Puttin' on the Style: On writing, and on English style | Hacker News Reader

Puttin' on the Style: On writing, and on English style

newcriterion.com

51 pointspepys9 comments

I stuck with it and found some gems but it comes across as a nasty case of naval gazing (similar to the navel version but you have to spit out the bits of rope stuck in your teeth, or choke)

The initial paras are quite fun parodies and explained soon after.

"English, unlike French, has no academy to protect its virtue": thank goodness - English has no virtue and no morals. It takes what it needs and returns the favour in flexibility. However, English spoken by a French person does sound rather lovely.

"guerrilla outfits of Berks and Wankers" - I've never read Amis but it seems I might have to:

"Berks ... Left to them the English language would die of impurity, like late Latin."

"Wankers ... Left to them the language would die of purity, like medieval Latin."

I too was educated at a posh prep. school (but in Devon, UK) and a posh public school in Oxon (public schools in the UK are private schools - we are a bit odd). I too was taught "correct" use of the language, except that I was taught en_GB rather than en_US. I still have my copy of "Use and abuse of the English language" somewhere. I should probably recycle its materials.

English does not require an Academy of Immortals to look after it. There are a few good reasons why it is a good first and second choice for a Frankish Language, one of which is that you can use and abuse it and still be understood.

> it comes across as a nasty case of naval gazing

Was that not the entire point of the piece? I am no learned fool, in the art of grammar, though, I do enjoy reading of those for whom it carries such importance.

My grammar is the product of the Pennsylvania public school system (paid for by the PA property tax), but it left me woefully unprepared for my private college experience. Perhaps this is why I turned to Computer Science; the software worked or did not work (though it was required to be no more than 80 columns wide, and laced with documentation).

Computational languages are generally magical in their strict adherence to grammatical rules. Perl being perhaps the least strict, and Java towards the end of the most. Many of our programming languages now come with standard linters, so even the variance allowed in the languages has been reduced to the the ruling class’ ideas of proper form. Something this article touches on in semicolon usage, visual style, is also being driven from programming languages; this comes in the form of tools like rustmt. Style in computational language has taken on a strong form of dictatorial guidance, and I’m a big fan; reducing the complexity of reading code helps reduce confusion, which, of course, reduces bugs.

It would be sad if English had a linter and an eng_USfmt, then the art of writing would be dead, and we’d have fewer things at which to naval gaze.

> English does not require an Academy of Immortals to look after it.

Many will agree with this, as do I (or, me included), but proper form should still be taught, if for no other reason than to give people confidence in their writing.

p.s. I was impressed at how long the author held out on the usage of an emoticon, but disappointed that they could not bring themselves to use emojis.

I was a bit harsh with "it comes across as a nasty case of naval gazing" - I rather enjoy these sorts of discussions.

"p.s. I was impressed at how long the author held out on the usage of an emoticon, but disappointed that they could not bring themselves to use emojis."

"PS" was what I was taught and use. Somehow, certain Latinisms (post scriptum) end up following different rules. The norm is to indicate an abbreviation by putting full stops (period) after each letter, except when you don't! Also, it seems to be acceptable to drop the full stops. So: id est and int al (etc) are perfectly acceptable. Actually, now I come to think of it, dropping the dots is usual usage unless there is an ambiguity, so RSCPA or ASPCA for example (eg). Et cetera, expempli gratia ...

Intriguing; I’ve been misusing abbreviations forever then.

I’m also surprised that my split infinitives weren’t called out ;)

You can use either PS or P.S. – neither is incorrect – a quick internet search reveals that. Also, considering it comes from the Latin post scriptum which is not capitalized and taking into consideration that writing in lower case is far more accepted these days writing p.s. is not a problem. But generally upper case is used. Compared to the loose/lose tectonic shift p.s. doesn't even register on my Richter scale. When in doubt, just look it up.

Several of these remind me of James Nicoll's old quote from Usenet:

"The problem with defending the purity of the English language is that English is about as pure as a cribhouse whore. We don't just borrow words; on occasion, English has pursued other languages down alleyways to beat them unconscious and rifle their pockets for new vocabulary."

Great quote. English does give back a little as well as take. My current favourites are le blue jean (denim is derived from De Nimes!) and le bifteck (beef[steak] is derived from la boeuf.)

Maybe, but there's a bit of a difference between the practice of loanwords and grammar usage.

Schooled in 1980s Australia, I'd never heard of the split infinitive controversy growing up; it seems a popular topic whenever Dr Pinker's name is mentioned.

Roddenberry's Star Trek seems to have been groundbreaking in more ways than one. To boldly split where no prescriptivist has gone before!

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