Grammar 101
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What two words do you find used incorrectly the most? Two that come to mind immediately for me are these: Noxious: "I feel noxious." This is incorrect, because fumes are noxious and make a person feel nauseated. Irregardless: "Irregardless of what you may think, this sentence is incorrect." Regardless is already negative and does not need the prefix “ir” to make it more negative. "Regardless of what you may think, this sentence is correct." --- I bought a Dell XPS gaming system, started a fan site, and never looked back.
One I never knew until pointed out to me: Flounder vs. Founder Flounder is a fish. Founder is to run aground. "My business is beginning to founder" - my business isn't doing too well. "I like to fish for flounder" - and then grill it or stuff it. "Fish and guests stink in three days." - Benjamin Franlkin
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What two words do you find used incorrectly the most? Two that come to mind immediately for me are these: Noxious: "I feel noxious." This is incorrect, because fumes are noxious and make a person feel nauseated. Irregardless: "Irregardless of what you may think, this sentence is incorrect." Regardless is already negative and does not need the prefix “ir” to make it more negative. "Regardless of what you may think, this sentence is correct." --- I bought a Dell XPS gaming system, started a fan site, and never looked back.
"I have a doubt." when they mean "I have a question." And while I notice misuse of Can and May I find correcting it to be a lost cause, normally responded to with a rather obnoxious saying; "Whatever!" regards, Paul Watson Bluegrass South Africa Ian Darling wrote: "and our loonies usually end up doing things like Monty Python." Crikey! ain't life grand?
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Colin Angus Mackay wrote: probably quite acceptable in American English Colin Angus Mackay wrote: judgementallywise Colin Angus Mackay wrote: colorize Colin Angus Mackay wrote: burglarized I don't believe it!! Please tell me that's not true. "I believe I referred to her personality as a potential science exhibit." - Elaine, about Ellen, in "The Dog"
Ramanan Sivan wrote: Please tell me that's not true I would like to, but I cannot. The Colorize / Colorization person was the only session at TechEd'01 where I walked out half way through in disgust - not just at that, but that whole session was a waste of time. The speaker was supposed to be showing everyone the new features of VS.NET but instead we got told about all these wonderful features, some of which I remember from V2.1 (when I started working with Visual Studio), there was very little new information.
"If a man empties his purse into his head, no man can take it away from him, for an investment in knowledge pays the best interest." -- Joseph E. O'Donnell The Second EuroCPian Event will be in Brussels on the 4th of September Can't manage to P/Invoke that Win32 API in .NET? Why not do interop the wiki way!
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What two words do you find used incorrectly the most? Two that come to mind immediately for me are these: Noxious: "I feel noxious." This is incorrect, because fumes are noxious and make a person feel nauseated. Irregardless: "Irregardless of what you may think, this sentence is incorrect." Regardless is already negative and does not need the prefix “ir” to make it more negative. "Regardless of what you may think, this sentence is correct." --- I bought a Dell XPS gaming system, started a fan site, and never looked back.
Correct: 1. "I'm broke" - meaning I have no money. 2. "This computer is broken" - meaning it doesn't work. Incorrect: 3. "This computer is broke." However, if something is really badly hosed, I often find myself using 3 on purpose just for emphasis. :-D "Fish and guests stink in three days." - Benjamin Franlkin
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The following: From an American news report many years ago, the interviewer asked this question: * "How do you view the situation judgementallywise?" Huh?? you mean "How do you judge the situation?" A couple from TechEd: * "You can colorize the various elements of the source code." Please most of the people in this room don't have English as their first language, please keep it simple: "You can colour the various elements of the source code" * "In this dialog you can choose the colorization of the text." Same comment as before. How about: "In this dialog you can choose the colour of the text". * "The woman was burglarized while she was out shopping". You mean "The woman was burgled while she was out shopping". What is it with trying to lengthen words? Are these people trying to sound more self important because they can use words of greater than two syllables? Yes, okay - I realise these are probably quite acceptable in American English, but they all seem to come into the category of using lenthier words where a shorter one will be quite enough.
"If a man empties his purse into his head, no man can take it away from him, for an investment in knowledge pays the best interest." -- Joseph E. O'Donnell The Second EuroCPian Event will be in Brussels on the 4th of September Can't manage to P/Invoke that Win32 API in .NET? Why not do interop the wiki way!
How about "I can't help but ..."
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How about "I can't help but ..."
