Formal Grammar and Syntax Poll

[Callie]

Pick the option that most often applies when writing formally. I recognize that some people's preferences vary considerably, but I wanted to keep the options limited. Please point out mistakes.

 

(Safari thinks slith mages should be sloth mages)

 

Question 11: What are your preferences in regards to gender-neutral pronouns?

 

-

 

My answer to question 11:

I use "their" as a third-person, singular, possessive pronoun. I try to use "one" in the subjective if it's not awkward; I use "s/he" otherwise. I don't use "them" as a third-person, singular, objective pronoun: I use "him or her". I wish there was an accepted set of gender-neutral pronouns, because I would use it exclusively.

 

Edit: IPB thinks a poll should only have one space after a period. I suppose that means the poll took the poll …itself?

[Lilith]

is anyone seriously still being taught to put two spaces after a period since typewriters stopped being a thing

[Callie]

is anyone seriously still being taught to put two spaces after a period since typewriters stopped being a thing

I had no idea that was the result of typewriters. Why did people put two spaces after a period when using a typewriter?

 

Edit: I learned to put two spaces after a period, but I don't remember where I learned that from.

[Lilith]

I had no idea that was the result of typewriters. Why did people put two spaces after a period when using a typewriter?

 

Edit: I learned to put two spaces after a period, but I don't remember where I learned that from.

 

because a manual typewriter isn't sophisticated enough to do what modern word processing and desktop publishing programs do, which is to automatically extend the length of spaces after a period to make text more readable. as such there's no need to do it nowadays, and in fact in some programs it won't even make a visible difference (the software simply ignores the extra space)

[Sudanna]

I use language very casually. Whatever sounds good enough is good enough.

[Alorael at Large]

Casual and formal writing are different.

 

I use Oxford commas. I use the passive voice in moderation; knee-jerk rejection is ridiculous and can lead to contortions of language, but overuse makes for bad writing. I split infinitives; that rule's a holdover from trying to make English be like Latin, where you can't split the infinitive because it's one word. I use whom, probably less than I should, but not fewer than I should. Whom is necessary even if it can't figure prominently in my signature. Subjunctive is a lost and possibly dark art that I try to maintain. You can count my spaces for yourself.

 

—Alorael, whose opinions on like and as do not fit within the margins of this text.

[Sudanna]

I use language casually in formal writing too.

[Slawbug]

What Alorael said. I can't answer the poll because most of my practices and opinions are significantly less absolutist than the poll options.

 

Also, bias. I take particular issue with the passive voice question, because its example sentence is awkward and off-putting in the passive voice: of course you wouldn't use it there. Compare to the split infinitive question, which uses a phrase that we familiarly and habitually hear as a split infinitive, and rarely as an unsplit one. Way too much bias to take these poll results seriously, whatever they are.

[Aran]

I use two spaces. That's the way to go.

 

- I'm definitely on the one-space side, because typesetting should always be left to computers. There's no point in interfering with the justification and spacing algorithms. (HTML seems to agree, because without using special markup, multiple spaces are never displayed. )

- I consider "whom" and "I were" to be non-optional rules, and try to correct those whenever I slip up.

- I may start my sentences with conjunctions when posting in forums (if I even use complete sentences), but mostly avoid them when composing texts. (Including texts for RPs, I guess.)

- No Oxford comma normally, probably because it's not used in German either. Passive voice whenever it is appropriate to emphasize the object.

- The rules on split infinitives and final prepositions seem kinda ridiculous, so I ignore them.

- I consider "like" and "as" as synonyms in this context, but tend to prefer "as" when it's not an actual example or simile.

 

Edit: Amusingly, the quote element is configured not to collapse spaces after all, unlike the poll options.

[Callie]

Also, bias. I take particular issue with the passive voice question, because its example sentence is awkward and off-putting in the passive voice: of course you wouldn't use it there. Compare to the split infinitive question, which uses a phrase that we familiarly and habitually hear as a split infinitive, and rarely as an unsplit one. Way too much bias to take these poll results seriously, whatever they are.

