Thora Wrote:psst J7 - your dialect is showing. :-)

Did I spell something Canadian style? I thought four years in Texas drilled that out of me.

The only real distinctiveness I've noticed in my writing is a tendency to use many parenthesis and "also" since I'm 完全主義者 and always want to add in more information.

Jarvik7 Wrote:完全主義者

I just realized I could read this damn thing without knowing what it means, can I get a cookie?

Also to get this topic back on track, can anyone supply similar video of natives not handling kanji very well but in less "crazy japanese game show" environment?

I can't believe I'm going to continue this arguement, but I am bored and this subject is a personal irk to me.

Jarvik7 Wrote:Fallacy: appeal to authority.

Being a writer of great fiction doesn't necessarily mean that you are good at English grammar. English "rules" were also in a state of flux when most of the classic great English literature was being written. Fictional literature also should not be compared to general writing and non-fiction, since affected speech is often used to give character in fiction.

Appeal to authority is only a fallacy when the authority in question is the improper authority to bring to bear on the subject. I would argue that it is not possible to be a writer of truly great literature without first being well-grounded in proper English usage. "You have to know the rules to break them well," and all that. Even writers such as Joyce can write clear, concise prose when that is what is called for. I've never come across a truly great author who had a poor grasp on grammar. Well, except for Burns, but his writing was always VERY heavily edited by better educated peers before publication, and most of it isn't really that great compared to the other romantic poets who were his contemporaries. Yes, writers of fiction do use affected speech to give character to their dialogue. But we could find hundreds or thousands of examples in writing which is not written in such a manner. For example, more contemporary writers of great fiction like J.D. Salinger. As for the grammar being in flux, it still is and always will be. There have been multiple changes just since I was in grade school and I'm thirty, for the record. That isn't the point, however, and I've already mentioned that we can find these examples in much more contemporary literature. Those great writers are where our standards and conventions come from, so they are the most appropriate authority to appeal to. I certainly wouldn't appeal to some prescriptivist grammarian's textbook for a discussion on the subject. Even Samuel Johnson's mighty Oxford English Dictionary, the dictionary for those in the know, always looks to actual usage in published writing to determine a word's meaning and correct use. And Johnson was a prescriptivist.

Quote:Anyways, they are considered bad style, not bad grammar.

But -> However
And -> Furthermore ("And furthermore" is redundant)
Because -> rearrange the sentence to put because in the middle, fronting it gives it emphasis that doesn't make sense in this context (even when fronted it should be preceded by "It is")

They are all grammatically acceptable (when they don't cause fragments or other issues), but they belong in spoken language, not written.

They are considered bad style by whom, exactly? What I would consider bad style is using and re-using polysyllabic words like "however" and "furthermore" in a casual setting like an internet forum. I would also consider it bad style to use the same sort of sentence patterns repeatedly without variation. It makes for boring writing. And it's hard to read. In the sentence I began with "because" the logic of the sentence made more sense to begin it that way. My emphasis was on how and why these "rules" are taught in school, and then showing what followed from that. While I agree the conventions for spoken and written language are different, this is one case where they really aren't.

For the record, my academic background is in English, Philosophy and Cognitive Science so I've done my share of writing. I also taught high school English here in the States for a year, and while I did leave, it certainly wasn't because I didn't know the content.
So can I appeal to my own authority? Just kidding. But, I bring this up because I know exactly why teachers say things like, "Technically its correct but you should still never do it." It's because so many students, even college students, are such poor writers they are bound to use it incorrectly, or too often. Neither makes for good writing, and it's easier to simply say, "Don't" than to try to teach how to do it well.

Well said.

Thora Wrote:Given: "________competition", many people would come up with "intense", "fierce, "cutthroat". It's like one of those pairings.

Also don't forget a lot of people can just skip over the words they don't know if they're forced to read the news article for whatever reason. Even if you can't read 熾烈, you're still able to grasp the meaning of the sentence.

English is my first language, and I still skip over these words all the time. I wasn't interested in business, politics, and even fictional writing until after I started learning Japanese. I probably know more Japanese words than English for these "pair" words, simply because I studied them on purpose through reading lots of these types of reading. However my English is still much easier to grasp the whole meaning and feel of the written works.