Vivic wrote: How about "I can't help but ..." :confused: I don't understand. What do you mean? Oops! I just realised it was another example. :doh:
"If a man empties his purse into his head, no man can take it away from him, for an investment in knowledge pays the best interest." -- Joseph E. O'Donnell The Second EuroCPian Event will be in Brussels on the 4th of September Can't manage to P/Invoke that Win32 API in .NET? Why not do interop the wiki way!
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Another one (yes, you've hit one of my pet subjects - you'll regret it soon ;P ) Split infinitives. Actually, I didn't used to pick up on it until I was rereading something that I wrote a few weeks ago and it just didn't sound right. When I reordered the words I realised that I had corrected a split infinitive.
"If a man empties his purse into his head, no man can take it away from him, for an investment in knowledge pays the best interest." -- Joseph E. O'Donnell The Second EuroCPian Event will be in Brussels on the 4th of September Can't manage to P/Invoke that Win32 API in .NET? Why not do interop the wiki way!
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It is when you split the infinitive form of the verb. For example: "To go" is the infinitive form. If you insert a word between the "to" and the "go" you get a split infinitive. For those that can see where this is going (Hint: Think Star Trek) the most famouse split infinitive is "To boldly go where no man has gone before". In the "Broken Bow" episode of "Enterprise" the sentence was said by Zephram Cochran correctly: "To go boldly where no man has gone before."* * For the pedants among you, I realise this isn't actually a sentence - but I wasn't going to quote the whole thing.
"If a man empties his purse into his head, no man can take it away from him, for an investment in knowledge pays the best interest." -- Joseph E. O'Donnell The Second EuroCPian Event will be in Brussels on the 4th of September Can't manage to P/Invoke that Win32 API in .NET? Why not do interop the wiki way!
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Ramanan Sivan wrote: Please tell me that's not true I would like to, but I cannot. The Colorize / Colorization person was the only session at TechEd'01 where I walked out half way through in disgust - not just at that, but that whole session was a waste of time. The speaker was supposed to be showing everyone the new features of VS.NET but instead we got told about all these wonderful features, some of which I remember from V2.1 (when I started working with Visual Studio), there was very little new information.
"If a man empties his purse into his head, no man can take it away from him, for an investment in knowledge pays the best interest." -- Joseph E. O'Donnell The Second EuroCPian Event will be in Brussels on the 4th of September Can't manage to P/Invoke that Win32 API in .NET? Why not do interop the wiki way!
Colin Angus Mackay wrote: Colorize / Colorization Was this someone in Britan? Its shocking how poor everyone's English is nowadays. Even that of native English speakers (I'm not one of them) I remember reading an article sometime back listing mistakes that English majors at Oxford (of all places) had made in their essays. I wonder if I can hunt that up now. It was enough to drive a man to drink X| "I believe I referred to her personality as a potential science exhibit." - Elaine, about Ellen, in "The Dog"
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It is when you split the infinitive form of the verb. For example: "To go" is the infinitive form. If you insert a word between the "to" and the "go" you get a split infinitive. For those that can see where this is going (Hint: Think Star Trek) the most famouse split infinitive is "To boldly go where no man has gone before". In the "Broken Bow" episode of "Enterprise" the sentence was said by Zephram Cochran correctly: "To go boldly where no man has gone before."* * For the pedants among you, I realise this isn't actually a sentence - but I wasn't going to quote the whole thing.
"If a man empties his purse into his head, no man can take it away from him, for an investment in knowledge pays the best interest." -- Joseph E. O'Donnell The Second EuroCPian Event will be in Brussels on the 4th of September Can't manage to P/Invoke that Win32 API in .NET? Why not do interop the wiki way!
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Colin Angus Mackay wrote: Colorize / Colorization Was this someone in Britan? Its shocking how poor everyone's English is nowadays. Even that of native English speakers (I'm not one of them) I remember reading an article sometime back listing mistakes that English majors at Oxford (of all places) had made in their essays. I wonder if I can hunt that up now. It was enough to drive a man to drink X| "I believe I referred to her personality as a potential science exhibit." - Elaine, about Ellen, in "The Dog"
Ramanan Sivan wrote: Was this someone in Britan? No, an American. Actually (I know I shouldn't say this) she looked like a typical example of what's called "Trailer Trash" Ramanan Sivan wrote: Even that of native English speakers You should go to the Netherlands. There are many people that speak English better than the English.
"If a man empties his purse into his head, no man can take it away from him, for an investment in knowledge pays the best interest." -- Joseph E. O'Donnell The Second EuroCPian Event will be in Brussels on the 4th of September Can't manage to P/Invoke that Win32 API in .NET? Why not do interop the wiki way!