That's true. I was more being facetious than anything. It would be difficult to make a meaningful poll without cluttering several pages with options, and I doubt anyone would take that poll. I was expecting a lighthearted discussion based on the poll; I think that's what I got.

 

Also, I've been enlightened about spaces. It looks like I'm the only one who does that, but it's a hard habit to break.

Edited April 28, 2014 by Excalibur

[Randomizer]

I still like the passive voice even though the Grammatica program kept insisting I should go active voice when it checked my dissertation.

 

@Excalibur - You are old enough to remember the commercial that had, "Pardon our grammar, but ...." after all these years?

[Callie]

@Excalibur - You are old enough to remember the commercial that had, "Pardon our grammar, but ...." after all these years?

Nope: I'm only 21.

[Actaeon]

I tend toward an Oxford comma even though I'm not supposed to. I have not yet checked whether the copy editor is removing them or I'm actually sneaking them into print.

 

The passive voice is incredibly useful in a lead when the object is the real subject and the people/organization involved are secondary.

[Edgwyn]

I have not been able to break myself of the habit of two spaces after a period from learning to type on a type writer. Of course my first two computer word processor programs did not have proportional fonts and so did not automatically adjust the size of the space after a period. My third did with some fonts but not all. I have not tried very hard to break this habit as I have higher priority habits to break.

[Soul of Wit]

Oddly, I tend to avoid splitting the old infinitive, but am quite pro-ultimate preposition. I suspect this is because scolds are much more likely to scold on the latter.

 

Recently, I was amused to hear a woman answer her phone, "Hello, this is Susie Wu, may I ask with whom I am speaking to?" I've changed her name, but preserved the rhyme of her name with "to."

 

I can confirm that students too young to remember typewriters are still being taught to use two spaces after a period.

[Rowen]

I started reading the first question on the poll and thought this was going to be a thread about the Oxford Comma by Vampire Weekend.

[A less presumptuous name.]

I'm still a big fan of the Oxford comma, although I think I've finally gotten over the idea that it is necessary for correctness. I try to work with "whom" and prepositions at the beginning of the phrase, although in spoken language I don't always bother with it.

 

I definitely learned to type two spaces after a period. I think that was something we learned in school, where we were already using MS Word or something of that ilk to type. I used a typewriter a handful of times, and always for fun. That said, I have only ever bothered to put two spaces after a period when I'm /really/ desperate to pad a paper's length.

 

Regarding gender neutral pronouns, I use "they/them" to refer to unspecified individuals, but I still have a hard time using it for a specified individual. I'm more likely to simply avoid a pronoun in that case. In formal writing, I often use "one".

 

Also, although no one has mentioned it here, I always notice when I omit a relative pronoun. In fact, especially when typing, I have to stop myself from adding it back in.

[Tyranicus]

I was taught to use two spaces after a period when learning typing on a computer as well. I have since realized that it is unnecessary and have tried, without much success, to convince others of this.

[Mistah Q]

The only ones I feel strongly about are the oxford comma (pro) and the subjunctive (pro). I actually wrote John Fogerty a letter about his song "Don't you wish it was true" and asked him to re-do it with "were."

 

I feel that language is a slightly living thing, and ours has evolved past the point of splitting the infinitive really being a technical error anymore.

 

I use two spaces after a period out of habit, which I have to fight against when writing papers in APA format.

 

Their/them has become an acceptable singular pronoun just because we had no better word for it. The rule used to be to use the word he/his unless it were explicitly contextualized that the subject is female but it became enough of an inclusivity issue for change to occur. If we're really stubborn enough to battle against this sort of change we might as well go back to speaking Old Norse or Middle English... language changes.

 

I do use whom, and I don't get Jeff's immense hatred for it - it is proper after all - but it doesn't tend to set off my spidey-sense should someone else say "who." Same with beginning sentences with conjunctions - I try not to but I'm sure a few sneak in, and I don't care when others do it.

