41–50 of 50 posts
Maybe a list of common errors in English usage would be more useful if it were a manageable list. How about the 20 most common errors in usage. I'd bet (but surely there are some studies on this) that the following would appear near or close to the top of the list: it's for its; there for their; alright for all right; 'the reason is because', for 'the reason is that'; dangling modifiers; missing or unclear pronominal…
It's great, but try reading the one on apostrophe's and see if you can still get it right every single time. We need some sort of academy anglaise to make decisions on the language and exorcise the apostrophe once and for all. Cursed thing it is.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
It says that, as a general rule, you should use 'use' instead of 'usage'. So I reconstructed the sentence to make it use 'use'. Also, the :) was intended to make it a bit of a joke.
> It says that, as a general rule, you should use 'use' instead of 'usage'. Nowhere does it say that. It says that only if both seem appropriate (obviously disallowing modifying the rest of the sentence -- that is clear from the context and the example). In this case, "use" doesn't seem appropriate at all.
As I am always forced bring up in English grammar threads, without a formal (decidable) grammar or an agreed-upon body of work to signify "common usage," there is no formal way to decide whether any statement is grammatical English.
English isn't a formal language so it doesn't matter if there's no formal way of deciding grammaticality. Usage is mostly about imprecise, changing social conventions. That doesn't imply that it's useless to talk about it. We can talk about language usage more or less in the same way we talk about what to wear on such and such occasion.
I'm not suggesting that talking about grammar is impossible or pointless. I'm saying that for the discussion to make sense, there needs to be some formal way to settle whether something is grammatical or not. You could try to make a formal grammar for English, but that's probably futile. A better approach would be to choose a list of written works as the English "canon" and judge usage (hopefully as objectively as you can) against that body of work.
As I am always forced bring up in English grammar threads, without a formal (decidable) grammar or an agreed-upon body of work to signify "common usage," there is no formal way to decide whether any statement is grammatical English.
You could say the same of pretty much everything. Just because something isn't perfect or provable doesn't mean it can't be useful. Just look at this as a guide to English grammar at the date it was written.
To me, it's a contradiction to say "x isn't a formal language with a decision procedure for well-formedness" and "A is/isn't a well-formed statement in x."
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I also notice a lot of "eke vs. eek" here. Turns out there's this property called onomatopoeia that escapes many people.
In fairness, "eke" is a rarely used word. No such excuses for they're/there/their though.
If only Hugh Laurie had any idea then about his role as Greg House.
Maybe a list of common errors in English usage would be more useful if it were a manageable list. How about the 20 most common errors in usage. I'd bet (but surely there are some studies on this) that the following would appear near or close to the top of the list: it's for its; there for their; alright for all right; 'the reason is because', for 'the reason is that'; dangling modifiers; missing or unclear pronominal…
Loose vs. lose comes up far too often here. Also: http://www.uta.edu/owl/top20.htm
It's great, but try reading the one on apostrophe's and see if you can still get it right every single time. We need some sort of academy anglaise to make decisions on the language and exorcise the apostrophe once and for all. Cursed thing it is.
I'm pretty sure you made an apostrophe mistake in "apostrohpe's" - the "s" is making "apostrophe" plural.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
You'll still confuse people (generally outside Anglo-American culture) who are used to 24-hour digital clocks.
If they've not familiar with pm timing, they'll be confused for the entire afternoon, not just noon.