ATTN: Copyeditors and Grammar Fiends

hadn't seen it

that is terrible

the relentless drive to save syllables will eventually lead to American English becoming a tonal language of monosyllables, hums and clicks

do any grammatical authorities still condemn the singular they?

Chicago says it's still unacceptable in formal writing.

if Chicago said you should jump off a cliff

Tangential question: could anything written expressly for the internet be considered formal writing?

Absolutely!

I mean, journalists need to follow the same rules as their print counterparts. I would assume that any online professors out there would also tote the academic line of their on-campus colleagues.

presumably they would toe the line

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

i say the first one

I only use "okay" basically.

ha! why that didn't occur to me i don't know. i would use that for a verb, i.e. "did he okay it?" but not for the affirmation

xposts tote that line on down the road

pplains there are a few rules i've seen bandied for online specifically, i.e. jakob neilsen's contention that online writing should always use digits for all numbers

I just think "Okay!" looks more cheerful somehow.

Using "okay" allows this expression which is used as a single word to be written as a single recognizable word, whereas ok and OK, although very common, are more ambiguous (if you tried to pronounce them, they'd resemble "awk") and using O.K. is just asking for trouble.

A.P. style is OK.

And I hate it.

I mostly agree with Neilsen. I can't bring myself to begin a sentence with a number though, but I do usually try to weasel myself out of that situation anyway.

pretty tired of working around '18-year-old ______ did ______' tbh

i mean at least give me captions, headers

Tangential question: could anything written expressly for the internet be considered formal writing?

I've recently heard a prof. web writer/editor say web writing is informal writing by default. Of course if you're a journalist writing for an online publication it might be a different story, but you're going to have a house style or w/e that will address these questions, hopefully?

Writing anything on paper by default is usually informal too!

You should see my grocery list. It's nothing but sentence fragments.

formality is a function of venue, audience, purpose, etc.

not medium

I was reading the Jezebel piece on CVS/church burnings and noticed that the author uses the phrase "on accident," which I've heard spoken but had assumed was not accepted grammar. So I looked online and found this study: http://www.inst.at/trans/16Nr/01_4/barratt16.htm which found that "by accident" is vastly preferred by people over the age of 35, while "on accident" is preferred by those under 35. No one seems to know what precipitated the shift.

Oh no shit. That's really interesting! "On accident" definitely sounds wrong to my elderly ears.

It actually makes sense as a parallel phrasing to "on purpose" but yeah it sounds wrong to me too.

man, how did that happen?

i've never heard it spoken.

"on accident" sounds vaguely posh and antiquated to me, ironically (sort of like "on approval")

Maybe a regional thing? I've never heard it (southern US)

The blog I found the article through said it would probably have to be via some kind of national media (like Barney) because it seems geographically widespread.

I will say I'm not super well-versed in academic studies but that one does not seem like the most rigorous research possible. Still interesting though.

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"