# Journalists no longer know how to use grammar



## 1SweetRide (Oct 25, 2016)

This is just one example of dozens I see everyday now.


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## Paul Running (Apr 12, 2020)

I don't believe that proofreading is used frequently now.


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## cheezyridr (Jun 8, 2009)

i have a theory about this. maybe it's wrong, but maybe not:

back in the day, there were proof readers. i only know about them, because my cousin was one. i don't remember now who she worked for, but when ever anyone wrote an article, it was passed to her for grammar, spelling and punctuation, sentence structure, etc. at some point, someone developed software to do this. of course the software isn't going to get it right all the time, it's not human, and can't make decisions the same way a person might.


some of you may notice a certain irony here. me of all people commenting on a thread about this subject. for the purpose of clarity, i do it deliberately. i always go back and check my spelling. it's rare to find a spelling mistake in my post. 
i'm not a fan of capitol letters or punctuation, and let's be honest here - i've turned run-on sentences into an art form. 
but my spelling is almost always good.


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## RBlakeney (Mar 12, 2017)

cheezyridr said:


> i'm not a fan of capitol letters or punctuation, and let's be honest here - i've turned run-on sentences into an art form.
> but my spelling is almost always good.


Capital


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## laristotle (Aug 29, 2019)

RBlakeney said:


> Capital


with a lower case 'c'.


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## RBlakeney (Mar 12, 2017)

laristotle said:


> with a lower case 'c'.


Too bee fare, I don’t even no if I’m wright.


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## Peel Ferrari (Jun 22, 2017)

Grammerly where R U ??


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## Rollin Hand (Jul 12, 2012)

Well, copy editors were some of the first to go when papers strated losing the classified ad revenue.

Add in the use of internet stories prepped on phones with the need to be first to publish and you begin to have issues.


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## FatStrat2 (Apr 7, 2021)

I think people started noticing bad spelling & grammar in the mid-90s when things started to go online. Most errors these days aren't grammar or spelling, they're typos or substitutes that computer software either can't pick up or it subs in itself. AI is slowly fixing that.

But the majority of readers can get the gist of your meaning just using the first & last letters of most words.

Yio kiuw wkit I mien?


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## DaddyDog (Apr 21, 2017)

Breakfast TV (on City) has a news ticker running across the bottom of the screen. It often has spelling errors, even in the names of celebrities. Drives me nuts.


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## Destropiate (Jan 17, 2007)

I'm not usually one to nitpick over grammar or spelling. Especially not in a text message or even a forum post. But if I see a news article with a typo in the headline, I can't help but think if they are that lazy with correcting simple spelling errors then how lazy are they with the reporting. A lot of online news articles these days seem to be clickbait. Even when it's an article about a serious event or issue I frequently get the impression it's being written by an unpaid intern who is basically copying and pasting from other articles found via a Google search.


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## SWLABR (Nov 7, 2017)

Who ever does the captions at the bottom of the screen for my local TV station is poorly read. 
You know the ones, it has the news stations logo and colour scheme and has type to say what city, or the reporter, the name of the person being interviewed or a catchy headline. It’s a bit of a joke. 

While we’re on the subject… has anyone else noticed the new batch of reporters don’t use “T” anymore? They pronounce it as a “D”. 

As in: “Impor-dand” WTF?!?!?


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## Okay Player (May 24, 2020)

"Journalists"


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## BlueRocker (Jan 5, 2020)

I barley use a grammar checker


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## mawmow (Nov 14, 2017)

We can read same flaws in Quebec most popular French newspaper...
As I do learn more English words and phrases in most popular French TV soaps these days...
Do you know that it is in office officers that write article headlines and cut texts ? 
It says much !
I often get a better picture of a news after reading two newspapers : Is it the writer's or the editor's falt ?


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## laristotle (Aug 29, 2019)

SWLABR said:


> As in: “Impor-dand” WTF?!?!?


W*D*F?!?!?!?


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## 1SweetRide (Oct 25, 2016)

A proofreader shouldn't be needed to catch most of the errors I see including the one I posted.


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## allthumbs56 (Jul 24, 2006)

SWLABR said:


> While we’re on the subject… has anyone else noticed the new batch of reporters don’t use “T” anymore? They pronounce it as a “D”.
> 
> As in: “Impor-dand” WTF?!?!?


