ATTN: Copyeditors and Grammar Fiends

Oh jesus maybe we should just get on the horn and talk about it? People being paralyzed at the thought of making a quick call vs. spending 5x the time crafting the perfect bulleted list I mean come on my GOD.

Honestly, a person who can write a decent e-mail AND/OR text AND/OR can/WILL actually dial a phone number and talk to a person on the other end is becoming increasingly rare, IMO. Millennials or phone-talk-phobic others may think that's OK, but in 2017 there are plenty of professional situations in which talking on the goddamn phone is part of the job, DEAL.

that's kind of why I think this needs its own thread! Make one (or I will, just not right now).

Bulleted lists are my default method of written comms which is my default method of any comms tbh

Figured this was always a 4chan thing.

http://i.imgur.com/6XqjK1F.png

Why and how have they become so dominant?

1. hyper-mediated etc etc of teh innernet age levels all things to equal importance, destroys everyone's ability to assert or discern relative importances

2. proportion of total communications seeking to induce others to comply at all-time high, compliance generally requires actionable sequential task formulations

3. fear of being ignored

5 important questions YOU should be asking about bulleted lists

I think, write, and speak in paragraphs containing long convoluted sentences that (through no premeditation of mine) tend to include a lot of parenthetical digressions and dependent clauses that follow my (somewhat scattered) train of thought; this leads me to write things that are not clear to people who are not me, so even in a breezy and informal context (like ILX) I frequently have to remind myself to stop and break it up into manageable chunks before hitting "submit post."

See above. To me, bullets are not syntactically different from a series presented in sentence form. They may be overused in ppt but in a lot of situations they're easier to read at a glance, and use in practical ways.

Things like "Dear husband, please pick up bread, milk, cat food (not the smelly kind), the kind of orange juice that I like, both kinds of bagel, some broccoli, and lots of wine" are better as bulleted lists.

I reserve numbered lists for lists in which the sequence is important and you might have cause to refer to a step by number.

Why and how have they become so dominant?

1. hyper-mediated etc etc of teh innernet age levels all things to equal importance, destroys everyone's ability to assert or discern relative importances

2. proportion of total communications seeking to induce others to comply at all-time high, compliance generally requires actionable sequential task formulations

3. fear of being ignored

this is otm
take it from someone who is frequently ignored

also there is status involved:
if you think, write, and speak in paragraphs containing long convoluted sentences that (through no premeditation of mine) tend to include a lot of parenthetical digressions and dependent clauses that follow my (somewhat scattered) train of thought and you are me, you WILL be ignored
the only way to communicate effectively is through premeditated/edited stark clarity
you need to have a very high status level to be convoluted/impenetrable and still have people pay attention to what you're saying; i do not have this
i bullet list almost every written communication that matters, including emails to friends whose time is limited
imo it's also polite/respectful not to bury your main points in a paragraph of digressions

the only way to communicate effectively is through premeditated/edited stark clarity

imo it's also polite/respectful not to bury your main points in a paragraph of digressions

This is:

- otm

and also

- otmfm

The only thing I can't abide is when people attach sentence-style punctuation to bulleted lists like

* Thing;
* Thing, thingy, thing; and
* Thing

* you

* people

Come on. A properly deployed semicolon in a bulleted list is a joy.

I don't mind semicolons per se but:

* The hanging conjunction bothers me from a design perspective, and

* It causes me fleeting anxiety.

Is it wholly redundant to say "Taken in isolation and out of context..." or do the phrases have different shades of meaning?

If the purpose of the redundancy is to add emphasis, then it could be used legitimately for that reason. The difference in shades of meaning is so minimal as to be indistinguishable to all but the most discerning reader, meaning practically useless for any reason other than the one I just cited.

taken in isolation suggests there are other instances of the same type, e.g. yr looking at one work of plato not the others. there will be historical/social/philosophical etc. context beyond the other instances of the same type, so i think it could be a meaningful to say yr just looking at this one little bit of a big pie and w no pie context.

Someone used this sort of construction recently and I can't work out if it sounds familiar although rarely used, or just wrong:
"I wasn't planning on completing A-levels, ignore a degree, but I ended up graduating"

where 'ignore' is used to mean 'let alone'

that's bizarre and upsetting

also lol while I was looking at an online dictionary to check:
"Trending Words
Most popular in the world:

BF
translate
English
racism
pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis"

xp it's weird, right? I think I lumped it in with 'save' e.g. "I don't have any qualifications save a General Studies A-level" which is proper but I associate it with older people.

I haven't ever run across that use of 'ignore'. If it's gaining ground I've seen no evidence of that. I'd file it under 'highly idiosyncratic usages' and ignore it.

