Author Topic: Grammar that makes you cringe  (Read 834848 times)

T42

  • Apprentice geezer
Re: Grammar that makes you cringe
« Reply #5400 on: 03 November, 2019, 02:09:54 pm »
Invite used as a noun.

Just checked my 2006 Chambers, and it’s in there as a noun, albeit informal.

And I have no great objection to its informal use, other than that the joke's worn a bit thin by now.  The usage probably originated with somebody literate pretending not to be, so when it appears in supposedly formal text it's a reasonable assumption that the writer genuinely isn't.
I've dusted off all those old bottles and set them up straight

ian

Re: Grammar that makes you cringe
« Reply #5401 on: 03 November, 2019, 02:19:02 pm »
The OED has examples of invite used nounishly from the 17th century onwards (first cite is to 1659). I think it's a perfectly acceptable alternative to the more letterified invitation.

T42

  • Apprentice geezer
Re: Grammar that makes you cringe
« Reply #5402 on: 03 November, 2019, 02:51:20 pm »
You can find practically any usage if you go back that far, but in more recent times invite as a noun has only been used waggishly - that is, until the internet began sanctifying ignorance.
I've dusted off all those old bottles and set them up straight

Cudzoziemiec

  • Ride adventurously and stop for a brew.
Re: Grammar that makes you cringe
« Reply #5403 on: 04 November, 2019, 09:38:50 am »
Do uk.com domains count as cringeworthy grammar?
Not really. They are perfectly legitimate domains. It's just that they are American.
If we were to associate domains with geography, Rapha would be based in the Cocos Islands, Tuvalu would be the broadcast equivalent of Hollywood, and so on.
Riding a concrete path through the nebulous and chaotic future.

Kim

  • Timelord
    • Fediverse
Re: Grammar that makes you cringe
« Reply #5404 on: 04 November, 2019, 11:53:55 am »
Do uk.com domains count as cringeworthy grammar?
Not really. They are perfectly legitimate domains. It's just that they are American.
If we were to associate domains with geography, Rapha would be based in the Cocos Islands, Tuvalu would be the broadcast equivalent of Hollywood, and so on.

My objection was more that it was middle-endian, like a USAnian date.  Domain names are usually little-endian.

Cudzoziemiec

  • Ride adventurously and stop for a brew.
Re: Grammar that makes you cringe
« Reply #5405 on: 04 November, 2019, 12:04:28 pm »
Do uk.com domains count as cringeworthy grammar?
Not really. They are perfectly legitimate domains. It's just that they are American.
If we were to associate domains with geography, Rapha would be based in the Cocos Islands, Tuvalu would be the broadcast equivalent of Hollywood, and so on.

My objection was more that it was middle-endian, like a USAnian date.  Domain names are usually little-endian.
Usanian dates are a problem because they lead to misinterpretation, ambiguity and confusion. Most people don't really need to interpret domain names in that way and the web wranglers who do, presumably know the grammar. But is it grammar? (yes, you already asked this!) Or is it that in this case as in all language, content is more important than grammar? Just as Usanian dates cease to be a problem when the month is written than given as a number.
Riding a concrete path through the nebulous and chaotic future.

Kim

  • Timelord
    • Fediverse
Re: Grammar that makes you cringe
« Reply #5406 on: 04 November, 2019, 12:22:54 pm »
It's certainly grammar; the structure determines how the name servers recursively look up the address[1].  I'm not sure how cringeworthy it is, as the recursion becomes a bit academic to mere mortals at the second-level domain.

TBH, the rot set in when they kept the original top level domains for USAnia and gave other countries their own code.  Which was pragmatic and sensible and semantically wrong.  It's been going downhill[2] ever since, and now we're at the point where if you own $widgetco you really have to register all of widgetco.co.uk widgetco.uk.com widgetco.com widgetco.eu[3] widgetco.widgets and so on, just to stop anyone else getting them.


