Grammar Discussions

[SeatBackForward]

There's a hairdressing salon near my workplace that apparently does "mans haircuts"

 

[get me outta here]

Reminds me of the butcher who sells sausage's and chops. (spell check was quite happy w' that apostrophe).

Or the fruiterer and his nectareds. We always call them nectareds now as it describes them nicely.

I had to return a sign to the desk at the library once that was indicating DVD's. Why ....

Just walked past a sign for our local e-waste dump telling me that "TV's" and "COMPUTER's" can be disposed of there.

I could almost forgive TV's but computer's?

 

[MEL_Traveller]

There's a hairdressing salon near my workplace that apparently does "mans haircuts"

well - not so entirely bad. they could mean a man's haircut (with apostrophe) - similar to a 'man's man etc.

 

[SeatBackForward]

well - not so entirely bad. they could mean a man's haircut (with apostrophe) - similar to a 'man's man etc.

But then it should be a "Manly haircut", despite it not being anywhere near there.

 

[Warks]

I thought 'nectareds' were a variety of nectarine. Either that or our greengrocers went to the same school.

 

[get me outta here]

A quick Google search does not mention that variety of Nectareds.

I thought 'nectareds' were a variety of nectarine. Either that or our greengrocers went to the same school.

 

[SeatBackForward]

A quick Google search does not mention that variety of Nectareds.

You have to search for it on Giggle, not Google. Nectared: The act of being targetted and/or struck by disgruntled greengrocers launching Nectarines.

 

[JohnM]

Not grammar as such but these three things bug me:

people who won't use the 'shift' key. they start every sentence with a lower-case letter. like this. and like this.

People who don't put spaces between sentences.Like this.And like this.

People who don't press the 'enter' key twice before starting a new paragraph.
Like this.
And like this.

I prefer the traditional two spaces after a full stop to separate sentences but a single space seems to be becoming fairly common practice.

Of course, combining two or three of the above makes for the ultimate eye-searing mess.

 

[rogerkambah]

On the radio yesterday evening, I heard, "500 men and boys will be coming together for a coral extravaganza." The presenter, of course, meant to say "choral".

Seems even worse when its written.

 

[anat0l]

Not grammar as such but these three things bug me:

people who won't use the 'shift' key. they start every sentence with a lower-case letter. like this. and like this.

People who don't put spaces between sentences.Like this.And like this.

People who don't press the 'enter' key twice before starting a new paragraph.
Like this.
And like this.

I prefer the traditional two spaces after a full stop to separate sentences but a single space seems to be becoming fairly common practice.

Of course, combining two or three of the above makes for the ultimate eye-searing mess.

Hopefully we may not need to spin off a whole new topic on typography, but essentially in the old typewriter days, when typeface was monospaced (i.e. every character was the same width as each other), two spaces after a period to separate sentences was quite common.

As for spacing between paragraphs, there are some distinct schools of thought on this, again mainly from tradition. During the time when handwritten letters were still extremely common, it was not usual to leave a visible space between paragraphs (even if writing on lined paper), however indenting the first line was quite common. This tradition then became a holdover to the typewriter, however as time went by - partly due to "modernisation" and partly due to moving towards more typewritten work - indenting the first line became less common in favour of fully blocking, however in order to account for the lack of indentation (and thus not being able to easily tell one paragraph from the next), using a double-return (or leaving one line between paragraphs) progressively became more common.

These days, due to it being more common to communicate in non-monospaced fonts, one space between a period and the start of a new sentence is usually quite sufficient. Since non-monospaced fonts reflect some of the realities closer to what people know when they handwrite themselves - and you hardly leave a double-standard space between sentences when you handwrite - this practice has become acceptable. Double spacing after a sentence also can mess up when using the "full" justification (i.e. text is evenly distributed and flush against both the left and right margins).

 

[Pushka]

I seen it.

 

[get me outta here]

Starting a sentence apropos of nothing, "So, I ............."

 

[Pushka]

Sometimes I start with "So" if I am telling a story.

 

[JessicaTam]

Sometimes I start with "So" if I am telling a story.

So do I.

 

[MEL_Traveller]

I prefer the traditional two spaces after a full stop to separate sentences but a single space seems to be becoming fairly common practice.

single spacing is the norm at the end of each sentence and is correct according to most style guides, including those for official documents.

as for using capitals at the start of each sentence? for formal writing absolutely, but for informal there is probably little need.

laziness sure, but it's obvious what the writer is trying to convey. with idevices having to add a capital it is an extra step which takes time, and perhaps different from a standard keyboard where you can use a spare finger to hit the 'shift' key.

spacingbetweenwordsmakesreadingeasierbutasidefromthatdoesn'treallyaddanything

 

[Pushka]

Hmm. I was taught it was two spaces at the end of a sentence.

I also like sentences starting with a capital letter. To be honest if someone takes the lazy way out I generally don't read what they have to say.

 

[MEL_Traveller]

Hmm. I was taught it was two spaces at the end of a sentence.

I also like sentences starting with a capital letter. To be honest if someone takes the lazy way out I generally don't read what they have to say.

i guess it depends how much you value the information.

if you were a stickler for perfect grammar, spelling and punctuation you'd miss a lot of valuable information on AFF!

 

[JohnK]

as for using capitals at the start of each sentence? for formal writing absolutely, but for informal there is probably little need.

laziness sure, but it's obvious what the writer is trying to convey. with idevices having to add a capital it is an extra step which takes time, and perhaps different from a standard keyboard where you can use a spare finger to hit the 'shift' key.

Poor excuse. My Samsung provides auto capital case for beginning of paragraph and sentence.

And it doesn't hurt to read what you type before you post.

Lazziness supreme.

 

[anat0l]

Hmm. I was taught it was two spaces at the end of a sentence.

Not to expose your age , but I'm not surprised due to the holdover from typewriters (or the transitional period from typewriters to modern word processors).

I was much the same when I did word processing in high school. We started on typewriters and monospace font documents (on WordPerfect 5.1), so two spaces after a period for a new sentence. Once we moved to WYSIWYG / Microsoft Word 95/97 with proportional fonts (e.g. Times New Roman etc.), the taught convention was one space after a period.

As MEL_Traveller also alluded, most style guides now advocate only one space after a period.

with idevices having to add a capital it is an extra step which takes time, and perhaps different from a standard keyboard where you can use a spare finger to hit the 'shift' key.

Don't most iDevices capitalise automatically after a period? In fact - and Android is much the same - there is a 'smart' initial capital, i.e. once you type a period and space, the next character is automatically capitalised (shift-lock is enabled), but then subsequent letters are not (shift-lock is disabled). This works really well for starts of sentences, but not so well for after periods which are not at the ends of sentences, e.g. abbreviations, in which case a manual override of the auto-shift-lock is required.

spacingbetweenwordsmakesreadingeasierbutasidefromthatdoesn'treallyaddanything

Thank goodness you at least put spaces between your words, because we sure as hell can't expect you to capitalise!

 

[JohnM]

aziness sure, but it's obvious what the writer is trying to convey. with idevices having to add a capital it is an extra step which takes time, and perhaps different from a standard keyboard where you can use a spare finger to hit the 'shift' key.

my idevices provide auto-captalisation after a full stop. That's the way they defaulted. How come yours doesn't, or can it be switched off? If so, why would you?