This week I also heard "The trains only run 6:00 while 11:00" but that's definitely a regional thing

Oh god kinder why would u even bring that ignore thing to us

ignore it

I see what you did there!

I don't think I've heard it but it does seem weirdly faintly familiar, which leaves me wondering if it's a regional thing or someone who's invented an exciting new backstory for "nor"

This week I also heard "The trains only run 6:00 while 11:00" but that's definitely a regional thing

― kinder, Monday, October 16, 2017 5:30 PM (ten minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

waht

I've never heard that version of "ignore," though I can kinda, kinda get where they're going with that.

However, the trains at 6:00 while 11:00 thing, what in the

That version of ignore sounds very like someone reaching for the thesaurus, or an AI translation mistake.

Today I saw on a news website that Bill Clinton is receiving an "honoury" degree from an Irish university. I hope I don't ever see that again.

That use of "while" is standard in Yorkshire iirc.

that is pretty reprehensible, not least cos i bet there are a few thousand self-regarding northerners who insist on using it just so you know where they're from.

think I've mentioned this before - I like that use of "while" by the way but I've got no desire to flatten out dialects into one universal robolanguage - but the main published example of that usage that I can think of is the Sisters of Mercy song "Nine While Nine" which made considerably more sense to me once I knew what the word "while" is doing in that sentence.

sorry, to clarify, this is the wrong thread for having no desire to flatten out dialects

haha - it's prob grand really and dialects are good but it's only a matter of time before it's used to sell me broadband.

it probably already is! there's a horrible Yorkshire Broadband company that advertises on TV, don't know if it's national or not. think they'd avoid "while" because until you've heard it used that way it would absolutely throw you. don't get me started on "breadcakes" which are pure Hull

can someone explain what the "while" one means?

It means "until".

The two things that threw me the most when I moved to Yorkshire (1989) were "while" as described above, and gnarly old dudes calling me "love". I like both very much.

There was (probably still is) a subset of self-consciously Yorkshire phrases like "put wood in th'ole" (pronounced roughly as "put woodenthoil") meaning "close the door". I'd always get a sly little look to see how I, as an obvious Southerner, would react to something they knew I'd find incomprehensible. While and love were not like that.

it's discussed on some thread -- i forget where except it wasn't a word-usage thread -- so the regional use of "doubt" shd be noted here

me, a fancy london-based wordsmith: i doubt aliens exist = i don't believe in the existence of aliens
me, a shropshire-born country lad*: i doubt aliens exist = i think aliens probably exist

usage not limited to shropshire (indeed i think it arose in the thread bcz a us poster had noticed it in their area)

*i was once this, with accent to match

i've def heard the ignore one in the wild -- it's the delivery that sells it (in the sense of ensuring it makes sense)

dublin has the "love" thing in the inner city too. not so often from men but funny when like a 12-year-old girl in a newsagent calls you "love" in a way inherited from an older relative.

on the "ignore" one, i assume british people also say "never mind" instead of "let alone"?

mark those meanings for "doubt" map almost exactly onto French usage:

"douter" = to have doubts about
"se douter" = to suspect

IIRC, it was RAG who previously mentioned the regional - Scottish - usage of 'doubt', somewhere or other on ILX.

yep, yr right ward, discussion of doubt begins here: Words, usages, and phrases that annoy the shit out of you...

I like 'while'! working 9 while 5...

I don't think 'ignore' meant 'nor' cos in the original use, which I doctored, the second thing was a subset of the first thing. like 'didn't expect to be able to afford a car, ignore a BMW'

"while" for "until" certainly common in Manchester too

I noticed an odd difference usage between me (southern UK) and my mother-in-law (Northwestern Illinois) recently - she seems to use "anymore" the way I'd use "these days" while I would only use it to mean a subset of "these days" these days where something has been lost / changed.

I could say "it's not cheap here anymore", and we would both find that totally standard use.
She could say "it's expensive here anymore" (or similar) and that sounds totally odd to me, though obviously I can get the drift fairly easily.

dublin has the "love" thing in the inner city too. not so often from men but funny when like a 12-year-old girl in a newsagent calls you "love" in a way inherited from an older relative.

I remember my mam asking the young lad in the petrol station for "£10 worth please, love." "I'm not your bleedin' love," was the answer.

To be clear, this was back in the days of full-service petrol stations. He was not a prostitute.

that you know of

Fair point.

Similar to "while" above: on my visits to Vermont, I used to hear people say e.g. "quarter of [the hour]" in place of "quarter to." I found it cute & quaint. Similarly, the English usage of "at the weekend" vs. "on the weekend."

Is that very regional? I've heard "quarter of" plenty often. Probably not as often as "quarter to," but still plenty. Never been to Vermont, BTW, my dialect is Midwestern / Midatlantic.

I thought "quarter of" was a common North American usage