 

The passive voice depends on context for me. As a rule I have to avoid it in medical writing besides in certain situations, but I find that when editorializing or narrating, done well it can add an effulgent sheen.

 

Like/as: Don't care, perhaps because I'm American. There are situations when you just have to use "as." But (and this is a bit of a simplification) in a predicate that's qualifying a verb phrase, Americans tend to use "like" instead of "as." I like it better that way even if someone may call it improper - I chalk it up to a dialect difference.

 

What really gets my goad is "as if" vs "as though." As if is hypothetical, as though is declarative! "Responsible" and "accountable" are often used where the proper word is "liable." Most of all, it pains me how often "if" is used where the proper word is "whether."

[Kelandon]

What really gets my goad is "as if" vs "as though." As if is hypothetical, as though is declarative!

I hadn't heard of this, so I tried Googing, and all I could come up with were sources (including sources citing to reliable authorities) suggesting that "as if" means the same thing as "as though."

"Responsible" and "accountable" are often used where the proper word is "liable."

I am skeptical of this.

Most of all, it pains me how often "if" is used where the proper word is "whether."

This one I do know about, but I'm pretty well prepared to declare that battle lost and say that it doesn't matter. It's hard for me to see why it would, whereas with something like "comprise" to mean "compose," I can see the argument for maintaining the original meaning. (And, while we're at it, why it's important to maintain the serial comma — which, I was amused to find out, is sometimes called the "Harvard" comma in New England, though the "Oxford" comma everywhere else.)

What really gets my goad

Also, I'd never heard this — it'd always been "goat" when I'd heard it — so I Googled, and sure enough, there is something of a dispute (or at least lack of clarity), though more people/more reputable people seem to lean toward "goat."

[Alorael at Large]

If you think there's ever a solution to near-homophonic words in idiomatic phrases you've got another thing/think coming.

 

—Alorael, who rarely finds that passive voice adds effulgence. On the contrary, it shows up in medical and scientific writing all the time because of a bizarre but fortunately not universal belief that the performers of procedures and research should be entirely invisible, and it's a (small) part of the plague of execrable science writing.

[Callie]

—Alorael, who rarely finds that passive voice adds effulgence. On the contrary, it shows up in medical and scientific writing all the time because of a bizarre but fortunately not universal belief that the performers of procedures and research should be entirely invisible, and it's a (small) part of the plague of execrable science writing.

I think that "wavelength was measured by a spectrophotometer" really is better than "a spectrophotometer measured wavelength". The active voice nearly personifies the spectrophotometer. It's appropriate in fiction, but not as desirable in scientific writing. Technical papers are often intended to be skimmed through, so otherwise agreeable prose would prove distracting. As for the quality of writing, the English level in many scientific publications is indeed lacking. Most examples can be attributed to English being a second language, but even native speakers exhibit poor composition. I've seen egregious uses of diction, such as the use of the word "beastly" to describe the performance of a hollow fiber membrane reactor.

 

Also, you win the unsellable bonus points for using the word "effulgent"!

 

I've realized that I often do not split the infinitive due to my education in French. Verbs in the language are almost always initially presented in their infinitive form, so that somehow stuck in my English-speaking mind (language transfer).

[Sudanna]

I don't think anyone reading either sentence is in any danger of personifying the spectrophotometer.

[Callie]

I suppose I am of a limited number in that tendency then.

[Lilith]

I think that "wavelength was measured by a spectrophotometer" really is better than "a spectrophotometer measured wavelength".

 

A more likely construction would be "we measured the wavelength using a spectrophotometer": you do occasionally see the first person used in academic papers these days, although it's still not common.

[Mistah Q]

 

 

A more likely construction would be "we measured the wavelength using a spectrophotometer": you do occasionally see the first person used in academic papers these days, although it's still not common.

