beeble
Posts: 799
Joined: 5/25/2005
From: UK
Status: offline
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quote:
PeonForHer wrote:
I remember being told emphatically by a primary school teacher that there's no such word as "alright". Everyone uses it now. Maybe it's I who should shift my brain and not those who use "alright".
*shrug* Fowler was pretty convinced of the wrongness of `alright' but he admits that it was already common in the 1920s. So, unless you're over a hundred years old, everyone was already using it while you were at primary school.
I'm perfectly alright with `alright' but can't abide `instore' and `anytime'. Ultimately, it's a matter of taste.
quote:
Yet I say that, despite the obvious evidence that I've trained myself to write in a very particular way. You likewise. Unlike the majority of writers of English (so I hear) you've trained yourself in the correct use of a semicolon. I mean: it puts the lie to it all, doesn't it? At bottom, we can't plausibly say "these rules are rubbish" - yet follow them as closely as we do . . .
I'm not saying that the rules are rubbish; I'm just saying that they're not rules. They're just a set of conventions that I try to adhere to because I want my writing to reflect my thoughts as precisely and unambiguously as I can make it. Of course, ultimately, somebody could interpret even a simple sentence such as `I like puppies' to mean someting totally bizarre but I try to write within the conventions so that anyone else who is familiar with them will know what I mean. (And, frannkly, to come slightly back on-topic, nobOdy is Going to HAvE any diFFiculty underStanding if i CapitAlize in RaNDoM wAys, though done in such an extreme way, it's rather annoying to read.)
quote:
Right, now that I've gone through the two paragraphs above with a fine-toothed comb, I can finally post this!
That was an invitation to find a grammatical or spelling error but I couldn't actually see any. Well done! 
beeble
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RE: Lower case, upper case. - .gif){kind=avatar}
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