That's nothing - Maggs and I watched about an hour of the AMA's last night and didn't understand one word that Cardi B (the host) said.


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## SWLABR (Nov 7, 2017)

laristotle said:


> W*D*F?!?!?!?


Touché!


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## Fred Gifford (Sep 2, 2019)

proof reading has been done away with, it does not add value to the product and paying someone to perform this service cuts into the bottom line ... greed is the name of the game in todays modern society ... profit above everything else in most cases


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## cheezyridr (Jun 8, 2009)

RBlakeney said:


> Capital



good eye! reminds me of something that drives me up the wall. when people don't use the right "they're/their/there"
there's another one like this, but i can't remember what it is right now


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## Verne (Dec 29, 2018)

SWLABR said:


> Touché!



Wouldn’t that be “douché”?? Ewwwwww


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## Verne (Dec 29, 2018)

cheezyridr said:


> good eye! reminds me of something that drives me up the wall. when people don't use the right "they're/their/there"
> there's another one like this, but i can't remember what it is right now


Then/than
lose/loose
Regardless/irregardless <—— grrrrrrr!!!!


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## RBlakeney (Mar 12, 2017)

cheezyridr said:


> good eye! reminds me of something that drives me up the wall. when people don't use the right "they're/their/there"
> there's another one like this, but i can't remember what it is right now


i think your onto something, I’m sure you will figure it out in you’re brain.


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## jb welder (Sep 14, 2010)

1SweetRide said:


> A proofreader shouldn't be needed to catch most of the errors I see including the one I posted.


A lot of times it's auto-correct, and the author being too lazy to re-read what they wrote after that step. Predictive text is another one that can cause these issues.
Mostly boils down to people working gadgets with their thumbs (rather than keyboards) and the short cuts that this requires. And that goes beyond grammar problems to the entire dumbing down of the internet.


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## laristotle (Aug 29, 2019)

cheezyridr said:


> there's another one like this, but i can't remember what *it is* right now


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## Paul Running (Apr 12, 2020)

I read a book by Nicolas Carr, "The Shallows". Basically explains that people rarely go into deep thought patterns now because of the internet...I believe that his theory is proving correct.


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## RBlakeney (Mar 12, 2017)

My phone autocorrects to duck a lot.


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## laristotle (Aug 29, 2019)

This place auto corrects M1CK to mick
And R3DN3CK to *******

There's probably more, but I haven't encountered them. Yet.


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## RBlakeney (Mar 12, 2017)

laristotle said:


> This place auto corrects M1CK to ****
> And R3DN3CK to *****
> 
> There's probably more, but I haven't encountered them. Yet.


You can’t say red neck?
edit: seems like I found the secret cheat code.


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## GuitarT (Nov 23, 2010)




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## laristotle (Aug 29, 2019)

RBlakeney said:


> You can’t say red neck?


Loses it's meaning that way though.
Now you're just talking about a sunburn.


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## mhammer (Nov 30, 2007)

1) They say that anyone who tries to act as their own lawyer and defend themselves in court has a fool for a client. I think a similar logic applies to anyone who feels they can rely on spell-checking software. To put it mildly, you get what you check for. 

2) When I was completing my M.Sc. in the early '80s, the running joke in our department was that one shouldn't use the word "causal" in one's thesis or dissertation because the secretaries (who typed out manuscripts as a side-gig) would invariably "correct" the word "causal" to be "casual".

3) I suppose we can attribute some of Mark/1SR's gripe to the decline of attention to spelling in the education system. But I suspect a bigger share of it resides with the general decline of proofreading, and allocating resources to it by publishers. I would be remiss if I did not mention the role that I think mobile devices and rapid two-thumbs typing plays. So-called smart-phones and services like Twitter, encourage quick impulsive messaging, much of which circumvents rule of spelling in order to stuff more "content" into a modest character limit. As great a musician as Prince was, he didn't help either with his constant substitution of numbers and individual letters for words (R U 4 real?).

