Grammar that makes you cringe

[Cudzoziemiec]

http://www.bristolpost.co.uk/news/uk-world-news/quiz-you-know-what-teenage-713855
Toke, douche, IDK, pre. These are not exactly new words. Even if you're old enough to have a teenage child. Judging by the fact they've made this quiz, neither are peng, swole, but at least they're words you (well I) have only heard from a 2017 teenager.

Edit: Domestic teenager got one less than me, disagrees with the use of most he got right, in particular says "allow" is used in all three meanings. Points out that drinking and smoking slang is out of date cos drinking and smoking is out of date (but then he's only 13).

[Mr Larrington]

Seems I iz hep to their kooky teen lingo, but who is "Mike" Jagger?

[Ben T]

although, at a previous work place, a tech support guy was asked if he'd ever done any programming or had any experience in .net, "Oh yeah, I've dabbled in C-hash" 

Most people learn technical computing stuff by reading though, so that sort of thing is a forgivable^[1] mistake (at least for things you've only dabbled in).  I mean, you get hashes all the time in programming languages, so you might not make the out-of-context connection to the musical pun on "C++".

Also, having looked it up, it's officially written "C#" not "C♯":

The name C# is pronounced “C Sharp”.
The name C# is written as the LATIN CAPITAL LETTER C (U+0043) followed by the NUMBER SIGN # (U+0023).

...which is the sort of thing that Microsoft would think was a good idea.


_{[1] I mean, really, what's not to like about someone having learned a thing by reading?}

It's how the confident "oh yeah" start of the response is then kind of invalidated by the dabbling not even having reached the point of, say, having discussed it with other people, for instance.

[Kim]

http://www.bristolpost.co.uk/news/uk-world-news/quiz-you-know-what-teenage-713855
Toke, douche, IDK, pre. These are not exactly new words. Even if you're old enough to have a teenage child. Judging by the fact they've made this quiz, neither are peng, swole, but at least they're words you (well I) have only heard from a 2017 teenager.

Edit: Domestic teenager got one less than me, disagrees with the use of most he got right, in particular says "allow" is used in all three meanings. Points out that drinking and smoking slang is out of date cos drinking and smoking is out of date (but then he's only 13).

Stands to reason that anyone making a quiz for a local newspaper website isn't actually on fleek with teenage slang.

I don't think drinking and smoking will be going out of fashion any time soon, but we can hope.  The rise of a) mobile phones  and  b) vaping  have surely made a huge dent in the popularity of underage smoking.  I was watching a student having a fag on their front doorstep recently and realised that the workplace smoking ban will pre-date their taking up smoking.

[Pingu]

Seems I iz hep to their kooky teen lingo, but who is "Mike" Jagger?

A hoopy frood who knows where his towel is?

[Mr Larrington]

Tch!  Another person using "hoopy" as an adjective instead of a noun.  I don't know what they teach these Young People in schools nowadays.

[clarion]

Indeed.  H2G2 is Core Curriculum, isn't it?

[Cudzoziemiec]

Seems I iz hep to their kooky teen lingo, but who is "Mike" Jagger?

A hoopy frood who knows where his tdowel is?

Mike "Michael" Jagger is the unsung/unsinging genius behind the Carpenters.

[citoyen]

"The legends ... remained popular during the 19th century but have since become little known."
(From here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Ingoldsby_Legends )

 

[hellymedic]

Mathematical 'grammar' on BBC News website:

By Wednesday lunchtime, the post had almost 25,000 thousand retweets, more than 52,000 likes, and a response from the manufacturer.

25 MILLION ReTweets? I think not!

[jsabine]

Mathematical 'grammar' on BBC News website:

By Wednesday lunchtime, the post had almost 25,000 thousand retweets, more than 52,000 likes, and a response from the manufacturer.

25 MILLION ReTweets? I think not!

That's a typo rather than grammar though - at a guess, it was originally written as '25 thousand retweets,' and the sub-editor (assuming the BBC still has 'em) was correcting it to be in line with the style guide and read '25,000 retweets,' but forgot to delete the superfluous 'thousand.'

