curious_guy,

...

YourPhriendlyAuthor (imported) wrote: Wed Dec 01, 2010 1:53 am but at the same time, the *ultimate* criteria is what feels right to YOU!

-YPA

To continue the pedantry: criterion.

Click on the link below to read another of our fun English grammar threads.

DeaconBlues (imported) wrote: Tue Nov 30, 2010 9:14 pm http://www.eunuch.org/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=1

8872&highlight=prepositions

Wouldn't a preposition at the end of a sentence be called a "postposition"? Probably the grammatists got tired of naming all of the grammatical structures and left out naming the "postposition" leaving later generations having to try to figure out how to speak their English without a preposition aka postposition.

I should teach Spanish. Repeat after me: reparo, reparas, repara, reparamos, reparais, reparan...

jab (imported) wrote: Wed Dec 01, 2010 12:16 am That was your mistake. You should have used the grammer checker.

My grammer was a little old English lady who spoke perfect english. I checked with her when I was young and she said a preposition was a fine thing to end a sentence with.

Seriously: It is a matter of formality. It is fine to do in informal speech, but should be avoided in written communication. Especially in business communication. Unless of course changing it will make it sound artificially contrived and awkward.

Some old school readers will frown upon it, but I have seen much worse in common usage today. The dumbing down of schools is one government program that worked better than expected.

Reminds me of this bit in Blackadder.

Old woman: "That it be"

Blackadder "Yes it is, not 'that it be'!"

punkypink (imported) wrote: Fri Dec 03, 2010 5:59 pm Reminds me of this bit in Blackadder.

Old woman: "That it be"

Blackadder "Yes it is, not 'that it be'!"

Reminds me of the country yokel who rang up a large computer firm hoping for a job. The telephonist answered "Good morning. IBM."

Yokel: "Oh, 'ello Emm, I be Joe"

Not only may you

jab (imported) wrote: Wed Dec 01, 2010 12:14 am use a preposition to end a sentence with,

but you may also split an infinitive if you so desire. I suspect that the people who came up with those proscriptions were really trying to teach kids what prepositions and infinitives actually were.

Regarding spelling and grammar checkers, they are very good for picking up typos and spacing errors but not much else. If you have lot of dialogue in your text it complains all the time about fragments ("consider revising"). And it suggests stupid corrections too. So irritating.

On the other hand a word processor is one of mankind's better inventions. When you read a Shakespeare play, remember the poor chap had to write it with a quill pen. Ouch!

Kortpeel (imported) wrote: Wed Dec 08, 2010 2:07 am Reminds me of the country yokel who rang up a large computer firm hoping for a job. The telephonist answered "Good morning. IBM."

Yokel: "Oh, 'ello Emm, I be Joe"

Not only may you

jab (imported) wrote: Wed Dec 01, 2010 12:14 am

Kortpeel (imported) wrote: Wed Dec 08, 2010 2:07 am use a preposition to end a sentence with,

but you may also split an infinitive if you so desire. I suspect that the people who came up with those proscriptions were really trying to teach kid

s what prepositions and infinitives actually were.

The man who came up with these "rules" was Bishop Robert Lowth whose Short Introduction to English Grammar (1762) was written for an adult audience. He had no intention of teaching children anything. His prescriptions were a reflection of eighteenth-century English insecurity with their language and the belief that unless it was hamstrung by "rules," it would be inferior to Greek, Latin, and French. In point of fact, most of the cherished "rules" of prescriptive grammar don't even apply to Greek and Latin. As I pointed out Latin constructions like pax vobiscum do indeed end sentences with what are traditionally called prepositions; Plato regularly forgets the subjects of his sentences (which go on for pages) and makes mistakes in subject-verb agreement or ends up with dangling modifiers, but classical students are taught to call such things anacolutha not, heaven forbid, mistakes, which would imply that Plato's grammar is almost as bad as his philosophy.