4) As I feel compelled to do here, once every few years, I present to you an unaltered ad, that appeared in the Pennysaver here some years back, for what has to be the BEST apartment ever. If you have ever had an absolutely desperate and urgent need for, um, "service", this was the one. Well, not unless there was a spelling error of some kind.


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## cheezyridr (Jun 8, 2009)

laristotle said:


> Loses it's meaning that way though.
> Now you're just talking about a sunburn.



there's a guy here (he's black) who's license plate says "blaknek" he pulled into the store in front of me one day. 
it's the coolest plate i've seen in quite a while.


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## laristotle (Aug 29, 2019)

cheezyridr said:


> license plate says "blaknek"


'rednek'. tnx cheezy. perfect workaround.


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## Diablo (Dec 20, 2007)

Iron-manicly, i think a lot of what we read online today is written by bots.


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## laristotle (Aug 29, 2019)

I'd go more towards college/uni grads that made it, not through accuracy and rules of language, but what felt good about what they wrote and how much time they spent in the safe space cry closet.


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## markxander (Oct 24, 2009)

SWLABR said:


> While we’re on the subject… has anyone else noticed the new batch of reporters don’t use “T” anymore? They pronounce it as a “D”.
> 
> As in: “Impor-dand” WTF?!?!?


This is definitely not constrained to any specific batch of reporters of any specific age: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flapping


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## DrumBob (Aug 17, 2014)

RBlakeney said:


> Capital


I saw that too...coming from a man who says never makes spelling mistakes.  

Being a journalist with a BA in English/Journalism, I see every single spelling mistake, every punctuation and grammatical goof. I was a near-champion speller in school also, and have been accused several times of being a Grammar Nazi. I guess someone has to stand up for the English language. 

The OP has a point. It seems today's journalists lack basic skills. Sad.


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## mhammer (Nov 30, 2007)

DrumBob said:


> I saw that too...coming from a man who says never makes spelling mistakes.
> 
> Being a journalist with a BA in English/Journalism, I see every single spelling mistake, every punctuation and grammatical goof. I was a near-champion speller in school also, and have been accused several times of being a Grammar Nazi. I guess someone has to stand up for the English language.
> 
> The OP has a point. It seems today's journalists lack basic skills. Sad.


The confusion is that the word itself is spelled "correctly", but is _applied_ incorrectly. Similar to the words "stationery" and "stationary", a single letter in the word changes the meaning. Or rather, the meaning changes which letter goes in that "spot".. Not much time or emphasis is placed on such subtle variations in spelling-X-use in school, in deference to a host of other things. That aspect of education aside, I would expect professional journalists and especially their editors, would catch such errors. But, the same factors that have led to your local newspaper either ceasing publication, or being bought out and serving as a vehicle for less costly centralized reporting, have also led to inattention to the details of what is written and published.

I think anyone with some sort of professional specialization finds small errors related to their domain immensely irritating, be it a misplayed note in a piano sonata, a lapse in legal language, or in my case, widespread misuse of the words "prove" and "proof".

As an aside, my first PC in 1982 was a British machine that had a 32 x 16 character display. I purchased the only "word processor" package available for it, and attempted to write my master's thesis on it. The application did not recognize spaces between words or apply hyphenation, such that any part of a word that did not fit within the 32 characters of the line was simply allocated to the line below. So, the word "line" could be split into "li" and "ne". Any check for spelling errors was necessarily MY responsibility and conducted visually, rather than via software. You can imagine it was a difficult and tedious task.


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## 1SweetRide (Oct 25, 2016)

I don't think the cause in the younger generation is autocorrect or typing on small devices. It's the lack of care for getting it right. All the big stars they admire twist words around to make them "cool". It all started with that popular movie Happyness. Now every kid thinks that's how you spell it.


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## SWLABR (Nov 7, 2017)

I just had an email from my bosses boss that was so devoid of any grammar, punctuation, or appropriate capital letters at the beginning, or used in the names of people in the email. They are in their 50’s. It’s complete laziness. 
I was taught email protocol at my very first job I needed it daily. I’ve taken it with me. Flippant correspondence now is the norm.


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## 1SweetRide (Oct 25, 2016)

SWLABR said:


> I just had an email from my bosses boss that was so devoid of any grammar, punctuation, or appropriate capital letters at the beginning, or used in the names of people in the email. They are in their 50’s. It’s complete laziness.
> I was taught email protocol at my very first job I needed it daily. I’ve taken it with me. Flippant correspondence now is the norm.