Correct. In general, tools don't "act" - tools are used.

 

Organic molecules can be another matter. For instance - the alpha-ketoglutarate inhibited the decarboxylase. It would almost be too indirect to say "the decarboxylase was inhibited by the alpha-ketoglutarate."

 

APA and most institutions these days strongly encourage active voice. It can get pretty murky otherwise when you're dealing with multi-part equations, long chain reactions, and the like.

[Alorael at Large]

First person and first person plural. And I prefer it. Passive voice has its place, as I said. X was measured with Y is fine. But then formulas were devised, two hundred thousand apples were peeled, and then each pair of mice was sutured together by the tails, and spontaneous combustion of graduate students was observed. There's room for saying that we did and saw those unholy things in the name of science!

 

Mostly, though, the flaws in science writing aren't simple matters of silly word choice (I'd actually be entertained by "beastly" amidst technical jargon!) or passive voice. There are bigger problems of tortured constructions and long rambling sentences written to sound scientific instead of being clear and concise. There's jargon used because jargon is expected. One word never suffices when two will do, and one had better be Greek, Latin, or longer than five syllables. ESL papers have their own flaws, but native speakers still churn out garbage prose. To some extent it's because scientists are neither expected to nor trained to write well, but there's also a culture of bad writing. I don't know if editors drive it by demanding impenetrable verbiage or whether it's entirely self-motivated, but it's pervasive.

 

—Alorael, who did not bring effulgence into the discourse. That was all Mistah Q.

[Mistah Q]

ESL papers have their own flaws, but native speakers still churn out garbage prose.

My wife is a university rhetoric professor - and by far, it seems, the native speakers are less disciplined and "worse" writers. The ESL papers are worse on technicality, but it's because those students make grammar and conjugation errors - and sometimes word choice when it comes to things like slang and colloquialism. Nevertheless what they write tends to be more cogent and substantive... parsimony is a virtue, I say.

 

It has to be difficult doing university work in something other than one's native language. I sometimes run into trouble working with Europeans because in many languages the decimal is represented by a comma rather than a period, for instance.

[VCH]

Mostly, though, the flaws in science writing aren't simple matters of silly word choice (I'd actually be entertained by "beastly" amidst technical jargon!) or passive voice. There are bigger problems of tortured constructions and long rambling sentences written to sound scientific instead of being clear and concise. There's jargon used because jargon is expected. One word never suffices when two will do, and one had better be Greek, Latin, or longer than five syllables. ESL papers have their own flaws, but native speakers still churn out garbage prose. To some extent it's because scientists are neither expected to nor trained to write well, but there's also a culture of bad writing. I don't know if editors drive it by demanding impenetrable verbiage or whether it's entirely self-motivated, but it's pervasive.

 

—Alorael, who did not bring effulgence into the discourse. That was all Mistah Q.

 

This is wrong. At least for Ecology papers this is wrong. The editor that edited my paper insisted on short, to the point sentences. And some journals even suggest that you should write in the active voice; and every guide on how to write in Biology says that simple writing is good writting. Some people don't follow the rules, no, but from I've seen, it's a goal in Biology/ecology to write concise and clear papers.

 

 

 

 

Also, ecologists are expected to write well, that's a huge goal for anyone that wants a long term job in the field.

[VCH]

you do occasionally see the first person used in academic papers these days, although it's still not common.

 

This is also wrong. It's very common in Ecology journals.

 

The only place it's rare is in the methods section, because sometimes saying "we did" I did" draws attention to the subject when the subject isn't important.

 

 

But maybe nobody cares about ecology

[Dikiyoba]

To some extent it's because scientists are neither expected to nor trained to write well, but there's also a culture of bad writing. I don't know if editors drive it by demanding impenetrable verbiage or whether it's entirely self-motivated, but it's pervasive.