Competent stylists of the English language who regularly and euphoniously split infinitives and end sentences in prepositions have a much better understanding of what infinitives and prepositions are than most of the double-digit stylemongers who end up with such awful rhythms as "to go boldly" instead of the pleasant iambic movement of the original "to boldly go" or produce dreadful sequences of bland monosyllables like "of which he disapproves" in preference to "which he disapproves of." It requires years and years of practice to achieve such tone-deaf prose. These writers know no more about English style than New York designers know about fashion. They are solely driven by a few irrational fads and have no sense of the practical applications which their efforts would be subjected to in real life.

gareth19 (imported) wrote: Wed Dec 08, 2010 3:42 am Competent stylists of the English language who regularly and euphoniously split infinitives and end sentences in prepositions have a much better understanding of what infinitives and prepositions are than most of the double-digit stylemongers who end up with such awful rhythms as "to go boldly" instead of the pleasant iambic movement of the original "to boldly go" or produce dreadful sequences of bland monosyllables like "of which he disapproves" in preference to "which he disapproves of." It requires years and years of practice to achieve such tone-deaf prose. These writers know no more about English style than New York designers know about fashion. They are solely driven by a few irrational fads and have no sense of the practical applications which their efforts would be subjected to in real life.

Gareth,

And therein lies the proverbial rub...

A *lot* of written literature that slavishly follows the 'rules' of grammar winds up feeling *very* awkward, because it fails to take the natural rhythms, cadences, etc., of speech into account!

One thing that's absolutely crucial in writing - dialogue especially - is for the prose to feel natural, and that goes double for playwriting, screenwriting, and *any* other writing intended to be spoken! Any character is going to have their own specific way of speaking; somebody young will speak differently than an older person, somebody who's high-class will speak differently than a lower-class person, and that's *before* you get into the little nuances like regional dialects, accents, etc. That's the reason that dialogue is the *most* difficult part of writing!

TIP: When you're writing a story, read it out loud, just so you can tell how it *feels* when it's converted to the spoken word!

-YPA

I really don't give a damn about the rules of grammar. I like to be able to EASILY a sentence, especially one involving dialogue. No one speaks with perfect grammar, except for perhaps college English professors.

And nothing irritates me more than starting a sentence with a conjunction!

LOL

j/k

Seriously, though...dialogue. It's extremely annoying to read a story with characters using perfect grammar and syntax. Especially when we're reading about teenage/young adult/preteens.

For instance, teenage boys do not say things like, "I am not going to do that!"

Note the exclamation point to indicate shock.

They say things like, "I ain't doin' that shit!" or "No way am I doin' that!"

Besides, I really doubt if we have too many literary critics browsing the Archive for grammatical quality.

gareth19 (imported) wrote: Wed Dec 08, 2010 3:42 am The man who came up with these "rules" was Bishop Robert Lowth whose Short Introduction to English Grammar (1762) was written for an adult audience. He had no intention of teaching children anything. His prescriptions were a reflection of eighteenth-century English insecurity with their language and the belief that unless it was hamstrung by "rules," it would be inferior to Greek, Latin, and French.

The arrogance of the fellow! So stupid of Bishop Lowth to invent such 'rules' of grammar. And on whose authority? At least no one was burnt at the stake for breaching those rules but probably quite a few knuckles have been rapped. The difference is only one of degree.

Why on earth would he be insecure about the status of his language? This was not all that long after Shakespeare and Milton had made their contributions to the English canon. At that stage English would have been widely used in the American colonies so it was already an international language.

It could be that Bishop Lowth had a lot to do with working class English speakers and was distressed by their poor grammar and pronunciation.

Even so, remember that it was the working class, or English peasants that actually created English. The Norman conquerors were ruling England in Norman French, a language which held no interest for the peasants. Horse dung had far more value for them. The peasants continued speaking Anglo Saxon and because they could not speak even that properly they simplified it into what eventually became English as we know it.

Not a bad achievement for a bunch of uneducated peasants. So next time you hear some dumbhead tell you "I ain't gonna do that shit." remember that it was folk of his ilk that created English in the first place.