TLDR


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## SWLABR (Nov 7, 2017)

1SweetRide said:


> TLDR


I had to Google that.


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## Granny Gremlin (Jun 3, 2016)

cheezyridr said:


> i have a theory about this. maybe it's wrong, but maybe not:
> 
> back in the day, there were proof readers. i only know about them, because my cousin was one. i don't remember now who she worked for, but when ever anyone wrote an article, it was passed to her for grammar, spelling and punctuation, sentence structure, etc. at some point, someone developed software to do this. of course the software isn't going to get it right all the time, it's not human, and can't make decisions the same way a person might.
> 
> ...



I'm sure this is a part of it, but the other half is that news is all online these days, and in the rush to update things, aggregatror sites often pull an earlier draft vs the source publicatyion/agency which has already been updated. Like you can see the same article in The Star online and on Yahoo News, and only the Yahoo one will have the oiriginal typo - The Star has been corrected.


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## SWLABR (Nov 7, 2017)

Granny Gremlin said:


> I'm sure this is a part of it, but the other half is that news is all online these days, and in the rush to update things, aggregatror sites often pull an earlier draft vs the source publicatyion/agency which has already been updated. Like you can see the same article in The Star online and on Yahoo News, and only the Yahoo one will have the oiriginal typo - The Star has been corrected.


Cause nothing says “credibility” like: Hey, you’ll never guess what I read on Yahoo News!


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## Jim DaddyO (Mar 20, 2009)

When the written word is your trade, you'd think comprehending the vernacular would be paramount.


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## mhammer (Nov 30, 2007)

1SweetRide said:


> I don't think the cause in the younger generation is autocorrect or typing on small devices. It's the lack of care for getting it right. All the big stars they admire twist words around to make them "cool". It all started with that popular movie Happyness. Now every kid thinks that's how you spell it.


I think we can go several decades further back than that. Think about how many products, services, and retailers spelled "and" as "N" or "right" as "rite", and so on. Even ToysRUs is in on the subversion. No, it goes back a lot further than recent pop culture.

A lot of this is a sort of extrapolation of Grice's conversational maxims, but in written form. In other words, by diverging visibly from how something _should_ be, and is expected to be spelled, one conveys surplus meaning in a sort of "hidden code" form. So use of "-n-" instead of "and" is intended to convey "we're not like those_ other_ products or vendors; we're on *your *side". There's a fascinating semiotics of deliberate language corruption. I was introduced to it by this book: Cool: The Signs and Meanings of Adolescence: Danesi, Marcel: 9780802004673: Books - Amazon.ca

I've been blathering on for years about what I call the "adolocentric society", that has increasingly adopted the norms and objectives of adolescence as some sort of de facto standard for how we should behave, and what we should aspire to. Sociolinguists will note that a big part of how adolescents talk is intended to differentiate themselves both from their parents and from other social groups. In other words, misspelling and misuse of words ("that's really _sick_") has the purpose of aligning oneself with age-mates and differentiating oneself from older persons. It becomes their "secret code" for communicating with each other in a way that an older generation wouldn't (and _shouldn't_) understand. The purpose is ostensibly to forge a sense of identity through group membership. I.E., *"W*e understand each other, so we're not like* them*, which means I know who I am - I'm one of us and NOT them". It's an understandable and important aspect of adolescent development; likely observable for centuries. It becomes problematic when it extends well beyond one's teens and early 20s and is carried over into one's 40s and 50s, which is the trend and scenario I refer to as "adolocentric".

But, all of that being said, I think it unwise to attribute the decline of "proper" language to any single thing. This is a mountain being eroded by many different factors on all sides.


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## colchar (May 22, 2010)

SWLABR said:


> Touché!


Don't you mean douché?


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## colchar (May 22, 2010)

Paul Running said:


> I read a book by Nicolas Carr, "The Shallows". Basically explains that people rarely go into deep thought patterns now because of the internet...I believe that his theory is proving correct.



I teach Carr each term. He actually has a deeper, evolutionary argument that I find quite interesting. Students never catch it until I've explained it to them though.


