Grammar that makes you cringe

[Mr Larrington]

[clarion]

Surely that is Kennedy Discovering the Gerund, and leading it into captivity.

HTH

[Cudzoziemiec]

It's a list not a sentence. It works perfectly well without a final conjunction, therefore the presence of the final conjunction changes the meaning.

a) The canning, processing, preserving, freezing, drying, marketing, storing, packing for shipment or distribution of [stuff]

b) The canning, processing, preserving, freezing, drying, marketing, storing, packing for shipment, distribution of [stuff]

That's the logic the judge seems to have followed, and it makes sense to me. Other logics might make sense too.

[Wowbagger]

Not me, but Dez . He is preparing stuff for webcasts in French. It seems that it is a thing in France that a space is placed before punctuation . I have never heard of this before . Is it normal ? Or just this particular client ?

[Bledlow]

Never seen that before, & not according to French government websites - http://www.interieur.gouv.fr/. All exactly the same as in English, i.e. no spaces before commas, full stops etc.

[spesh]

One of the dictionary definitions of "best" is as a transitive verb, though the usage tends to be colloquial/informal.

http://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/best
https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/best

[T42]

Not me, but Dez . He is preparing stuff for webcasts in French. It seems that it is a thing in France that a space is placed before punctuation . I have never heard of this before . Is it normal ? Or just this particular client ?

My understanding is that colons, semicolons, question and exclamation marks take a leading space and the rest don't.  However, the waters have been muddied by computerized text-presentation algorithms, which were all written with English rules in mind and will quite happily insert a line break in the space preceding an exclamation mark, yielding something like this
!

I think the leading space will die out in time, but linguistic conventions are remarkably long-lived in France, where even the spelling-mistakes in the Académie Française's dictionary were taught as gospel until quite recently.

[citoyen]

There again, the rest of the sentence is hardly better grammar.

'Most Hot' is an unfortunate conjunction.

[T42]

One that makes me blench is intuit.  I considered it a nasty back-formation from intuition, yet looking it up yields a first recorded date of 1655.  Taking an ngram of it, however, reveals that it has only recently begun to proliferate, so I would place it in the category of nasty back-formations perpetuated in error and beginning to flourish in the garden of careless Internet English.

And anyway, every time I read it I try to think of 64 words for snow.

[citoyen]

And anyway, every time I read it I try to think of 64 words for snow.

 

[Bledlow]

And anyway, every time I read it I try to think of 64 words for snow.

 

I had to read it twice because of that.

[Mr Larrington]

I know we have done making verbs out of other words before but this made me cringe: Nicki Minaj Bests Aretha Franklin for Most Hot 100 Hits By Female Artist. It could have been written Nicki Minaj beats Aretha or Nicki Minaj surpasses Aretha and made more sense. There again, the rest of the sentence is hardly better grammar.

If you follow the link, be aware that the photo may not be entirely appropriate at work, although I thought her microphone was the most offensive item on display.

The real question on everyone's lips, though, is not whether "best" is an appropriate word in the context but rather "who the hell is Nicki Minaj?"

[ElyDave]

Not me, but Dez . He is preparing stuff for webcasts in French. It seems that it is a thing in France that a space is placed before punctuation . I have never heard of this before . Is it normal ? Or just this particular client ?

My previous companies house style on reports was a double space after a full stop.  Nobody could explain why.

[clarion]

And no apostrophes?

[Cudzoziemiec]

Not me, but Dez . He is preparing stuff for webcasts in French. It seems that it is a thing in France that a space is placed before punctuation . I have never heard of this before . Is it normal ? Or just this particular client ?

My previous companies house style on reports was a double space after a full stop.  Nobody could explain why.

A company I work for has the same rule. I haven't even asked them why, as I doubt there is a reason beyond "it's our rule" and in any case, it's fairly easy to comply with.

[T42]

When I typed up a short story for submission in the 60s the standard (they said) was double line spacing, two spaces after a colon or semicolon, and three after a full stop.  They said it made proof-reading and marking-up easier.

[ian]

It's old skool, man, that emphatic double bang on the space bar.  This sentence is DONE. There ain't no going back on a typewriter*.  So you got to make space. Move on.  Ain't nuthin' more to see. 

*archaic mechanical device for putting words onto paper.  Forced you to think before you wrote.  Then came the internet to casually reverse that.  Now people write and then think.  Thinking will eventually become vestigial. A million monkeys might not write the works Shakespeare (they've done a cracking rewrite of Cymbeline though), but they've no competition on Twitter. 

[Bledlow]

When I typed up a short story for submission in the 60s the standard (they said) was double line spacing, two spaces after a colon or semicolon, and three after a full stop.  They said it made proof-reading and marking-up easier.

Back in the days when you put proofreading marks on a typescript with a red pen or pencil, using the spaces between the lines. Not much point when the software shuffles things up for you & records all your changes, with you able to choose where it shows them.

[Mr Larrington]

As a tiny Mr Larrington I was taught that full stops require more space after them than mere commas, colons or their ilk.  Thus when transitioning to a keyboard I have always used a double space.

[clarion]

Two spaces after a full stop is normal, isn't it?

[SteveC]

My previous companies house style on reports was a double space after a full stop.  Nobody could explain why.

That was standard for typewriters. It makes sense with monospaced typewriter fonts.

[ian]

But you don't need to do it any longer. Unless you're using a typewriter to somehow interface with the internet. They should do this for Trump, those pudgy little hands could no way hammer a testy Olympia into submission.

Of course, the only true way to record information is to paint an area of Tipp-Ex¹ and then scratch your words into it with the pointy end of a compass².

¹schoolyard hallucinogen, your honour.
²device for drawing circles, schoolyard tattoos (c.f. Parker Ink), and minimally offensive weapon.

[T42]

Of course, the only true way to record information is to paint an area of Tipp-Ex and then scratch your words into it with the pointy end of a compass.

Hellish difficult to get that stuff off the display once you'd finished with Wordstar for the day.

[hellymedic]

Not me, but Dez . He is preparing stuff for webcasts in French. It seems that it is a thing in France that a space is placed before punctuation . I have never heard of this before . Is it normal ? Or just this particular client ?

My previous companies house style on reports was a double space after a full stop.  Nobody could explain why.

This was standard practice for typists on manual keyboards in days of yore.

I see others concur.

[ElyDave]

Not me, but Dez . He is preparing stuff for webcasts in French. It seems that it is a thing in France that a space is placed before punctuation . I have never heard of this before . Is it normal ? Or just this particular client ?

My previous companies house style on reports was a double space after a full stop.  Nobody could explain why.

This was standard practice for typists on manual keyboards in days of yore.

I see others concur.

I think the last time I used a trypewriter in anger was as a penniless pre-student oaf doing some after school clerical work.  Word processing by 286 with a whole 4MB RAM was de-rigeur even by my penniless-student oaf days. 

Which then led to one professor demanding all work in 14 font double spaced, mainly on account of his bottle top glasses.