unarmedman wrote:*to imaginary music in my head*

"eight-six-seven five-three-zero-nieeeyine"

nope. doesn't work.

i tried picturing everyone calling james bond "double-zero seven" and that sounds a little weird, too. the TR-eight zero eight. Q one zero one. yup. let's keep the "oh", eh?

and i should be ashamed for thinking of this, but what about that teevee commercial from the 80's i wanna say, with bruce willis singing "levi's button fly five zero one blues". neh.

1. Joshsolberg's notion that the acceptance of sloppiness with regards to language is symptomatic of the unacknowledged class/caste system in America, and the social and educational inequities therein, is a fundamentally sound notion. I would argue that there are larger and more insidious forces at work (think of the obesity epidemic that exists among poor people in this country, and look at the nutritional choices available in your city's particular ghetto, and you'll see what I mean), but Joshsolberg has a point.

2. Toomanyhelicopers' "stinging rebuttal" to Joshsolberg's post accused Joshsolberg of irony. The irony supposedly existed in Joshsolberg's grammatically incorrect defense of the English language in its proper form. Of course, toomanyhelicopters was completely wrong in all of his biting rebukes (there were no run-on sentences in Joshsolberg's post), which, ironically enough, served to add irony to what was mistaken for irony.

3. Try to read, let alone grade, an essay written by an average high school student in a typical urban American public school, an essay for which he/she will receive a passing grade, and you will be shocked.

Angus Jung wrote:2. Toomanyhelicopers' "stinging rebuttal" to Joshsolberg's post accused Joshsolberg of irony. The irony supposedly existed in Joshsolberg's grammatically incorrect defense of the English language in its proper form. Of course, toomanyhelicopters was completely wrong in all of his biting rebukes (there were no run-on sentences in Joshsolberg's post), which, ironically enough, served to add irony to what was mistaken for irony.

joshsolberg wrote:We create ideas like "evolution of language", when, if you think about it, the thought of language needing to change to assure its continued survival, while for sure having applicability to the discovery of new objects (like, e.g., the "jungle"), doesn't really apply to the misuse of already-established traditions of the language in traditional applications (think of their and there).

webster.comnet.edu wrote:Run-on sentences happen typically under the following circumstances*:

...

When two independent clauses are connected by a transitional expression (conjunctive adverb) such as however, moreover, nevertheless.
Mr. Nguyen has sent his four children to ivy-league colleges, however, he has sacrificed his health working day and night in that dusty bakery.
(Again, where that first comma appears, we could have used either a period — and started a new sentence — or a semicolon.)

i guess you might want to give webster a call and set them straight.

if you want, i can give you a sentence-by-sentence breakdown of all the things i perceive to be grammatical errors in his initial post and then you can let me know how they're proper and i'm mistaken.

don't you see the slightest bit of irony in his use of the there/their dichotomy to illustrate his point? he gets its/it's wrong both times he uses it in the following paragraph!!! that isn't ironic? sheehaw.

i just noticed this now... it looks like the quote i've taken from Angus Jung is a run-on as well! the last sentence should have been broken in two where the word "which" was used. is THAT ironic? no?

hey, i realize that i'm as guilty as the next guy of writing overly-long sentences. probably moreso. that was a fragment, btw. we're all allowed our stylistic choices. i'll say to you what i said to josh: i have no problem understanding what you've written. when i look in resources that tell me how it goes "by the book", none of us write in agreement with that... but then it becomes amusing to me when josh is pointing out this terrible process by which the language is dumbed down for the sake of dummies, yet he himself is not following the strictest rules in the first place. like i said, i'll point out more if you'd like.

Angus Jung wrote:3. Try to read, let alone grade, an essay written by an average high school student in a typical urban American public school, an essay for which he/she will receive a passing grade, and you will be shocked.

btw - you're aware this isn't even close to proper english, right?

toomanyhelicopters wrote:

Angus Jung wrote:3. Try to read, let alone grade, an essay written by an average high school student in a typical urban American public school, an essay for which he/she will receive a passing grade, and you will be shocked.

btw - you're aware this isn't even close to proper english, right?

I'm not. Please diagram this sentence's errors for me. Uhm, not that any of this has anything at all to do with the point joshsohlberg was tryna make anymore. But seriously, Mr. Grammar, educate me.