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"I have a doubt." when they mean "I have a question." And while I notice misuse of Can and May I find correcting it to be a lost cause, normally responded to with a rather obnoxious saying; "Whatever!" regards, Paul Watson Bluegrass South Africa Ian Darling wrote: "and our loonies usually end up doing things like Monty Python." Crikey! ain't life grand?
Hmm, that must be a South African thing, I've never heard anyone say "I have a doubt." to mean "I have a question." I do frequently hear things like, "I doubt this will work." but AFAIK that is correct usage. "Fish and guests stink in three days." - Benjamin Franlkin
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Ramanan Sivan wrote: Was this someone in Britan? No, an American. Actually (I know I shouldn't say this) she looked like a typical example of what's called "Trailer Trash" Ramanan Sivan wrote: Even that of native English speakers You should go to the Netherlands. There are many people that speak English better than the English.
"If a man empties his purse into his head, no man can take it away from him, for an investment in knowledge pays the best interest." -- Joseph E. O'Donnell The Second EuroCPian Event will be in Brussels on the 4th of September Can't manage to P/Invoke that Win32 API in .NET? Why not do interop the wiki way!
Colin Angus Mackay wrote: the Netherlands Yeah I've listened to Bergkamp talk many times. He has an accent but he speaks quite well. But has has lived in England for quite sometime. Likewise other Dutch players like Guillt(when he was managing Newcastle), Cruyff . Colin Angus Mackay wrote: what's called "Trailer Trash :) "I believe I referred to her personality as a potential science exhibit." - Elaine, about Ellen, in "The Dog"
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What two words do you find used incorrectly the most? Two that come to mind immediately for me are these: Noxious: "I feel noxious." This is incorrect, because fumes are noxious and make a person feel nauseated. Irregardless: "Irregardless of what you may think, this sentence is incorrect." Regardless is already negative and does not need the prefix “ir” to make it more negative. "Regardless of what you may think, this sentence is correct." --- I bought a Dell XPS gaming system, started a fan site, and never looked back.
What bugs me is randomly capitalizing one of the middle letters of your last name. :mad:
I can imagine the sinking feeling one would have after ordering my book, only to find a laughably ridiculous theory with demented logic once the book arrives - Mark McCutcheon
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What two words do you find used incorrectly the most? Two that come to mind immediately for me are these: Noxious: "I feel noxious." This is incorrect, because fumes are noxious and make a person feel nauseated. Irregardless: "Irregardless of what you may think, this sentence is incorrect." Regardless is already negative and does not need the prefix “ir” to make it more negative. "Regardless of what you may think, this sentence is correct." --- I bought a Dell XPS gaming system, started a fan site, and never looked back.
You insure a house or car. You ensure your code works correctly. I have seen this misused many times - even in print. (How anal is this - I actually e-mailed a food vendor after seeing "insure" used incorrectly on the label.) "Fish and guests stink in three days." - Benjamin Franlkin
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Hmm, that must be a South African thing, I've never heard anyone say "I have a doubt." to mean "I have a question." I do frequently hear things like, "I doubt this will work." but AFAIK that is correct usage. "Fish and guests stink in three days." - Benjamin Franlkin
Actually it seems to be an Indian thing*. Smitha and Nish both do it in the programming forums here on CP and are quite adamant they are using it correctly. I however am doubtful about that. * That annoys me. When I can't think of the correct word and have to use stuff or thing. regards, Paul Watson Bluegrass South Africa Ian Darling wrote: "and our loonies usually end up doing things like Monty Python." Crikey! ain't life grand?
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You insure a house or car. You ensure your code works correctly. I have seen this misused many times - even in print. (How anal is this - I actually e-mailed a food vendor after seeing "insure" used incorrectly on the label.) "Fish and guests stink in three days." - Benjamin Franlkin
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can and may It bugs me to hear someone say something like "Can I have a piece of pie?" If it is one of my children, I will usually reply with "I don't know, can you? Gary Kirkham A working Program is one that has only unobserved bugs He is no fool who gives what he cannot keep to gain what he cannot lose. - Jim Elliot Who you are in Christ
When I was in my 20s can/may were interchangeable. Now that I'm 40 I see the difference. I wonder if this has to do with the maturing of the brain? It's easier to pick up new languages and accents when you are younger. As you get older it becomes more difficult. I struggled through college German (at 28 years of age) watching 18 year olds not do homework and fly through the course. It's good to live, Josef Wainz Software Developer