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## colchar (May 22, 2010)

DrumBob said:


> I saw that too...coming from a man who says never makes spelling mistakes.
> 
> Being a journalist with a BA in English/Journalism, I see every single spelling mistake, every punctuation and grammatical goof. I was a near-champion speller in school also, and have been accused several times of being a Grammar Nazi. I guess someone has to stand up for the English language.
> 
> The OP has a point. It seems today's journalists lack basic skills. Sad.



The one that really bugs me is seeing the names of countries used when the adjective should be used. For example:

"One person dead in Canada floods" - should say Canadian

"Suspect arrested in France attack" - should say French


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## colchar (May 22, 2010)

SWLABR said:


> I just had an email from my bosses boss that was so devoid of any grammar, punctuation, or appropriate capital letters at the beginning, or used in the names of people in the email. They are in their 50’s. It’s complete laziness.
> I was taught email protocol at my very first job I needed it daily. I’ve taken it with me. Flippant correspondence now is the norm.


50s, not 50's.

The apostrophe does not denote the plural form that many people think it denotes.

Also, when talking about decades people will write 60's when they should be writing '60s as the apostrophe indicates that something has been removed as it does in a contraction.


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## laristotle (Aug 29, 2019)

colchar said:


> Don't you mean douché?


You must've missed that in post #22.


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## colchar (May 22, 2010)

laristotle said:


> You must've missed that in post #22.



Yeah I noticed it a minute later but was too lazy to change my post.


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## Diablo (Dec 20, 2007)

SWLABR said:


> I just had an email from my bosses boss that was so devoid of any grammar, punctuation, or appropriate capital letters at the beginning, or used in the names of people in the email. They are in their 50’s. It’s complete laziness.
> I was taught email protocol at my very first job I needed it daily. I’ve taken it with me. Flippant correspondence now is the norm.


Its only going to get worse.
I occasionally visit a hiphop forum.
I could be wrong but I think they go through a lot of effort to write badly....sentences like "...Imma talmbout wypipo...".
But going forward, calling out that kind of pseudo-literacy will be a political faux-pas.


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## colchar (May 22, 2010)

Diablo said:


> I occasionally visit a hiphop forum



Christ almighty, _why_?????


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## mhammer (Nov 30, 2007)

colchar said:


> The one that really bugs me is seeing the names of countries used when the adjective should be used. For example:
> 
> "One person dead in Canada floods" - should say Canadian
> 
> "Suspect arrested in France attack" - should say French


When my sister talks about a trip to "Dominican", it drives me up the wall.


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## mhammer (Nov 30, 2007)

Diablo said:


> I occasionally visit a hiphop forum* occasionally*.


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## Diablo (Dec 20, 2007)

colchar said:


> Christ almighty, _why_?????


Fair question.
1)I like to at least be aware of what the younger generation is up to, although i dont want to use the words "stay relevant".
2)I actually have about as much in common musically there as I do here.
3) some of the posts, comments, emojis etc are freaking hilarious there.

I dont get out much anymore so I like to expose myself to a lot of different types of ppl virtually.
Im also on a deals forum thats mostly asian-canadians, and a watch collectors forum thats mostly canadian snobs and watch scalpers, and a sports car forum thats mostly wealthy right wing americans. Also my Linkedin feed, where everyone seems to compete on a daily basis for making the most woke posts. And then theres my stocks/finance forums, and MSN news story dashboard/comments (which might have the most nastiness of all). Its a big world, you gotta find balance.


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## colchar (May 22, 2010)

mhammer said:


> When my sister talks about a trip to "Dominican", it drives me up the wall.



If she says 'the Dominican' then it is fine.


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## mhammer (Nov 30, 2007)

colchar said:


> If she says 'the Dominican' then it is fine.


As I understand it, it isn't. However, "Dominica" IS proper usage.


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## 1SweetRide (Oct 25, 2016)

colchar said:


> "Suspect arrested in France attack" - should say French


What if it was an English attack? At least the above lets us know who the subject is


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## mhammer (Nov 30, 2007)

1SweetRide said:


> What if it was an English attack? At least the above lets us know who the subject is


That would be true IF it was an attack by England on France. Colchar's reasonable irritation concerns when "France" is being used as an adverb or adjective, rather than an object.