[1] When resolving www.yacf.co.uk, your [ISP's] server asks the root servers for 'uk', which ask that to find 'co.uk', which asks that to find 'yacf.co.uk' and so on until it gets to an ip address.
[2] Since this is a cycling forum, should the metaphor be "going uphill"?
[3] These are going to be Type 2 fun after brexit...

T42

  • Apprentice geezer
Re: Grammar that makes you cringe
« Reply #5407 on: 04 November, 2019, 12:56:52 pm »
[3] These are going to be Type 2 fun after brexit...[/sub]

You're going to need Metformin for that...
I've dusted off all those old bottles and set them up straight

Cudzoziemiec

  • Ride adventurously and stop for a brew.
Re: Grammar that makes you cringe
« Reply #5408 on: 04 November, 2019, 01:21:20 pm »
I wonder how those urls would look if the Russians had developed the internet? Russian postal addresses follow their own idiosyncratic format, which IIRC is (or used to be, I think they've changed it now):
PUTIN Vladimir
MOSCOW
Big Palace St 1/1
0123456789
Riding a concrete path through the nebulous and chaotic future.

Kim

  • Timelord
    • Fediverse
Re: Grammar that makes you cringe
« Reply #5409 on: 04 November, 2019, 01:39:39 pm »
I wonder how those urls would look if the Russians had developed the internet?

My first thought is that probably wouldn't be based in 7-bit ASCII, for a start...

Most of the history of Soviet-era computing involves quirky derivatives of western systems, but starter for 10 from the days before Microsoft and ISO and Unicode and so on:  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/KOI-7

(It always amazes me how much in common some of these standards can have.)

Re: Grammar that makes you cringe
« Reply #5410 on: 04 November, 2019, 11:11:37 pm »
If we were to associate domains with geography, Rapha would be based in the Cocos Islands, Tuvalu would be the broadcast equivalent of Hollywood, and so on.
Domains are associated with geography, whether you like it or not. .com domains genuinely are managed from the USA, .tv ones generate a significant part of the national income of Tuvalu, and so on. Reading them is pretty easy because, like various other parts of the Internet*, they are based on the real world. We all know that postal addresses divide up the world into ever-smaller sections, working backwards from the end and that, in nearly all cases, a different body will be in charge at each level; domain just means the part that a body is in charge of:

13 (The bit of the world where I am in charge, if this is the number of my house)
High Street (the local council)
Summertown (ditto in this case)
Countyshire (the County Council)
United Kingdom (Parliament/the national government)

Internet domains work the same way:

mail.eps.leeds.ac.uk or www.eps.leeds.ac.uk (specific individual server addresses within EPS's domain)
eps.leeds.ac.uk (the engineering & physical sciences [EPS] department of Leeds University)
.leeds.ac.uk (Leeds University)
.ac.uk (Nominet)
.uk (In this case Nominet as well - in some countries it would be a different organisation at this level)
. (the top-level domain run by ICANN)

In the real world, number 13 High Street might be further subdivided (into flats) before you got down to an actual address where people resided. Or number 13 might represent a cluster of buildings, and so could be divided first into buildings and then into flats. In the Internet, you can similarly keep dividing before you reach a point at which a service exists. But the division is always little endian in the real world, and so it is also in the Internet. It no more makes sense to claim that ourcompany.uk.com is a .uk address with .com after it than it does to write an address ... 13 High Street, United Kingdom, Birmingham.

* For example, email uses a multi-hop system not unlike real mail, in which batches of mail are passed from place to place, getting ever nearer to their destinations, until finally they are delivered quite locally. And often using POP, the Post Office Protocol :) What's more, email uses envelopes, which is one of the reasons why the To: address does not actually determine where the message is delivered. In the same way, the addressee at the top of a paper letter does not determine where it goes, because the letter is inside an envelope with an address that might be quite different.

Re: Grammar that makes you cringe
« Reply #5411 on: 05 November, 2019, 07:33:02 am »
Radio 4 this morning: "... there have been five Secretary of States"
Quote from: tiermat
that's not science, it's semantics.