 

Well, if new scientists aren't trained to write well and all the scientific papers they see are written poorly, then they're going to copy what they see and produce badly-written papers of their own. It's nearly impossible to break the cycle without training scientists how to write well first. Publish-or-perish institutions and overwork don't help either.

 

Dikiyoba likes to imagine that the typical scientific paper titles are created through party games. You know, like Telephone or the One Word at a Time Story.

[Randomizer]

A more likely construction would be "we measured the wavelength using a spectrophotometer": you do occasionally see the first person used in academic papers these days, although it's still not common.

Academic papers rarely have a single author anymore at least in the fields I read. I still remember a physics paper on a CERN experiment that had a page just of the authors that numbered over a hundred.

 

In learning how to write a technical paper I was told to read papers in the field and do it like them. The only criticism on what I wrote was from the professor I worked for and papers for class work.

[Triumph]

I don't think anyone reading either sentence is in any danger of personifying the spectrophotometer.

 

Oh yeah? I, Spectrophotometer, will knock you all down!

Edited April 30, 2014 by Triumph
I don't take personifying light-ly!

[Edgwyn]

I am a bit out of touch on the world of academia, though it sounds like not a lot has changed, since a completed my MS 16 years ago and choose a program with a comp instead of a thesis. With all of that said, there seems to be two problems, one is the publish or perish and the other is page count. Many academics are required to publish, so a scientifically valid paper with a bunch of co-authors is the way to go so everyone gets credit. My limited professional writing (briefings and reports) is required to be clear and concise, short and in active voice. It is only when they are trying to further "educate" me that I have to write a paper that is a certain minimum length. You tell almost anyone to write a ten page paper and there is going to be six pages of ideas, two pages worth of font size, spacing and margin tricks and two pages of fluff and filler that obscure the six pages of good writing. I have no idea how to do it, but there needs to be a better way of measuring effort in the academic world than page count.

[Tyranicus]

I don't take personifying light-ly!

I see what you did there.

[Randomizer]

You tell almost anyone to write a ten page paper and there is going to be six pages of ideas, two pages worth of font size, spacing and margin tricks and two pages of fluff and filler that obscure the six pages of good writing. I have no idea how to do it, but there needs to be a better way of measuring effort in the academic world than page count.

Thirty plus years ago my father would submit papers to his boss in the chemical industry and see his boss weigh the papers in his hand without reading them. They would get rejected for not being long enough especially when all the relevant information was on a single sheet. So he would have to go back to his cubicle and fluff them up to be sure he had included everything.

[Alorael at Large]

Academia, at least in the sciences, has very strong pressure towards keeping length to a minimum. That doesn't fix the problem. Students' bloated writing is a separate issue, although one with a similar element of imitating the crap that has come before. And appropriating jargon to appear smarter.

 

—Alorael, who distinguishes between authors and writers. There may be dozens of authors but it's only the first one, maybe two, who actually turned research into words.

[Student of Trinity]

It has to be difficult doing university work in something other than one's native language.

It is. I lecture in German. This is now payback for my post-doc years when native German speakers thought I was brilliant because we worked in English. Now I'm the one with the extra cognitive overhead. It's still a lot easier for me because English is the language in which everyone has to write papers and proposals.

 

The passive voice is very useful for keeping attention focused where it should be. I think that may be the only good use it has, so it should never be used by default. But guiding attention is really important, so the passive voice is important to use at times.

 

Lately i've been trying to avoid ending sentences with prepositions, and feeling that the alternative constructions are a bit longer and slower, but easier to understand. I'd much rather ask for whom the bell tolls than ask who the bell tolls for. It seems more clear and forceful to me, not just more grammatical.

 

(And I'll just ask, thanks. I ain't gonna send to know for whom anything.)

[Goldengirl]

I'm pro-Oxford Comma, though I've come to the grudging acceptance that it often doesn't have any effect on the meaning of the sentence. People can talk about "the strippers, Kennedy, and Stalin" versus "the strippers, Kennedy and Stalin," but I think ultimately that's a contrived example that doesn't often arise. I still use it, but I don't look too critically if it's omitted.

