survey feedback (was: [Theforum] anyone else have a prob with this?)

aardvark roselli at earthlink.net
Fri Nov 23 23:37:28 CST 2001


> From: Madhu Menon <webguru at vsnl.net>
> 
> >question 2 shouldn't end with a preposition...
> 
> (warning: language geek stuff ahead!)
> 
> Ah, the artificial "don't end a sentence with a preposition" rule
> raises it ugly head. It's perfectly acceptable to end a sentence with
> a  preposition, as long as it doesn't make the sentence sound awkward

IMO, it makes the sentence sound awkward... which, by your 
standards, qualifies as a valid case to fix it...

and it's not totally artificial... that's the thing about language, it 
depends on which books you read... for instance, many people feel 
that titles for, say, articles should be in sentence case, and they 
claim that other rules are outdated or inappropriate, or they even 
claim readability issues... then they point to its use in different 
countries/cities/counties...

and in the end, "ain't" made it into the dictionary, and i still refuse 
to use it in conversation (unless i'm being ironic, or kitschy, or 
talking to the clerk selling people their lotto tickets), but there are 
people who walk around feeling that it's legal and i should tell my 
kids it's ok to use it...

just imagine the fights between the MLA and Chicago Style people 
go... i've seen it... it isn't pretty...

oh, yeah, i have a stack of 
language/grammar/usage/etymology/history/etc. books within 10 
feet, so i'm pretty used to seeing it done every which way... you'll 
note, however, i tend to stay out of the language conversations... 
it's like religion, too much argument with too little evidence...

references?  my living room...

[snip grammar flexing]

[...]
> I suggest we change these to generic categories like "WYSIWYG
> editors", "Bitmap graphics software" (didn't want to say just
> "graphics software), "Illustration software", etc.
[...]


raster, vector (illustration), paint, layout, modeling/rendering, 
interactive, animation, ...

WYSIWYG, text editors, language-specific tools, ...

> >i don't think "Never heard of it" should be pre-checked... people who
> >choose not to do this portion will skew the results...
> 
> Nothing should be pre-checked.

+1

> >theforum
> >smoothering your hotdog in a lot of mayo
> 
> Huh? I'm sorry, but what do hotdogs have to do with the price of fish?

nothing, thankfully...

any other silly questions?





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