I see what you mean. Exposure doesn't mean it fully registers. And one shoudn't assume that everyone has the same sense of 'typical collocations' (in our own language, never mind other languages.)

Besides, it's better to break away from tired expressions. Intense competition should be "scorching," "bold," "robust," "radical," "devastating," "murderous," "annihilating"... ugh more words to know

Very few grammatical books will even tell you not to begin sentences with "but" or "and", that's more of a myth than an actual rule. If citing great literature is an "appeal to authority fallacy" then how are you proposing to show that these are bad style? The writers of usage books are just "authorities" as well, and most of them are just making things up or repeating shibboleths that they learned from other people. The way I learned to write my own academic prose is by reading other academic prose, and academic journal articles use "but" and "and" at the beginning of sentences all the time.

Quote:English "rules" were also in a state of flux when most of the classic great English literature was being written.

While this is true, if you can find something in (say) Shakespeare, Dickens, and Jane Austen, and it's still being used today, it's safe to say there should not be any "rule" against it.

Authors have the right to break the rules of English for poetic reasons. Just because they did something doesn't mean that it's not against a rule.

wccrawford Wrote:Authors have the right to break the rules of English for poetic reasons. Just because they did something doesn't mean that it's not against a rule.

^- Exactly.

Everything I said was in regards to general writing, not fiction/poetry/artistic writing. If you are writing financial reports at work with Shakespeare as your guide, then you are doing something wrong.

English has no central governing body like French or some other languages, so there is nothing you can call "ungrammatical" in the technical sense (see ebonics). There are, however, things that are commonly accepted by speakers of a dialect and is best to follow those norms to aid clarity when your writing is meant to convey information (aka not artistry). The closest thing we have to a governing body for English are various style guides, which you should try to follow if you are writing for academia or in your (non-artistic) career.

@Yudantaiteki:

Appeal to majority is the best you can get with language, since it is created by majority. In other words, it is best to follow norms when writing unless you are writing something with an aim for artistry. Going with the flow is very different from saying "I can go against the flow because Shakespeare did it, so it must be ok." That is especially true when you consider that the flow was moving in a different direction at the time.

Trying to be artistic where it isn't called for leads to verbose hard to understand text. See AJATT blog for examples. His articles are more like stream of consciousness poetry than something that is supposed to convey information.

I was taught in high school, that beginning a sentence with "Because" was OK, as long as you followed the rules -- which were, as I was taught -- to rearrange the sentence and see if it still made sense (without adding/subtracting words)
O: Because the hill was steep, we decided not to climb it. --> We decided not to climb the hill, because it was steep.
X: I like food. Because it is tasty. <-- simply change the . to a , and it should be OK, but as is, it is bad.

As for "And" and "But", I was taught that the rule said not to begin sentences with them. Although it can be used in creative writing (ie. not formal essays) if there is a big enough contrast/emphasis being portrayed.
I will give you half of the gold I stole last night. But, you must promise me to kill yourself in one year from today.
He lived in a small cottage with a farm, cows, and pigs. And the ever constant noise from the construction next door.

These sentences probably don't follow "the rules," but given the context, I believe my former English teacher would allow them.

edit: re-read the post...seems like i'm not doing anything, but restating what everyone already knows

○Once upon a time there was a rabbit named Timmy who lived in the magical forest. And he had a sister named Louise.
^-- Write whatever you want, it's fiction (art).

×The next financial year will begin on April 1st. And we will be hiring 2300 new employees.
^-- Follow an appropriate style guide or people will begin to hate you for writing unclear hard to read reports.

The inability to write appropriate, professional English is what held back the majority of the students in my translation certification program. I'm not a grammar nazi on the internet (though I do try to maintain a written instead of verbal style), professional writing should be professional.

As Jarvik's post suggests, context is everything.

You don't wear jeans to an important job interview and you don't use sloppy grammar in serious writing if you want to be taken seriously.

