Posts by BenWilson
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That sounds like a formative experience, Ben.
It was. It taught me that some people who have power over you are much more interested in your humiliation than anything else, and picking on arbitrary rules of language is an excellent way of achieving that.
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It was also an excellent strategy to mess people up in debates by interjecting, demanding clarity on some pissly language point. Really good way to annoy people, if that is your intention.
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I tend to listen even to the pedants though, as occasionally they will pinpoint a mistake that might stop well-intentioned readers from making sense of what's on the page/screen
Me too. I listen to everyone who makes the effort to speak to me. When the pedantry does actually pinpoint ambiguity (or even total error) then it's definitely helpful. Got no problem with that. There's just an awful lot of it which isn't.
Having said that, my own punctuation is frequently over-comma'd and each attempt to learn the correct usage leads me further into confusion. Somehow I was better at it when it was purely instinctual.
Yup, when you were focused on conveying the ideas, rather than the nagging comma-Nazi voice in your head? I'll never forget a teacher at intermediate school wasting about 3 hours of my life teaching me about apostrophes, by tearing up the work and making me write it again. She was actually totally wrong about apostrophes, but that wasn't going to stop her making her point about how important they are. Over, and over and over. Until the wrong way was totally drummed into my head.
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You introduced it to the conversation, both times, is all I'm sayin'. :)
It is my point, yes. It was in response to some pedantry, though. And it only turned into an argument when someone else wanted to argue about it. Or some three, more like.
Paul, I don't think we're in disagreement. My own job involve endless pedantry, because a compiler rejects anything that is the slightest bit wrong syntactically with "Syntax error in Line x". But when I'm designing the algorithm, or writing instructions on how to use it, or proving an idea to senior management, or writing a specification document, I'm always annoyed when their major concern is about how I used American English instead of Canadian, or how I split an infinitive somewhere. So I take care to proofread myself.
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3410, I argue about what I'm interested in. Pedantry came up, so I'm discussing it. I'm flattered that you're keeping track of what I've been talking about and when.
Paul, I was kind of kidding. I know that Ministers can use any excuse at all to throw something out, so the various people working for them have to treat them like they're Christian Bale on the verge of another wild blowup all the time. If that involves standing absolutely still and holding your breath, or getting 6 people to proofread a discussion document, then that's how things go. Slowly, boringly, and stupidly, but that's not the flunky's fault.
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I'm not trying to make excuses for poor presentation, I'm totally coming from the other side of the equation. Of course there is onus on writers to get as close as they can to good form. But there is also onus on readers to try to understand what is being written, rather than picking on how it is written. That is like driving along criticizing everything about how everyone else drives, instead of concentrating on your own. Or even worse, backseat driving. You're actually making an accident more likely, not less. Unless you are a driving instructor, of course, in which case it is your job.
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Paul, so the DG was saying the pedantry was from the very top? Man, that really is the last thing we need.
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So that's how I can find the disreputable places? Look for crude apostrophes and poor accents?
You should do the typos, definitely. But when someone has done the typos, then you find one that slipped through, without loss of meaning, do you really need to feel duty bound to point it out? When you're actually reading what this person is thinking rather than tiresomely having to hear them saying it? And you're thinking about what they're thinking and you're thinking something awesome about that, do you really want to go "No, hold on, there's something wrong with the apostrophes on that one. Damnit, this whole thing is just disreputable. A man of my standing shouldn't have to put up with that. Come back when you've learned some decent language, Sonny, and you can take your poorly typed Cure for Cancer with you. Honestly!".
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Sorting out the typos is going to be the last thing you do. If that has to get skipped, because the paper just has to come out, then it gets skipped.
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If you're calling me a pedant, which you seem to me to be, then by your definition, I am exactly that.
I said you are not my teacher. My teacher was a pedant. I did not call you any name. Nor did I define pedant. I merely hinted that it was annoying when you have more important matters to attend to. It's often busy work. It wastes time. People got it. OK? Class Dismissed.
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