 

I use the passive voice as a means of emphasis for passive conditions. In my historical work, there's a huge rhetorical difference between, "Emancipation was given to the slaves," and "Slaves were emancipated." Portraying slaves as objects versus subjects in these sentences speaks volumes to the depths of the historical debate.

 

I don't often split infinitives, but I'm alright with them. English isn't Latin, and the Nordic Invasion of England by William the Bastard happened so long ago that I don't think the Franco-Latin rules should govern our discourse. I feel the same way about the subjunctive form.

 

I absolutely use the term "whom." People may not know when to use it, but they can at least recognize what it means, so there seems no reason to not use it. I sometimes correct people when they don't use it, but only ironically to be snooty. Otherwise, I don't care.

 

I begin sentences with conjunctions, but never in formal writing. There are plenty of better phrases to use at the beginning that are accepted, aside from conjunctions. "And" can become "in addition," "but" can become "however." In creative writing and plain conversation, however, I'm all for it.

 

I tend to avoid ending my sentences with prepositions, especially in formal writing. I used to be a lot more prescriptivist, so it makes me cringe slightly to do it, but I don't care if other people do. I don't like the awkward syntactical acrobatics one has to do sometimes to avoid it.

 

I have no preference between "as" and "like." "Like" is more casual, with connotations of valley girls, "as" is slightly more formal but still not exceptional. Likewise, I feel the same way about the contrived differentiation between "less" and "fewer," though I recognize the distinction regardless.

 

I've never even heard of putting two spaces after a period. That sounds like a waste of paper, sacrificing the lives of the trees that fell for the purposes of our text.

 

Singular "they" is something that makes sense and has historical backing, though I don't think that history should necessarily control the language. Plural "they" is also acceptable, obviously.

 

I tend toward an Oxford comma even though I'm not supposed to. I have not yet checked whether the copy editor is removing them or I'm actually sneaking them into print.

 

The most imperative I've heard is that they're optional. I've never heard that it's something you shouldn't do at all.

[Alorael at Large]

I use the passive voice as a means of emphasis for passive conditions. In my historical work, there's a huge rhetorical difference between, "Emancipation was given to the slaves," and "Slaves were emancipated." Portraying slaves as objects versus subjects in these sentences speaks volumes to the depths of the historical debate.

These are both passive voice, though; I'm not sure how having slaves be subjects of objects changes that. "All slaves in the USA gained their freedom with the passing of the 13th Amendment," would make them subjects of an active sentence; "The passing of the 13th amendment granted freedom to all slaves in the USA," makes them the object of an active sentence. They're all perfectly good constructions depending on the emphasis you want to give.

 

—Alorael, who doesn't actually think subject vs. object has all that much weight unless you craft tortured constructions that make the choice obvious and forced. Replace "gained their freedom" with "were freed" in the first active sentence and no one will notice much of a difference, except maybe that the latter is less wordy.

[Callie]

I've never even heard of putting two spaces after a period. That sounds like a waste of paper, sacrificing the lives of the trees that fell for the purposes of our text.

I did some quick googling and found that a typical single-spaced, 8.5" x 11" page contains 2700 characters. The average sentence length is supposedly (I was skeptical of the sources) 14.3 words at 5.1 characters per word. The spaces within the sentence and the period amount to another 14.3 characters. That amounts to 87.23 characters per sentence without the spacing in between sentences. Accordingly, one single-spaced page contains 30.60 sentences with one space after the period and 30.26 sentences with two spaces. Putting two spaces after the period uses 1.13% more paper. By comparison, double spacing uses 100% more paper than single spacing.

