.
Mrs Skin, I suspect Janet may point out that that is an example of begging the question. It’s good grammar, therefore you should learn it, because it shows you know good grammar. As she explains, people once probably defended the capitalisation of all nouns, or the periods after Mrs (Mrs.) as examples of good grammar.
However, my feeling is that dropping apostropes is a change of a different nature than just dropping unnecessary periods or caps, but I can't elaborate just now. (May have something to do with my lunch today consisting of three beers and no food.)
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A.u.d.i.e.n.c.e. Write for your audience.
C.o.n.t.e.n.t. Read for content.
I'm feeling you've also joined the ranks of people who are no longer disagreeing me, but still want to reserve the right to feel grumpy with me about it.
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Has the difference between it's and its been abolished somehow?
Janet's counter to that is that context will serve to clarify. You're clearly sober, you refute it.
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C.o.n.t.e.n.t. Read for content.
That's really funny.
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"Has the difference between it's and its been abolished somehow?"
No. I was more thinking of the fact that we haven't had much of a genitive case in English since mediaeval times, and that it must be about 500 years since anyone noticed a missing vowel in the possessives that currently require an apostrophe.
I'm sure there are sentences with its/it's where the apostrophe disambiguates them, but I'm buggered if I can think of one right now.
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David, do you think Ben has really understood what you're writing?
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3410,
Weirdly, Americans, generally seem to have reversed the apostrophe-for-possessive / not-for-plural rule. I'm guessing that this error might've been introduced via the habit of apostrophising plurals of non-standard words (foreign, acronyms, etc.) but that's just a guess. Most (ie more than half) of my American correspondents would write, for instance, "Hogans Hero's", and now non-English-speakers - writers, I should say - are also picking up that style.
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I'm amused by this whole conspiracy angle, as if evil grammarians have created a language cartel, and are suppressing 500-mile-per gallon revolutionary New English to protect their enormous salaries in the education system. (Please read those last six words with the appropriate sense of irony.)
Why this assumption that pointing out grammatical conventions is a moral judgment? Maybe it's because everybody has made mistakes (by someone's definition) and thus feels judged when the issue of "correct" grammar comes up - and at those times "grammar nazi" is the easiest tag to hand to shut down your opponent and soothe your bruised ego. We've all done it, surely?
I mean, as long as we're saying that The Queen's English isn't inherently better than other usage, doesn't it go the other way? Is there actually a middle ground here, or are apostrophiles going to be up against the wall, along with all the bad-faith Internet trolls and crusty English professors on the wrong side of history?
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