Do they even teach about adjectives and adverbs, definite and indefinite articles, and prepositions, in school anymore?


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## Diablo (Dec 20, 2007)

mhammer said:


> That would be true IF it was an attack by England on France. Colchar's reasonable irritation concerns when "France" is being used as an adverb or adjective, rather than an object.
> 
> Do they even teach about adjectives and adverbs, definite and indefinite articles, and prepositions, in school anymore?


ya, my 11 yr old is doing it now. but kids sleep through it. Cant say I blame them. they need to find a way to make it more interesting. its as interesting as catechism.
School House Rock to the rescue!


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## Granny Gremlin (Jun 3, 2016)

SWLABR said:


> Cause nothing says “credibility” like: Hey, you’ll never guess what I read on Yahoo News!


 I mean, pick your aggregator of choice. Yahoo news is no less credible than anywhere else (it's all off the Reuter s etc wires).


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## mhammer (Nov 30, 2007)

Diablo said:


> ya, my 11 yr old is doing it now. but kids sleep through it. Cant say I blame them. they need to find a way to make it more interesting. its as interesting as catechism.
> School House Rock to the rescue!


Actually, it IS pretty interesting, just not to anyone that young. Our older son, now 35, is constantly fascinated by the very small grammatical/syntactic differences between English and Japanese. When I was in French immersion training for work, I learned much about my first language that had simply never dawned on me. An awful lot of "Ahhhhh, so THAT's why we....." took place. Indeed, you never understand your first language nearly so well as when you study another one as an adult.


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## colchar (May 22, 2010)

mhammer said:


> As I understand it, it isn't.



It is fine as it is merely a contraction similar to 'the US', 'America', 'the UK', 'Britain', etc.


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## colchar (May 22, 2010)

mhammer said:


> That would be true IF it was an attack by England on France. Colchar's reasonable irritation concerns when "France" is being used as an adverb or adjective, rather than an object.
> 
> Do they even teach about adjectives and adverbs, definite and indefinite articles, and prepositions, in school anymore?


I do when I teach first year academic writing. That class is boring as fuck, but necessary. Unfortunately I only ever reach one or two students, the rest are tuned out and oblivious.


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## colchar (May 22, 2010)

Diablo said:


> ya, my 11 yr old is doing it now. but kids sleep through it. Cant say I blame them. they need to find a way to make it more interesting. its as interesting as catechism.
> School House Rock to the rescue!


"Conjunction junction, what's your function?" has stuck with me since I was a kid.

They don't teach phonics any more but those were essential to me becoming such a good speller. Even now, if I pause over the spelling of a word I simply sound it out and I'm good. Well except for 'bureaucracy', I've never been able to spell that fucking word.


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## colchar (May 22, 2010)

mhammer said:


> Actually, it IS pretty interesting, just not to anyone that young. Our older son, now 35, is constantly fascinated by the very small grammatical/syntactic differences between English and Japanese. When I was in French immersion training for work, I learned much about my first language that had simply never dawned on me. An awful lot of "Ahhhhh, so THAT's why we....." took place. Indeed, you never understand your first language nearly so well as when you study another one as an adult.



I'm certified to teach English as a second language. There is always a big difference between your L1, which is an acquired language, and your L2 (or L3, L4, etc.) which are learned languages.

There is no verb I can't use properly in a sentence, but it wasn't until I did the training for that certification that I realized there is a future perfect continuous tense of a verb. Even worse, I know the formula for forming it. And how many native English speakers know that there are three tenses for every verb, but that each of those tenses has four aspects thus meaning that there are, essentially, twelve possible tenses for every verb? In fact, it is often just shortened to twelve tenses rather than saying tense and aspect.


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## mhammer (Nov 30, 2007)

colchar said:


> It is fine as it is merely a contraction similar to 'the US', 'America', 'the UK', 'Britain', etc.


The contractions you cite are all perfectly fine. But "Dominican" is an adjective. How can it stand alone? It is tantamount to calling the United States "American" as a contraction, instead of "America". Not trying to give you a hard time, just noting why I believe "Dominica" IS the proper term. Indeed, "The Dominican" tends to provoke the question "The Dominican what?".