 

A typical pine tree produces 80,500 sheets of paper (.67 m³, only about half the tree is useful paper pulp). Printing paper has a density of 800 kg/m³. The United States produces roughly 75 million tons of paper per year; 45% of that is recycled. 28% of paper is used for printing, which amounts to 21 million tons of paper per year, or 35.6 million trees. I couldn't find numbers on how many people put two spaces after the period, but my impression from googling is that most people don't. I'm going to use the unrepresentative percentage from this poll (16%). I also can't find a number for the average word content of a page (a flier has much less words than an essay, etc.). I'm going to assume for the sake of calculation that printed paper is mostly filled with words, regardless of spacing. Additionally, let's say that half of printed paper is double-spaced. If Americans stop putting two spaces after the period, they'll save 48,000 trees per year (.13% of the trees cut down for printing paper). I think it's more useful to reduce paper usage by using backsides, recycling, avoiding paper entirely, single-spacing, etc.

 

Edit: Spaces hardly matter if paragraph breaks are included.

 

And yes, I currently have way too much time on my hands.

[Slawbug]

MORE ERGATIVITY IS NEEDED IN THIS THREAD

[Edgwyn]

Excalibur, since you have too much time on your hands then you might as well add font proportionality to your calculations. On almost all typewriters, each letter took up exactly the same amount of horizontal distance on a line, so an "i" took up just as much space as a "w".

 

The easiest way to recreate this on a computer is that certain of the oldest fonts (like courier) were set up to match typing, so if you type a line of text in courier and then the same line of text in times, the line in courier will take up substantially more space. Even Helvetica which is a thicker/darker font than times takes up less horizontal space than courier. So switching to a proportional font (in a reasonable size) saves paper as well.

 

Typewriters came in 10 and 12 pitch (characters per inch) varieties, but only the most advanced typewriters at the end of typewriters were able to do both (swappable daisy wheel or ball). A paragraph where the space between sentences was the same as the space between words was less readable so several generations were taught to put two spaces after a period.

 

The advent of WYSIWG word processing programs and desktop publishing brought the fonts and font sizes onto computers from the printing industry. Their practices were kludged together with typewriter based typing techniques and that is how a lot of us ended up putting an unnecessary second space after a period. Which is a hard habit to break, though I would hope that people have stopped teaching it.

[Mistah Q]

Another holdover from the typewriter era is the qwerty/azerty layout - not the best layout for typing efficiency, but instead having commonly juxtaposed letters spaced out from one another for little reason other than to keep the type arms from getting stuck together.

 

It's a construct we're still stuck with, decades after typewriters have fallen from common use. The dvorak keyboard is much more efficient and I had actually switched to it in my formative years with some success, but I had to go back to qwerty because I learned that in the workplace and in university computer labs, alternate keyboard layouts were not really an option.

[Student of Trinity]

Ergativity is my personal proof text for how linguistics is a real discipline. I'm a theoretical physicist who can wrap my head around quite a lot of things, thanks; but somehow ergativity just keeps slipping out of my brain. My wife explained it to me once, but without fail I've had to ask her again what it is, every few years. She doesn't see why this arbitrary example is such a big deal, when it's really trivial, but that's exactly my point. To me, somehow, it's very counter-intuitive.

 

And once again, I've lost it. What is it, again?

[Callie]

Excalibur, since you have too much time on your hands then you might as well add font proportionality to your calculations. On almost all typewriters, each letter took up exactly the same amount of horizontal distance on a line, so an "i" took up just as much space as a "w".

For 12-pt. font, Courier requires about 51% more paper than Times and 37% more paper than Helvetica (Sentences per page: Courier - 30.6; Times - 46.4; Helvetica - 41.8). If all of America's printing paper is used for single-spaced Courier and switched to Times, that would save 12.1 million trees. Of course, my analysis earlier was the extreme example without paragraph breaks. In that case, Courier requires 41% more paper than Times and 33% more paper than Helvetica (Sentences per page: Courier - 30; Times - 42.3; Helvetica - 40). That's 10.4 million trees.

 

Spaces hardly matter if paragraph breaks are included. I've been doing crude back-of-the-envelope calculations, though.

