I would say both, but yes I suppose.
"ratgirlagogo – the sky is always blue during daylight hours when seen from the surface of the earth. If the sky is grey, you’re not seeing the sky – you’re seeing the clouds.
(because if we’re going to be pedantic, let’s take it all the way)"
Unless it’s at night. Or red and orange at sunset, etc. etc. So of course there are circumstances where one might ask this as a question. I’m not saying this to be pedantic, kind of the opposite. My mother was an English teacher, so I’m familiar with the grammar arguments. If someone’s grammar is so tortured that the listener/reader truly can’t understand what they’re trying to say, that is a problem. Especially for the speaker/writer.
“The third is flat-out incorrect in any circumstance”.
That would be "please feel free to contact myself, " yes? Awkward, yes. But I bet you would understand what they meant to say. Unfortunately you (and I for that matter) would probably also assume that the speaker was someone who was painfully trying to sound “correct” without knowing how.
Whether any of us are willing to forgive these grammar sins probably depends more on how we feel about the speaker than anything else. Our horrible boss or abusive customer? No. Mom or Dad? More likely yes.
" it’s just a way of speaking… almost like a dialect."
That is what I would argue. And a language is , as they say, a dialect that has an army and a navy.
I can’t find a link to full text of the original essay, but here’s a page from the PBS site discussing Dennis Preston’s “They speak really bad English down South and in New York City”
http://www.pbs.org/speak/speech/prejudice/attitudes/#
Not food related exactly but definitely related to the profanity discussion in this thread.
I just want to go on the record to say; “This thread now officially makes my head hurt.”
Thank you.
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thus the “during daylight hours”. That would exclude night and sunset (and sunrise, for that matter)
and because we have collectively decided to have rules of spelling and grammar, “contact myself” is counter to those rules. Nobody was talking about whether the sentence could be understood – but it doesn’t meet the rules of grammar.
And if this site devolves into such a pedantic knickerwad that we are truly going to nitpick every fucking post, I’m out – this from a self-avowed grammar nazi, straight-A student, and a former teacher of English as a second language. This site is not an English site, nor a grammar site, nor an ESL site – so I’m officially drawing a line under this post as the end of my participation in this discussion.
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Sorry Sunshine, This seems to have been something I started unwittingly - “the way some people use “Ummm” or younger people use “Like””. - in describing the use of the f-bomb on FTC.
Got to go now, so I can find an up-talking girl to apologize to. Shouldn’t be all that hard here on the OC.
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Just like the other thread about profanity labeling, I am going to lock this thread now, because I observe that we are going around in circles a bit on both this thread and that one. I think we have an understanding that the mods will just place a short note to inform people of such language if the need arises, and based on the feedback from the community, this seems to be an acceptable solution that neither over-moderate nor under-moderate.
Lots of great points on the thread though- thanks for the feedback. Thanks also for the understanding- Let’s go and talk about food (, vs ourselves or the site)!
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