Cudzoziemiec

  • Ride adventurously and stop for a brew.
Re: Grammar that makes you cringe
« Reply #5412 on: 05 November, 2019, 08:45:35 am »
If we were to associate domains with geography, Rapha would be based in the Cocos Islands, Tuvalu would be the broadcast equivalent of Hollywood, and so on.
Domains are associated with geography, whether you like it or not. .com domains genuinely are managed from the USA, .tv ones generate a significant part of the national income of Tuvalu, and so on.
That's what I'm saying! Rapha's website is on a server located in the Cocos Islands but it's simply because of a coincidence, there's no link between the company and the islands. Adverts tell me I could register a .tv address for £34.99 a year but unfortunately there's no South Pacific holiday in it.
Riding a concrete path through the nebulous and chaotic future.

Re: Grammar that makes you cringe
« Reply #5413 on: 05 November, 2019, 10:47:13 am »
Response to email to colleague:
"I am out of office. I will be back on <date>"
Could you not have typed "the", colleague?

On the other hand, a different colleague has "Dear Sender, Thank you for your email. I am currently unable to respond to your enquiry as I am out of the office until <date> and will not be able to respond until then." which goes a bit too far in the opposite direction.

Steph

  • Fast. Fast and bulbous. But fluffy.
Re: Grammar that makes you cringe
« Reply #5414 on: 05 November, 2019, 12:01:15 pm »
Response to email to colleague:
"I am out of office. I will be back on <date>"
Could you not have typed "the", colleague?

On the other hand, a different colleague has "Dear Sender, Thank you for your email. I am currently unable to respond to your enquiry as I am out of the office until <date> and will not be able to respond until then." which goes a bit too far in the opposite direction.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/7702913.stm
Mae angen arnaf i byw, a fe fydda'i

Kim

  • Timelord
    • Fediverse
Re: Grammar that makes you cringe
« Reply #5415 on: 05 November, 2019, 12:01:52 pm »
If we were to associate domains with geography, Rapha would be based in the Cocos Islands, Tuvalu would be the broadcast equivalent of Hollywood, and so on.
Domains are associated with geography, whether you like it or not. .com domains genuinely are managed from the USA, .tv ones generate a significant part of the national income of Tuvalu, and so on.
That's what I'm saying! Rapha's website is on a server located in the Cocos Islands but it's simply because of a coincidence, there's no link between the company and the islands.

No, it looks like it's on a server hosted by an American company in That London.  With a Cocos Islands domain name.

(This sort of thing is normal and ordinary.  IIRC YACF is hosted in Amserdam or somewhere...)

Cudzoziemiec

  • Ride adventurously and stop for a brew.
Re: Grammar that makes you cringe
« Reply #5416 on: 05 November, 2019, 12:28:30 pm »
I suspected as much!
Riding a concrete path through the nebulous and chaotic future.

Mr Larrington

  • A bit ov a lyv wyr by slof standirds
  • Custard Wallah
    • Mr Larrington's Automatic Diary
Re: Grammar that makes you cringe
« Reply #5417 on: 05 November, 2019, 01:06:23 pm »
Apparently the Cook Islands have clamped down on waggish types registering.co.ck domains, probably after TV's Nathan Barley had trashbat.co.ck prominently displayed.  Wasp T12 Speechtool - It's Well Weapon!
External Transparent Wall Inspection Operative & Mayor of Mortagne-au-Perche
Satisfying the Bloodlust of the Masses in Peacetime

Re: Grammar that makes you cringe
« Reply #5418 on: 05 November, 2019, 01:54:41 pm »
Response to email to colleague:
"I am out of office. I will be back on <date>"
Could you not have typed "the", colleague?

On the other hand, a different colleague has "Dear Sender, Thank you for your email. I am currently unable to respond to your enquiry as I am out of the office until <date> and will not be able to respond until then." which goes a bit too far in the opposite direction.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/7702913.stm
I knew that was going to be the Welsh out-of-office story before I clicked on it...

