ATTN: Copyeditors and Grammar Fiends

barney... the dinosaur?

I think it's OK to acknowledge that ppl using "on accident" are wrong but that also we can't do much about it

"on accident" makes me stabby. It sounds like baby-talk.
Mind you I realllllly hate the phrase "take the decision" which seems to have surpassed "make the decision" in popularity. I have vague memories of reading an interesting article many years ago about how "taking decisions" cropping up in political speeches was a marker of who the real author was, uncommon as it was back then.

Take the decision! That's terrible!

I feel more forgiving toward a generational shift like "on accident" than I do toward stupid business culture speak like "take the decision."

I'll tell you what, why don't you open the kimono and you can take the decision where the sun don't shine.

I've never heard or read anyone say 'on accident'

I have a vague feeling that those who preferred "on accident" would overwhelmingly choose to say "whom" in all cases where it was unclear in their minds whether "who" or "whom" was the correct choice.

"take decisions" is a commonly made error i've seen on account of tomar being used wrt decisionmaking en español
(you don't make decisions, you take them)

http://skepticism-images.s3-website-us-east-1.amazonaws.com/images/jreviews/John-Langshaw-Austin.jpg

'on' accident??!

slovenly, simply slovenly

"taking decisions" has become the norm in UK politics

My wife says "on accident." It

...sounds odd to me too, but I've never questioned where she got it from.

maybe there's a lot about her you never questioned

maybe it's time to start looking into her background

too right

OK vs o.k. vs O.K. vs ok

One of my clients uses "Ok" as house style and it makes me stabby.

as long as she pronounces it "okk" aloud, she's fine

taking decisions is for brits; taking shits is for americans

"On accident" is definitely a young people thing near me (NYC/NJ), and because I'm from this area I just thought it was a regionalism (probably fucking Long Island, those fucking people ruin everything). Had no idea it was national/international. Oh, and I'm 43, so yeah, that's a paddlin'.

"by accident" is a direct translation of the french "par hasard" where "par" = "by" and "hasard" = chance, hence the equivalent expression "by chance"

maybe soon people will start saying "on chance"

I prefer "by purpose"

I have NEVER heard or seen "on accident" before and I'm under 30, but I'm also Canadian and that shit isn't legal here afaik

I figure if New Yorkers will say "on line," they'll say anything.

I assumed "on accident" was a US thing. It deeply annoys me currently but I guess prepositions like that are malleable, so maybe I'll get used to it.

"Made the decision" and "took the decision" have both been used in British English for a long time:

http://i.imgur.com/LGsDDpb.png

Neither phrase existed before the 20th century.

Generally I'm laid back about transatlantic drift in language but one thing that bugs me beyond all reason is the American habit of adding in superfluous prepositions (esp "out") after verbs.

Close out
Change up (I know this has a particular meaning in baseball, but in general use it doesn't)
Beat out
Swap out
Build it out

"Swap out" has swept Britain in recent times.

american english is overly reliant on phrasal verbs in general imo
it drives language learners crazy

i was just explaining this the other day with turn
turn on
turn off
turn out
(turnout too but that's a noun)
turn up (increase)
turn up (appear)
turn around
turn down
turn in
turn into
and so on turn turn turn

also makes sentence structure a mess when you have phrasal verbs and prepositional phrases
barf on phrasal verbs

tracer how do you know it is a borrowing from french and not the other way around?

Ha, I've just noticed that I wrote "adding in" instead of just "adding".

Since I've moved to the Midwest I've started saying "come with" as in "Do you want to come with?" and leaving of the noun. It's both too many and also too few words all at once.

Leaving off!

Also I bet that's on Alba's list, too.

I thought "Come with" was a Valley Girl thing?

i thought it was a ~bro~ thing

either way it is terrible

phrasal verbs are the chief glory of the manly and practical-minded american tongue, and the envy of all lesser nations, feckless and hemmed in by their pitiable declensions and noun genders and hidebound grammatical despotisms

consider, for example, the singular beauty of fucking up

nobody fucks up like an american fucks up

At the Minnesota liquor store I worked at, I somehow got used to saying "Do you need a bag to take with?"

And not a SACK like we have down here.

you have sacks? no wonder the post office mixes up AR and AK

Plastic bag / paper sack.

And you should talk to the Arizonans, they're the ones who should really be PO'ed at the P.O.

nobody fucks up like an american fucks up
lol true

in a presumably well-edited (it originally dates from the 80s when there were still editors lol) university press publication, i get:

'in the aftermath of the dot.com bust'

is that… are there people who say that is how that should be done? really??

Doesn't bother me. You don't have to treat punctuation as if it's to be read out, just because it is in, say, amazon.com. It has the advantage of looking like a web address, which dotcom or dot com don't.

I'm fine with PIN number too, though.

I don't like it from an editorial POV. What if there was a website called Dot.com that went bankrupt?

'just because it is in, say, amazon.com'

yeah but making it LOOK like 'amazon.com' sure does make it seem like you should read it out, which is a bold choice when you actually are also spelling out the dot

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TKfUpKgl0w8

http://daily.jstor.org/grammar-rule-is-probably-fake/

I have to be honest. I always enjoyed the rules of grammar as taught to me, and definitely embraced being a "grammar nerd" as part of my identity for a long time. But over time, and sincerely thanks to ILX pointing me to articles like that and specifically La Lechera, I've come to see the error of my prescriptivist ways. It makes me kind of sad to lose that part of my identity but it's also really liberating and probably makes me a better person generally.

That article just seems like a popularizing rehash of the descriptive vs prescriptive argument. It seems to me like the argument is over and the descriptivists won. The residue of prescriptivism will die off very gradually because conservatives cling to simple and traditional rules no matter how irrational they are. Whereas ordinary people will just continue to ignore the entire argument and successfully communicate with each other. They'll also continue to become confused whenever they try to remember what the 'real rules' are.

descriptivism is true but that doesn't mean you should give up the struggle for linguistic dominance, you should just revel in the all-the-more naked pursuit of the power of language

<3 carl

It seems to me like the argument is over and the descriptivists won.
YES finally
people are even starting to value the opinions of linguists in other matters as well!

and as a language teacher, i obvs see the value in rules and guidelines and even using prescribed sentence structure. however, ime most of the rules that people freaked about were more of a display of linguistic privilege than anything else.
now we can all get back to criticising people for any number of other things

Oh good

yeah, i'm not a language instructor, though i had to teach it for a very short while. wasn't a fan.

now that i'm living with someone whose native language isn't english, it's difficult to explain a lot of things she hears on the television, movies, or just from random people. i mention a general rule and she gets confused by its exceptions or just lack of logic or coherency in the english language.

i love being a language teacher
it's fun + empowering + requires energy and creativity

the argument is over and the descriptivists won

Maybe, but there is still a viable middle path. I don't know what to call it - maybe the Garnerian Compromise?

Instead of arguing prescriptivism vs. descriptivism, I generally just speak in terms of sensitivity to target audience. If you think your audience believes in this or that "rule," and you wish to be persuasive to that audience, it's reasonable for you to follow the "rule" or avoid the situation somehow.

I don't follow rules because I like rules, I follow them because I like paychecks. And the most important audience member is the person who signs the check. So when I am working for someone who hates sentence-ending prepositions, I don't use them. When I am working for someone who doesn't care, I don't care either. When I am working for someone who likes AP style, I follow it; if the next gig is for someone who prefers Chicago, I follow that.

Similarly, I don't trim my toenails because I care all that much about my toenails, I trim them because my wife cares about them, and I like sleeping with her.