Grammar that makes you cringe

[Tim Hall]

It's possible to have ambiguity with only two items. "I like macaroni and cheese. But I don't like macaroni and cheese." Though in this example you can avoid the ambiguity by being American and calling the dish "mac and cheese".

But then you would have to be killed utterly to DETH. Even worse is "mac 'n' cheese".

[L CC]

Macaroni cheese=macncheese=/=macaroni and cheese.

The 'and' in English is only used for separate items, surely?

[Tim Hall]

Macaroni cheese=macncheese=/=macaroni and cheese.

The 'and' in English is only used for separate items, surely?

Good point. But what of fish and chips?  Presumably in Scotland confusion is avoided by having a fish supper.

When I was learning Lat. at school, it turned out the Romans had "et" for "and" and "que" for "and", as a suffix, when things often went together. The Senate and People of Rome, (SPQR, Senatus Populusque Romanus, for example. My Lat. teacher gave "fish chipsque" as an example of its use.

[Cudzoziemiec]

We could I suppose use "with" in English to avoid this. "I like fish and chips but I don't like fish with chips." But we don't actually say that.

[Croft]

For me, there are three items in A, B, C or D, but four items in A, B, C and D, with or without an extra comma. Are the Americans confused between the meanings of "and" and "or" ?

I think there are several valid interpretations of "A, B, C or D":

{A} OR {B} OR {C} OR {D} : "Would you like red wine, white wine, orange juice or water?" (not an invitation to be greedy)
{A,B,C} OR {D} : "Rock, paper, scissors, or toss a coin?" (don't think I'd want to play a game of "scissors or toss a coin")
{A,B, {C OR D}} : "Lasagna, seasonal vegetables, chips or boiled potatoes" (A favourite of all pubs before they went gastro)

I would tend to assume the first unless context suggests otherwise.

With "and", there is little ambiguity as conjunction is associative: {{A AND B} AND C} is equivalent to {A AND {B AND C}}

[Salvatore]

Macaroni cheese=macncheese=/=macaroni and cheese.

The 'and' in English is only used for separate items, surely?

Hendiadys - "one through two". My latin teacher used to use 'bread and butter' as an example.

And he referred to -que as an enclitic.

[Kim]

We could I suppose use "with" in English to avoid this. "I like fish and chips but I don't like fish with chips." But we don't actually say that.

Except in degree course titles, where "Midwifery with Astrophysics" means you're almost qualified to deliver a baby and looked at a telescope once, but "Midwifery and Astrophysics" means an equal split and you shouldn't be trusted with either.

[citoyen]

To use a notation that avoids the ambiguity, it's the difference between {"A", "B", "C", "D"}  and  {"A", "B", "C and D"}

You're thinking of it like a computer programmer.

Communication between humans is more open to nuance. In real life, your cheese and biscuits example isn't ambiguous because we commonly understand cheese and biscuits as a composite menu item. You'd only read them as two separate items if you're being wilfully pedantic. Or wilfully American.

We shouldn't pay heed to Americans on punctuation rules anyway. They stupidly insist on putting all punctuation inside quote marks, even when it is syntactically not part of the quoted phrase.

[citoyen]

I checked up what Fowler had to say on the matter...

"The more usual way of punctuating such an enumeration as was used as an example in the preceding section is French, German, Italian and Spanish; the commas between French and German and German and Italian take the place of ands; there is no comma after Italian because, with and, it would be otiose. There are, however, some who favour putting one there, arguing that, since it may sometimes be needed to avoid ambiguity it may as well be used always for the sake of uniformity."

Uniformity is overrated. I prefer to judge each case on its merits and only add the serial comma if it is genuinely necessary.

[Cudzoziemiec]

Talking of computer programming, last week I was editing captions for a series of videos that were to form a course for a particular software. Needless to say, I knew nothing about the programme beforehand and very little afterwards, but I did gather that it's important to distinguish between, say, Reward Account, RewardAccount and rewardAccount. One is a generic idea, one a particular database and one a method. Or something. I really, really hope someone who understands this is going to go over it before it's released on students, but somehow I doubt that's going to happen.

[ian]

Indeed, I'm minded that all grammar rules should be ignored, if the results are clear and easy to read and there's no unnecessary ambiguity, who cares where the comma should be inserted. I'll insert an Oxford comma if it aids that.

[Kim]

Talking of computer programming, last week I was editing captions for a series of videos that were to form a course for a particular software. Needless to say, I knew nothing about the programme beforehand and very little afterwards, but I did gather that it's important to distinguish between, say, Reward Account, RewardAccount and rewardAccount. One is a generic idea, one a particular database and one a method. Or something. I really, really hope someone who understands this is going to go over it before it's released on students, but somehow I doubt that's going to happen.

Fairly standard problem in object-oriented programming:

And then you can have a class called Object which is an object of class Class.
<bemused looks>
I can't do uppercase and Courier font when I'm speaking. I try, but I can't get the serifs right.

[Cudzoziemiec]

Yeahbut Ian Utting at least knows the difference!

[Kim]

Quite.  I think you're well into the realm of requiring expert knowledge to get that sort of thing right.  And in an educational context, it matters.

[Cudzoziemiec]

The annoying thing is they knew how much it would matter, because they specifically instructed that certain phrases would be entered by students into the command line and therefore must be captioned exactly as they appear on screen but in single quotes, but they didn't think to apply that to stuff that doesn't appear on screen. I've done previous work for other elements of this same course and that has been much easier, because it was more "how to use this" rather than how to programme it.

[Cudzoziemiec]

Anyway I was going to go back to "and". "I like lentils and parmesan but I don't like lentils and parmesan." See the Random Food thread!

[citoyen]

Anyway I was going to go back to "and". "I like lentils and parmesan but I don't like lentils and parmesan." See the Random Food thread!

If you like peas and you like cheese...

[Cudzoziemiec]

Anyway I was going to go back to "and". "I like lentils and parmesan but I don't like lentils and parmesan." See the Random Food thread!

If you like peas and you like cheese...

I had to google that. A little before my time...

[hatler]

Why do we say "Shot dead", but "Stabbed to death" ?

Why not "Shot to death" and "Stabbed dead" ?

[ian]

More correctly they're both forms of being murdered to death.

[Mr Larrington]

I've seen “shot to DETH” crop up occasionally but sounds Wrong/FOREIGN/both to this Unit.

[Tim Hall]

I've seen “shot to DETH” crop up occasionally but sounds Wrong/FOREIGN/both to this Unit.

Yes, it's lacking the word UTTERLY

[cygnet]

Why do we say "Shot dead", but "Stabbed to death" ?

Why not "Shot to death" and "Stabbed dead" ?

Is there a technical difference (linguistic and/or legal) that's combining with "usage frequency"?

"To death" suggests multiple (and not individually fatal) wounds.  Perhaps it also includes number of assailants. A firing squad shoots someone to death, they don't shoot someone dead. Stabbing dead could be a single fatal action. Stabbed to death - be bleeding out from multiple injuries.

I think it's generally imagined (expected) that being stabbed is more survivable than being shot. Being stabbed dead is less common than being shot dead, and so the phrase is used more often.

[T42]

An Ngram of shot to death vs shot dead shows that shot to death is mainly American usage (you can flip between US & UK at the top).  Funnily enough, both terms are in decline in Britain, probably since extreme PC kicked in.

[Mr Larrington]

There, you see.  FOREIGN.