Re: Grammar that makes you cringe
« Reply #5419 on: 05 November, 2019, 07:12:59 pm »
That's what I'm saying! Rapha's website is on a server located in the Cocos Islands but it's simply because of a coincidence, there's no link between the company and the islands. Adverts tell me I could register a .tv address for £34.99 a year but unfortunately there's no South Pacific holiday in it.
Oh yes, that much is true, because the domain is a separate entity from the server, and simply points to the server wherever it is. There's no requirement for the location of the server to correspond to the country from which the domain is derived. Nor is there (typically, there are exceptions) a requirement that the organisation buying the domain be based in, or even have a presence in, that country. However (at least for the traditional domains before the recent waves of daft ones), the domains absolutely do relate to the countries, and bodies within those countries, that control and issue them.

Torslanda

  • Professional Gobshite
  • Just a tart for retro kit . . .
    • John's Bikes
Re: Grammar that makes you cringe
« Reply #5420 on: 06 November, 2019, 07:35:43 pm »
Invite used as a noun.

Just checked my 2006 Chambers, and it’s in there as a noun, albeit informal.

<Milligan, S.> Chambers Encyclopaedia? Isn't that the dictionary of piss-pots? </Millgan, S.>
VELOMANCER

Well that's the more blunt way of putting it but as usual he's dead right.

ian

Re: Grammar that makes you cringe
« Reply #5421 on: 06 November, 2019, 08:12:45 pm »
Do uk.com domains count as cringeworthy grammar?
Not really. They are perfectly legitimate domains. It's just that they are American.
If we were to associate domains with geography, Rapha would be based in the Cocos Islands, Tuvalu would be the broadcast equivalent of Hollywood, and so on.

My objection was more that it was middle-endian, like a USAnian date.  Domain names are usually little-endian.

Didn't domain names used to be backwards and wasn't there something horrid were you had to somehow wrangle an address through nfs.net or something strange (and there was a dog called fido), and much of the internet was based around vibrating strings, and not the eleven-dimensional sort, oh no, real wet string.

And the first time you logged on, you got a message warning you that the mere press of a key would use billions of dollars of infrastructure so don't even think of using it. You, sir/madam, are not worthy of all our hard work. Anyway, that so obviously did not work.

I probably imagined all this. I only got onto the internet because someone told me about this email thing and I was, as ever, trying to impress a girl with my technological skills. Back then you had to write emails in a text editor and save them before you could send. The 'save' bit turned out to be important. Because if you didn't save, you sent a blank email. So basically, I was like inadvertently sending her the email equivalent of a heavy breather phone call.

Re: Grammar that makes you cringe
« Reply #5422 on: 07 November, 2019, 08:08:18 am »
Response to email to colleague:
"I am out of office. I will be back on <date>"
Could you not have typed "the", colleague?

As a native speaker of Leftpondese, I would agree with "out of the office" as 'normal.'  But, then again we say that someone is "in the hospital" versus "in hospital" over here.

Cudzoziemiec

  • Ride adventurously and stop for a brew.
Re: Grammar that makes you cringe
« Reply #5423 on: 07 November, 2019, 08:47:43 am »
In hopsital = ill.
In the hospital = in the location for another reason, eg work or visiting.
Generally speaking. Same with school and a few other specific purpose buildings, eg court.
Riding a concrete path through the nebulous and chaotic future.

Salvatore

  • Джон Спунър
    • Pics
Re: Grammar that makes you cringe
« Reply #5424 on: 07 November, 2019, 09:06:34 am »
In hopsital = ill.
In the hospital = in the location for another reason, eg work or visiting.
Generally speaking. Same with school and a few other specific purpose buildings, eg court.

But in/to the pub.
Quote
et avec John, excellent lecteur de road-book, on s'en est sortis sans erreur