7 ms·

I hope everyone knows you're quoting "The Elements of Style" en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Elements_of_Style

• dllthomas 13y ago
  ... and I hope everyone is aware of both the virtues and the limits of that work.
  • rthomas6 13y ago
    I'm not. Care to enlighten me?
    • dllthomas 13y ago
      Virtues: A lot of the style rules are great guidelines. Limitations: minor: Style rules shouldn't be followed when they make things awkward or harder to understand; that's more a problem with some readers than the book, but it's something to keep in mind... less minor: A lot of the grammar proscriptions are confused at best (and not followed by the authors themselves, in that work or others). Language Log has oodles of examples: http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll
      • _delirium 13y ago
        A fun parlor game: choose a claim from the book that you think the book itself follows. Then your opponent has 5 minutes to find a counter-example.
        • dllthomas 13y ago
          Very nice.
    • FreakLegion 13y ago
      There was a good article in the Chronicle of Higher Education a while back: http://chronicle.com/article/50-Years-of-Stupid-Grammar/25497 http://chronicle.com/article/50-Years-of-Stupid-Grammar/2549...
      • dllthomas 13y ago
        Note that Pullum is also the one who's probably written the most about this on LL, but certainly that's a nice consolidated case instead of a scattering of examples - thanks! :)