My pet peeve is teachers who get it wrong. Even here, context matters. When I get an email from my child's teacher with misused words or improper grammar, I'm annoyed and my opinion of her drops, but I don't get all bent out of shape. I understand that email is an informal and rushed format. But when my child's junior high science teacher hands out a syllabus with a serious grammatical, spelling or word usage error in almost every other sentence and then has the audacity to state that she grades very severely on poor grammar and will mark any assignment down for every error she finds, my limit is reached. That's why I'm currently homeschooling my daughter in science.

marydj Wrote:she grades very severely on poor grammar and will mark any assignment down for every error she finds

While I commend her for caring so much about grammar, a science teacher has no business grading grammar. Leave that to the English teacher. While in science class, those students need to concentrate on science.

If they want to have an all-in-one class that teaches everything, that's fine... But I've never yet seen a system set up like that. Probably because it doesn't work.

What "norms" are you talking about, though? Even the style guides disagree on these issues; there are a number of style and grammar manuals that say it's perfectly OK to begin a sentence with "and" or "but".

But I know from past experience there's nothing I can say -- no matter what evidence I bring up, it can always be countered by appeal to these nebulous rules. I'm not saying that there are no rules or that you can write whatever you want, just that certain specific rules (like the "don't begin a sentence with and or but") are myths.

Here are some quotations from recent academic articles in professional journals (dealing with Japanese literature, my area) by experienced academic writers that begin sentences with "and" or "but":
"But before I take it up, I must support the statement I have already made that Zeami
wrote Matsukaze."
"But while Matsukaze may suitably sing and dance, she and her sister have no visible honzetsu at all. And although Zeami recognized that one might wish to write a play without honzetsu (he called such a play a tsukuri-no, or "made up noh"), he warned anyone but a "consummate master" against attempting such a feat."
"But even if he did, how does one legitimately read a no text like Matsukaze?"
"But before she left she found time to visit the studio of the French sculptor Auguste Rodin (1840-1917) and present him with copies of the first two volumes of her translation of Genji."
"But somehow she got wind of the plan and told him he might better put the money towards advertising her Genji."

These are just a few quotations from two random articles I selected. There is simply no justification for saying that beginning sentences with but or and is bad style -- if academic journal articles do not count as "serious" writing, I don't know what does. I don't see why some style guide should be placed above the actual usage of good writers.

I agree with kendo99. I majored in Latin, English and Linguistics so this is kind of my hobby-horse, excuse me for sticking my nose in.

Do you know where these (often arbitrary) rules are from? Historically, many of them stem from an attempt to force English to have more Latinate grammar rules codified by just some guy who thought Latin was cooler. Yes Latin, a completely unrelated language, which was considered high prestige and the purest classical form of Language at the time.

For example, the controversial split infinitive rule in English is said to have been prompted by Latin not having a split infinitive - because its infinitive is just one word so it can't be split! There are people who just cite this rule blindly because they've been told it's stylistically unsound, but they don't even know where the rule comes from. In some cases if you do not split the infinitive, you can completely change the meaning of the sentence. You can take Henry W. Fowler as the authority on that. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Dictionar...lish_Usage

Further, a spelling example: when they changed the spelling of 'doubt' from the original 'dout' because the Latin form is 'dubito'. 'Dout' had entered the English language through Norman French, where there was no 'b'.

I understand and agree that there ought to be standards in formal written language, however, not all style rules are created equally - some were created out of thin air by one person who published a grammar a long, long time ago and those rules have often been misapplied or applied blindly ever since. Of course, not all style rules are made up. It would make sense to have the standards reflect how written language is actually used by acknowledged great writers (of fiction or non-fiction), rather than mangle the beauty of the language by following archaic or made up style rules just to follow the rules.

Incidentally, for whoever it was wanted to use "but" at the end of a sentence, we actually do that in Australia, as in "it tastes good, but!" But "But" is used more with the sense of "though", though. ;-)

yudantaiteki Wrote:Quotes of sentences beginning with "But"

But the way I see it in these sentences, even though it sounds/reads fine in my mind, I think it would be better just omitting the "but." If not better, then at the very least the "but" is optional.

