All About Pocket Knives

I sometimes find myself being silently judgmental of folks on AAPK that pluralize knife with knifes.

I decided to look up the rule.

Seems the ones here doing that are just slightly transitionally ahead of their time.

https://www.techtarget.com/whatis/featu ... oves?amp=1

Charlie Noyes

RobesonsRme.com wrote: ↑Sat May 28, 2022 9:30 pm I sometimes find myself being silently judgmental of folks on AAPK that pluralize knife with knifes.

I decided to look up the rule.

Seems the ones here doing that are just slightly transitionally ahead of their time.

https://www.techtarget.com/whatis/featu ... oves?amp=1

Charlie Noyes

It's knives.....knifes is just dumb.

When I see “knifes” I assume the writer doesn’t know any better and/or their spell checker is disabled.

In todays text-centric world the norms of proper grammar and punctuation seem to be disappearing. The inane omnipresence of Twitter (force-fitting the message into a character limited format) is not helping either. Nor is the “dumbing down” of education expectations. JMO

Ken

Don’t axe me.
John

jmh58 wrote: ↑Sat May 28, 2022 10:39 pm Don’t axe me.
John

jmh58 wrote: ↑Sat May 28, 2022 10:39 pm Don’t axe me.
John

Oh John!! You crack me up!!

One that bothers me waaaay more than that is using then instead of than

jmh58 wrote: ↑Sat May 28, 2022 10:39 pm Don’t axe me.
John

! Hilarious John!

knives
roofs
hooves
Any questions?

What irritates the crap out of me is when someone says "so didn't I" when they really mean so did I. Drives me crazy.

jmh58 wrote: ↑Sat May 28, 2022 10:39 pm Don’t axe me.
John

I see what you did there

And there is deers everywhere here…

not only that but we have a hole flok of gooses

When I first brought my wife to South Carolina, she cracked up when she heard folks calling a water hose a hose pipe.

Oh boy...discussing grammar usage online is opening a big ol' can of worms that tends to make people very defensive (I'm sure everyone is familiar with the term "grammar Nazi"?)

So, FWIW:

When I first began my career as an English teacher, I was a strict prescriptive grammarian; I believed it was my duty to make judgements about my students' misuse of grammar and correct them (because that's what English teachers do). After a few years of teaching ESL (English as a Second Language) as well as learning a foreign language myself, however, I changed my thinking on the concept of prescriptive grammar to a more relaxed view of language as communication (as opposed to language as a set of prescribed rules that must always be followed) --the main point being an acceptance of effective (if not always proper or technically "correct") written communication. In other words, as long as the writer conveys his intended message, regardless of using what might otherwise be considered syntactical or grammatical errors, then his communication is effective. When I was learning Spanish and practicing with a native speaker, I would often make grammatical errors. When the native speaker would correct me, I would say, "But you understood me, right?" That's when I realized that...

As long as the reader/listener understands what the writer/speaker means, the communication is effective. Remember, not everyone is a college English major, prescriptivist or native speaker (or even well-educated in their own native language, for that matter)

That said, here are some of the more common words I tend to see frequently misused in writing:

it's/its
then/than
to/too/two
your/you're
their/there/they're

Because they sound exactly the same in spoken language, to many people, these words are essentially interchangeable. It's only when language is written that we start to have issues with spelling and synonyms.

OK, English class is now over and you're all allowed to resume using faulty grammar/spelling as long as your meaning is clear.

On another forun to which I belong there is a guy that instead of I’m sure types am sure. Drives me bonkers.

Well I didn't graduate high school so whadda I know?

gordonjohn wrote: ↑Sun May 29, 2022 3:06 am not only that but we have a hole flok of gooses

Or a mob of mongeese?

Well I did graduate in the top 1% of the bottom 3 in my class with honors

I am a horrible speller and I blame it on Webster. Before dictionaries became common, spelling was somewhat variable. That became obvious to me when I started searching family history. There was a dozen or more ways that my family name was spelled. (Jameson was the oldest, so it is not some complicated Eastern European word) Fathers and sons were entered with different spelling, and nobody apparently took offense. The practice continued up until about 1750 when the current spelling solidified, and alternate spellings were considered different families. I suspect that a lot of that had to do with the way the parish priest interpreted the sound of spoken name when they recorded births and deaths.

The thing that I consider curious about my inability to spell is that I have read over a thousand books in my life and you would think that that would think that it would have been pounded into my brain, but nooooooo.

To the English teacher who posted above I will say, "Thank you for your service." I will tell you that English teachers lost my attention when we started diagraming sentences. I still cringe when I think about it)

Iff'in yawl don't lack bad Grammer just continue to by pass my posts it don't hurt my feelings a'tall.

bighomer wrote: ↑Sun May 29, 2022 1:56 pm Iff'in yawl don't lack bad Grammer just continue to by pass my posts it don't hurt my feelings a'tall.

I’m from WV and you is from Tenn. so I understood every bit of that garb you just spit out there.

bighomer wrote: ↑Sun May 29, 2022 1:56 pm Iff'in yawl don't lack bad Grammer just continue to by pass my posts it don't hurt my feelings a'tall.

That commutates good in Texas too. But my English teachers (grammar Nazis all) even in Texas would have give you a C at best.

Ken

One of the great conundrums of English teachers everywhere is how to explain to their students the objective fact that many prescriptive grammar and syntax rules of the English language (including spelling) originated for screwball reasons, impede clear and graceful prose, and have been flouted by great writers of literature for centuries. From my own observations, modern authors constantly use sentence fragments (incomplete sentences lacking certain ostensibly essential elements) that do not detract from the meaning or flow of their prose, but actually make it more effective.

When Winston Churchill was chastised for ending a sentence with a preposition (an arcane and often ignored grammar rule), he wittily responded. “This is the type of arrant pedantry up with which I will not put.” Churchill's retort illustrates that attempts to avoid ending a sentence with a preposition can be labored and ludicrous.