 

Another holdover from the typewriter era is the qwerty/azerty layout - not the best layout for typing efficiency, but instead having commonly juxtaposed letters spaced out from one another for little reason other than to keep the type arms from getting stuck together.

 

It's a construct we're still stuck with, decades after typewriters have fallen from common use. The dvorak keyboard is much more efficient and I had actually switched to it in my formative years with some success, but I had to go back to qwerty because I learned that in the workplace and in university computer labs, alternate keyboard layouts were not really an option.

I use Dvorak and find it much easier than Qwerty. I've managed to memorize the qwerty layout, so I can type at half the words per minute while having to use qwerty. The computers at my work let me change the layout, which is nice. On the other hand, my university computer lab allows no such convenience.

[Dintiradan]

I use the Oxford Comma, yes. So whenever I throw a party featuring not only strippers but also two reanimated political figures from the twentieth century, I write "I invited the strippers, Stalin, and Kennedy." However (and this is important) whenever I throw a party where those two politicians were hired as strippers, I would write "I invited the strippers: Stalin and Kennedy." That's because I'm not some savage who thinks the comma and the period are the only forms of punctuation. Additionally, when throwing a really big party that features more than just the aforementioned strippers, I would write "I invited the strippers: Stalin and Kennedy; five clowns, two elephants, and a ringmaster from the circus; and a mariachi band." See, I paid attention in school, and I know that the semicolon not only separates two independent clauses, but is also the delimiter for lists of lists.

 

In summary, the whole Oxford Comma debate is just obscuring the issue; for maximum clarity, don't limit yourself to commas.

 

P.S. While writing this, I realized that "I invited the strippers, Stalin and Kennedy." would be how you would inform those two politicians that you invited strippers to the party. So the Oxford Comma does have its uses after all.

[Slawbug]

Ergativity is my personal proof text for how linguistics is a real discipline.

Do you realize how you come off when you say things like this? Hint: not well.

 

For a quick primer, I recommend

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Morphosyntactic_alignment

[Kelandon]

Ergativity is my personal proof text for how linguistics is a real discipline. I'm a theoretical physicist who can wrap my head around quite a lot of things, thanks; but somehow ergativity just keeps slipping out of my brain. My wife explained it to me once, but without fail I've had to ask her again what it is, every few years. She doesn't see why this arbitrary example is such a big deal, when it's really trivial, but that's exactly my point. To me, somehow, it's very counter-intuitive.

 

And once again, I've lost it. What is it, again?

As far as I know, ergativity is the property of having an ergative case, which is a somewhat unusual feature (i.e. less common than nominative-accusative) of a language with declensions.

 

In English, we use a subject case (nominative) for all subjects and an object case (accusative) for all objects. Thus,

 

"I run." and "He runs."

"I see him." and "He sees me."

 

The subjects of "run" and "see" are in the same form. It's as though the subject case is the default, and when you have to distinguish between subject and object, the object is the marked case.

 

In an ergative-absolutive language, the subject of an intransitive verb is in the same case as the object of a transitive verb (absolutive), but those are both different from the subject of a transitive verb (ergative). It would be sort of like this:

 

"Him runs." and "Me run."

"I see him." and "He sees me."

 

The subject of "run" — an intransitive verb, i.e., it takes no object — is in the same case as the object of "see" and a different case from the subject of "see."

 

It's as though the absolutive case is the default, and when you have to distinguish between a subject and an object, the subject is the marked case.

 

EDIT: Also, Slarty is right about how that sort of remark sounds. I try not to be annoyed by science prejudice, but it's an annoying trait.

[Randomizer]

EDIT: Also, Slarty is right about how that sort of remark sounds. I try not to be annoyed by science prejudice, but it's an annoying trait.

As Dr. Sheldon Cooper on The Big Bang Theory repeatedly points out as a physicist he has a working knowledge of the universe so everything else is derivative from physics. SoT is a physicist.