That some rules/norms may have been created out of thin air for dubious reasons is an etymological curiosity. What matters is established usage norms right now. Are you going to go back to spelling it "dout" in protest? There is no such thing as a "true English" to go back to. Whatever the majority says is correct (of the dialect of) English, is correct.

If 90% of people will be put off by your usage of and in an article, it doesn't matter if it can be backed up by historical writing, it's still wrong.

@Yudantaiteki: I noticed several grammatical mistakes in those quotes other than the "but", and the writing seems poor overall, so perhaps they are not the best things to offer up. I'm not quite sure what you meant to accomplish with the quotes anyways. What I said was that academic writers SHOULD write professionally, not that they define professional writing. I've read some articles that were written by people who really knew their field, but still wrote very bad difficult to follow English.

What other "grammatical mistakes" are there?

I just don't see any basis for your point. You haven't quoted a single style guide or source that says you shouldn't start a sentence with and or but. I didn't use historical writing, these are current articles in peer-reviewed academic journals. Saying that they "should" write a certain way means nothing when their work is edited and published. If academic writers aren't the definition of professional academic writing, then what is?

Quote:I'm not quite sure what you meant to accomplish with the quotes anyways.

The purpose was to show examples of sentence-initial but and and from current, non-fiction sources that most people would accept as "serious" writing. And as I said, it's not like I had to do hours of digging to bring these up. I took two arbitrary articles on Genji, and selected some random sentences from just a minute or two of searching.

wccrawford Wrote:

marydj Wrote:she grades very severely on poor grammar and will mark any assignment down for every error she finds

While I commend her for caring so much about grammar, a science teacher has no business grading grammar. Leave that to the English teacher. While in science class, those students need to concentrate on science.

It may not be relevant at the grade level of marydj's daughter, but there is more to being an accomplished scientist than just being good at science. Being able to communicate ideas coherently isn't just for English majors.

That doesn't excuse the teacher's hypocrisy, though. If her English is as bad as marydj describes, chances are she'd be marking off stuff that wasn't even wrong.

The reference to historical writing was not directed at you, coming before the "@yudantaiteki"

I couldn't find any freely accessible online versions of the major style guides I've had to write under, but here is Reuters' style guide: http://handbook.reuters.com/index.php/B#but

"When I split an infinitive, God damn it, I split it so it stays split." - Raymond Chandler

JimmySeal Wrote:It may not be relevant at the grade level of marydj's daughter, but there is more to being an accomplished scientist than just being good at science. Being able to communicate ideas coherently isn't just for English majors.

That doesn't excuse the teacher's hypocrisy, though. If her English is as bad as marydj describes, chances are she'd be marking off stuff that wasn't even wrong.

I never said there wasn't. I said the teacher should worry about teaching their own subject and not grade on other subjects. If someone fails science, how do you know their failing is in the realm of science or English? Simple: Because they are only supposed to be grading on science! Likewise, they shouldn't grade for penmanship or basketball ability.

Schools and colleges and universities all require a well-rounded education without having to resort to a single class testing for everything. It's a well-designed system that is easily corrupted by teachers that haven't got a clue what they are doing.

I'd say the "science teachers grading English" thing is just a reaction to the horrific writing skills of current students. The majority of my undergrad courses which required paper writing had the teachers grading for spelling and grammar.

Horrible writing will eventually become the accepted norm I guess. Free variation for spelling returns?

wccrawford Wrote:Likewise, they shouldn't grade for penmanship or basketball ability.

Poor analogy. Penmanship and basketball are completely unrelated to science. Writing correct sentences isn't. Would you also say that science teachers shouldn't be grading their students' math because math is another subject?

JimmySeal Wrote:

wccrawford Wrote:Likewise, they shouldn't grade for penmanship or basketball ability.

Poor analogy. Penmanship and basketball are completely unrelated to science. Writing correct sentences isn't. Would you also say that science teachers shouldn't be grading their students' math because math is another subject?

And yet I've had bad teachers grade me on both in unrelated subjects.

As for the math, yes. If the math doesn't directly relate to showing their skill at the science, they shouldn't be grading it. Unfortunately, unlike grammar, math is integral to science and can't be wholly separated.