Rickresource Rickenbacker Forum

scotty wrote:Paul thanks for you output.

Wow, Paul W, that's a gem that you found there! The nightmare that is the increasing number of folks with a less than stellar command of grammar

except-accept

affect-effect

to, too, two

there, their, they're

and, the erroneous written construction "would of" instead of the correct contraction "would've", which is of course a contraction for "would have"

And then there's always your and you're...

What drives me crazy is overused commas and random capitalization...

There seems to be a group of people who never quite got the rules of capitalization (of maybe who emigrated from Germany?) who feel that they must capitalize every noun, usually just to be on the safe side.

Having been in a design management or director position for the last couple of decades of my career, I've interviewed (and dealt with) hundreds of artists, illustrators, and designers. Fully 75% of them were dyslexic to some degree or other.

One guy wrote in his resumé that he worked on a toy design of a "drackular" project. When queried on this, he asked me if I never heard of vampires...he meant "Dracula", of course!

My ex-boss constantly wrote me memos about "consepts"; he got rich on them and never learned how to spell what they were.

I'm a firm believer in the "Oxford comma". I find, ironically, though, that the use of commas in British English has decreased dramatically to the extent that the sense of a sentence often requires a second, and third, reading, in order to be clear. This surely should be the subject of a letter to the Sunday Times.

In America, OTOH, we've never been particularly consistent or attentive about capitalization, punctuation, and grammatical consistency beyond college essays, so it's been going all to hell for a generation now, good communication having been de-emphasized in favor of profiteering.

Oh, and one last thing: "hillbilly plural's". Q.E.D.

jingle_jangle wrote:There seems to be a group of people who never quite got the rules of capitalization (of maybe who emigrated from Germany?) who feel that they must capitalize every noun, usually just to be on the safe side.

Having been in a design management or director position for the last couple of decades of my career, I've interviewed (and dealt with) hundreds of artists, illustrators, and designers. Fully 75% of them were dyslexic to some degree or other.

One guy wrote in his resumé that he worked on a toy design of a "drackular" project. When queried on this, he asked me if I never heard of vampires...he meant "Dracula", of course!

My ex-boss constantly wrote me memos about "consepts"; he got rich on them and never learned how to spell what they were.

I'm a firm believer in the "Oxford comma". I find, ironically, though, that the use of commas in British English has decreased dramatically to the extent that the sense of a sentence often requires a second, and third, reading, in order to be clear. This surely should be the subject of a letter to the Sunday Times.

In America, OTOH, we've never been particularly consistent or attentive about capitalization, punctuation, and grammatical consistency beyond college essays, so it's been going all to hell for a generation now, good communication having been de-emphasized in favor of profiteering.

Another vote here for the Oxford comma! I learned it well!

Clever observation on the German practice of capitalizing every noun PW; I learned that during a two year course of study in German.

I have a friend who capitalizes the verbs...

And I thought my Mom and I were the last two word nazis left in the world ... this thread has me rolling.

Wait until Clauson joins us...

... we'll be insufferable Everyone else will drop out

What goes up the chimney down but never down the chimney up?

An umbrella. Next?

How's that for insufferable? A good beginning?

As Jack Benny would say, Hmmmm

I hate it that I can't overlook the popular mis-usages no matter how sleepy I am or how hastily I read. A sense of proper spelling is a curse these days as well. I feel like a granny schoolmarm under this wild and crazy exterior.

the correct answer is a open umbrella!take that Mr Jingle jungle! put that in yer input and smoke it!

(winces)

The secondary subject of this thread (can you say thread drift anyone?) is also dear to my heart. Although I would not particularly think of my interest in the context of being a "word nazi".