Suitable for area codes but not always for the body of the number.....Not Crap. In Baltimore say "Oh" a lot its part of our accent. area code four one oh.

endofanera wrote:Please diagram this sentence's errors for me.

in 1988, Fillmore, Kay and O’Connor wrote:THE ‘LET ALONE’ CONSTRUCTION

The LINGUISTIC FORM of the ‘let alone’ construction:

- they contain ‘let alone’, which is a kind of conjunction
- constructions that contain ‘let alone’ have a paired (or multiple pairs) focus construction, that is, two intonational foci
- before ‘let alone’, there is a sentence
- after ‘let alone’, there is a sentence fragment

alright, so i guess "Try to read" counts as a sentence, though the way i've seen the Let Alone construction described, it should be more like "I can barely read these essays, let alone grade them", with that whole full thought of a sentence there. but, fine. seems sketchy, but fine. whatever. i'm probably wrong about that anyways.

the use of the compound word "high school" here... when used as a noun, it's a compound word written in open form (i.e. i went to high school) but when used as an adjective, it's a compound adjective and therefore hyphenated, yes? (i.e. high-school student).

the string of adjectives, "...in a typical urban American public school..." wow, that's an awful lot of adjectives strung together with no commas separating them, isn't it? none of those adjectives are considered coordinate? personally, i'd like to see urban-American with a hyphen since to me that smacks of compound adjective. but to keep urban and American as separate adjectives, i would contend that they're coordinate. so then we'd need a comma between them. i lean towards compound adjective, a la African-American.

switching the sentence structure to "Reading an essay...will shock you" would remove the passive voice of the phrase "and you will be shocked". or at least change the ending to "and it will shock you". further, on the passive-voice tip, i would change "an essay for which he/she will receive a passing grade" to something like "an essay that merits a passing grade". it's more active that way, i'd say.

so i guess i'd end up with the following:

Reading an essay that merits a passing grade for the average urban-American public-high-school student would shock you.

maybe that's totally wrong, i dunno, but i think that sentence might be more gramatically correct. it certainly makes the same point in about half as many words. but more importantly, who fucking cares? besides joshsolberg, i mean.

i really don't think there's anything wrong with what he wrote. i understood his point exactly, even the part about him being a high-school teacher.

i can't figure out though, how seriously will our language be marginalized if i tolerate his 1) use of passive voice, 2) lack of hyphenation when using a compound adjective, 3) absence of commas separating a string of adjectives, and, with the way he's broken apart the first clause, 4) *possible* violation of the proper Let Alone structure--

"According to Fillmore, Kay, O'Connor (1988), the general effect of the construction is to assert the first full clause preceding let alone (i), and to entail that the second (ii), the reduced clause (or fragment), necessarily follows."

i mean, how will the unkempt masses benefit from us allowing him such stylistic liberties?!?!?!

Well, damn, Shakespeare.

Anyway, yeah, it's not a terribly well-written sentence, but despite your attempt to parse it into something it's not, it's still a correct sentence. "Try to read" is most definitely an independent clause and a complete sentence; it's an imperative with the assumed subject "you." The remainder of the sentence is a dependent clause, following the "let alone" rule as you stated it.

Beyond that, your affection for compound adjectives is a little overzealous. "High school" when used as a adjective, as in this case, does not require hyphenization. It functions more as a qualifier -- it strictly defines the type of student in a way that's central to the concept of the sentence, much like the word "rocking" in rocking chair. In this type of application, the adjective is considered as part of the noun; no hyphenization is required. If you read books and shit you'd know that.

About the only fault I can mebbe sorta agree with you finding (aside from stylistic questions about the use of passive voice, which, torturous as it might be to read, is still correct construction in English) is the lack of commas between "urban" and "American." I tend to think that those two are not coordinated adjectives, but that's almost like a value judgment in this case and prolly not the kinda thing I could prove. Basically, the question comes down to what is meant by "urban?" If it's a mere geographic location, then yeah, theyre of the same class and oughta have a comma between 'em. But if it's an observational adjective (like "beautiful" or "dilapidated" or "costly" or "low-down" or "stylish"), or even a physical description adjective (like "wooden" or "blue," admittedly more of a stretch), then they can happily sit next to one another without a comma. In either of these second two cases, the order chosen for them is correct -- "urban" as either an observational or physical description adjective comes before "American," which is an origin adjective in this case. I tend to think the use of "urban" is more like the second example in this case and is an observational adjective, but natch youre free to differ.

That said, I never woulda guessed you knew so much about grammar based on your usual use of the block-of-run-on-sentences-without-paragraph construction. Salut, grammar-fiend tmh!

endofanera wrote:"High school" when used as a adjective, as in this case, does not require hyphenization. It functions more as a qualifier -- it strictly defines the type of student in a way that's central to the concept of the sentence, much like the word "rocking" in rocking chair. In this type of application, the adjective is considered as part of the noun; no hyphenization is required. If you read books and shit you'd know that.

i just looked it up in the dictionary is all. i figured that would be the book to go to. it had high school, the noun, in open form, and high-school, the adjective, with a hyphen. a big "whatever".

That said, I never woulda guessed you knew so much about grammar based on your usual use of the block-of-run-on-sentences-without-paragraph construction. Salut, grammar-fiend tmh!

grammar is stupid, books are stupid, ergo, sum cogito, laissez-faire, nom de plume, gratis and such. i'm assuming by "never woulda guesseded", you actually meant "wouln'ta never guessed", right? see? i'm still a big dummy.

My wife makes it a point to say zero, and it's annoying. It's like she's saying, "I say zero, because it takes longer, and I like to talk, plus, I sound smarter, because it is the right thing to say."

the Lord will judge these people when their time comes....