Vexing phrases

[Gibbon]

Some self-proclaimed anti-pedants are the most pedantic cretins I have come across; for example, Oliver Kamm, who writes for The Times.

Just sayin'.

Is that really the best you have got! God, the nights must fly by!

[jamesbrown]

Some self-proclaimed anti-pedants are the most pedantic cretins I have come across; for example, Oliver Kamm, who writes for The Times.

Just sayin'.

[Gibbon]

Because when people speak, they add pauses - they don't need to say "apostrophe". Also, the reader might be partially sighted and using a screen reader, where punctuation informs the context.

(who wants to "starting a sentence with Because"?)

They don't add pauses for a contraction, the shortening is deliberate to aid brevity, maybe, just maybe, you're actually, well maybe, thinking about, probably, commas?

[Gibbon]

Have you evern tried to help your Uncle Jack off a horse?

If you didnt have an uncle Jack it wouldn't make sense would it, its a extreme example to stretch language where it does not belong and obvs. beloved by pedants.

[Paralytic]

Context fecking hell M didnt expect you to roll out that trite example. Spoken it would make perfect sense, why should the written word be different?

Because when people speak, they add pauses - they don't need to say "apostrophe". Also, the reader might be partially sighted and using a screen reader, where punctuation informs the context.

(who wants to add "starting a sentence with Because" to the list?)

[Gibbon]

Because I can read? And, unlike most of the last two generations, I was taught English, rather than picking it up from a variety of illiterate sources.

Like I said pedantic writing is for fools, the spoken word is primal, the written a poor abstract.

SOCRATES: Well, then, those who think they can leave written instructions for an art, as well as those who accept them, thinking that writing can yield results that are clear or certain, must be quite naive and truly ignorant of [Thamos’] prophetic judgment: otherwise, how could they possibly think that words that have been written down can do more than remind those who already know what the writing is about?

PHAEDRUS: Quite right.

SOCRATES: You know, Phaedrus, writing shares a strange feature with painting. The offsprings of painting stand there as if they are alive, but if anyone asks them anything, they remain most solemnly silent. The same is true of written words. You’d think they were speaking as if they had some understanding, but if you question anything that has been said because you want to learn more, it continues to signify just that very same thing forever. When it has once been written down, every discourse roams about everywhere, reaching indiscriminately those with understanding no less than those who have no business with it, and it doesn’t know to whom it should speak and to whom it should not. And when it is faulted and attacked unfairly, it always needs its father’s support; alone, it can neither defend itself nor come to its own support.

[malvolio]

I've never bothered even trying to read them, because for a start I understand they are chock full of exuberant bizarre linguistic aberrations, which from one or two examples I've seen suggest the author's mind was somewhat disordered, maybe addled by neurosyphilis, who knows? They didn't have a cure back then.

Also a lot of allusions are to events and people long since forgotten, and I gather the plot is completely banal, verging on non-existent, literally no more than some loser ambling through Dublin over the course of a single day.

It was more an exercise in linguistics (then again, so was Tolkien's work, but he made a proper book out of it) and alternative ways of story telling. Not a very successful one, it has to be said, but it was entirely logical and intentional. The story is, as you say, quite banal, but that wasn't really the point of the exercise.

It's a bit like modern comedy. Just like the old comedy but without the irritating need to be funny...

[OwlHoot]

.. James Joyce was a very well educated man, but Finnegan's Wake and Ulysses are not pretty much unreadable because he didn't know what he was doing.

I've never bothered even trying to read them, because for a start I understand they are chock full of exuberant bizarre linguistic aberrations, which from one or two examples I've seen suggest the author's mind was somewhat disordered, maybe addled by neurosyphilis, who knows? They didn't have a cure back then.

Also a lot of allusions are to events and people long since forgotten, and I gather the plot is completely banal, verging on non-existent, literally no more than some loser ambling through Dublin over the course of a single day.

[malvolio]

They're not rules they're guidelines. Surely the rules follow popular usage rather than the opposite.

Is starting a sentence with "Just" great grammar?

No, they're rules, written down so they can be taught to others.

If you want to bitch about something, try bitching about why the rules aren't updated in line with modern usage (written, not spoken; spoken is all on its own).

[d000hg]

Just expanding on the wider point, you can of course ignore the rules of grammar completely. But you really shouldn't unless first you know what they are. James Joyce was a very well educated man, but Finnegan's Wake and Ulysses are not pretty much unreadable because he didn't know what he was doing.

They're not rules they're guidelines. Surely the rules follow popular usage rather than the opposite.

Is starting a sentence with "Just" great grammar?