[rogerzilla]

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-merseyside-42000256

"Alunnus" is the singular, not "alumni".  "Graduate" is less pretentious.

[T42]

"Roscoe and Duffy" would sound like a TV cop-opera.

[nicknack]

Have we had get-go/getgo/get go yet? Someone never heard of the word "start"?

[mattc]

If you read that "A orbited B" (in an article about satellites), what would you assume this meant?

[T42]

Either that A went round B or that A put B into orbit. Not saying the latter's right, though.  It's like podiuming.

[mattc]

Either that A went round B or that A put B into orbit. Not saying the latter's right, though.

Indeed. <grinds teeth>

  It's like podiuming.

So is that where very large men are employed to put successful female gymnasts on the podium??

[rogerzilla]

Miss Z the younger wrote that a building was "stoned" rather than "stone-built", much to the amusement of her teachet.

[T42]

Either that A went round B or that A put B into orbit. Not saying the latter's right, though.

Indeed. <grinds teeth>

  It's like podiuming.

So it that where very large men are employed to put successful female gymnasts on the podium??

There must be a technical word for doing such things to verbs.  Arseholery?

[hellymedic]

Either that A went round B or that A put B into orbit. Not saying the latter's right, though.

Indeed. <grinds teeth>

  It's like podiuming.

So it that where very large men are employed to put successful female gymnasts on the podium??

There must be a technical word for doing such things to verbs.  Arseholery?

'Verbing weirds language' was a frequent Sheddi phrase...

[T42]

Either that A went round B or that A put B into orbit. Not saying the latter's right, though.

Indeed. <grinds teeth>

  It's like podiuming.

So it that where very large men are employed to put successful female gymnasts on the podium??

There must be a technical word for doing such things to verbs.  Arseholery?

'Verbing weirds language' was a frequent Sheddi phrase...

Back in the 90s I wrote a statement of requirements for software, using the kind of formality I had used since I was writing up school: such expressions as "the project will be saved as...". I was rather surprised when the client's tech chappie said "you can't do it that way these days" and told me how the passive had to be eliminated and the people or agency performing an action had to be identified, "giving a punchier, more dynamic impression". My clients were American, btw.  Tech chappie said that this had been taught for years. In other words, while I was cranking stuff out in French and German, my own language had been turned inside-out by dubious foreign stylists.

Anyway, I think this thrust to eliminate the passive is at the root of all the weirding: for many people, reformulating a sentence to replace the passive voice with the active is too difficult, so they simply use the passive form of the verb as the active: "is obsessed by" becomes "obsesses over". Bleh.

[citoyen]

Anyway, I think this thrust to eliminate the passive is at the root of all the weirding

Yes, it's one of those things like elegant variation where writers try too hard to follow the rules. I started listening to a book reading on Radio 4 Extra the other day but had to turn it off after five minutes because the prose was so excruciatingly painful. The author had clearly been taught at some point in her life that the passive is to be avoided* and so had mangled her sentences to avoid it at all costs. It led to some very strange sentences. Wish I could remember some examples. But also glad I can't.

*see what I did there?

[Jakob W]

'Is obsessed by' and 'obsesses over' have slightly different meanings to my mind; whether people are using them in this way is of course debatable.

And yes, I think it's from a slavish devotion to the 'no passive' rule; while on the whole it's worth trying to follow, sometimes the passive is the best solution, especially for technical or complex prose.

[ian]

I like weirding, obvs.

I spent a small portion of my working life hunting down passives and putting them out of their misery (it's easy, they don't even run away) – this was for scientific and medical writing, where there used to be (and often still is) some odd belief that every sentence should be morbidly passive. It makes reading it and odd and dismal experience, as though you are attending the writing's funeral. There are indeed places where passive hits the right tone, but entire paragraphs and pages, particularly when it's unnaturally enforced passivity, are the mind killer.

[Jakob W]

But Science is Objective! Obviously that means suppressing any hint of authorial action, and methods just float freely on a soup of passive verbs...