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## colchar (May 22, 2010)

mhammer said:


> The contractions you cite are all perfectly fine. But "Dominican" is an adjective. How can it stand alone? It is tantamount to calling the United States "American" as a contraction, instead of "America". Not trying to give you a hard time, just noting why I believe "Dominica" IS the proper term. Indeed, "The Dominican" tends to provoke the question "The Dominican what?".



Adjectives stand alone all the time - the young, the old, etc.


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## mhammer (Nov 30, 2007)

Aren't they considered as nouns in that case, then? The "-an" suffix normally designates an adjective, as it would in the word "Canadian".


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## SWLABR (Nov 7, 2017)

Diablo said:


> Its only going to get worse.
> I occasionally visit a hiphop forum.
> I could be wrong but I think they go through a lot of effort to write badly....sentences like "...Imma talmbout wypipo...".
> But going forward, calling out that kind of pseudo-literacy will be a political faux-pas.


I’m not sure this is apples to apples… the email was from my bosses boss. And not just to me. It was to a few of us Front Line managers. I’d almost expect a “Hip-Hop Forum” to encourage slang. The source should dictate the feel of the correspondence. I guess I’m the crazy one expecting someone that many rungs above me to craft a professional email.


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## laristotle (Aug 29, 2019)

SWLABR said:


> I guess I’m the crazy one expecting someone that many rungs above me to craft a professional email.


or his secretary?


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## colchar (May 22, 2010)

mhammer said:


> Aren't they considered as nouns in that case, then? The "-an" suffix normally designates an adjective, as it would in the word "Canadian".



Nope, still adjectives.


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## Jim DaddyO (Mar 20, 2009)

If you ever get tired of the lack of eloquence in journalism, just pick up an article by Rex Murphy. You don't have to agree or even like it, but the writing will be a relief.


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## colchar (May 22, 2010)

SWLABR said:


> I’m not sure this is apples to apples… the email was from my bosses boss. And not just to me. It was to a few of us Front Line managers. I’d almost expect a “Hip-Hop Forum” to encourage slang. The source should dictate the feel of the correspondence. I guess I’m the crazy one expecting someone that many rungs above me to craft a professional email.


Just for shits and giggles:

boss's (or boss' in the older form)
front line
hip-hop forum


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## laristotle (Aug 29, 2019)




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## SWLABR (Nov 7, 2017)

colchar said:


> Just for shits and giggles:
> 
> boss's (or boss' in the older form)
> front line
> hip-hop forum


I’ll give you the “boss’s vs bosses” one. Not sure where I failed by capitalizing Front Line (as that’s my title) or Hip-Hop, again… title “proper name” of the genre.


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## mhammer (Nov 30, 2007)

colchar said:


> Nope, still adjectives.


Then are they modifying unseen "implied nouns", allowing them to retain adjectival functioning and conform to proper use?
I would imagine that this is how such expressions and usage evolves over time. That is, the modifier gets retained, and the object/noun gets dropped, such that the modifier comes to function like a noun. One of my neighbours is a linguistics prof who apparently specializes in syntax. I'll have to ask her.


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## Diablo (Dec 20, 2007)

SWLABR said:


> I’m not sure this is apples to apples… the email was from my bosses boss. And not just to me. It was to a few of us Front Line managers. I’d almost expect a “Hip-Hop Forum” to encourage slang. The source should dictate the feel of the correspondence. I guess I’m the crazy one expecting someone that many rungs above me to craft a professional email.


I call it the trickle-down effect.
The slang starts in the streets, schools, wherever. social media/MSM gets wind of it, next thing you know 65 yr old women on The View are saying it, followed by every other white middle class (or higher) person bc its fun/makes them seem more hip/younger etc. And it gets to a point when noone realizes where the words they use even come from (bling, dope, lit, on fleek etc) or how stupid they sound saying it. the one that comes to mind for me is "sick"....like "that Ferrari is so sicckkkkkk!". It makes zero sense. But I guess in the 70's ppl started saying "bad" in the same reverse way.
Makes me wonder if 30 yrs from now, people will look at the way, for example, those of us on this forum speak/write as being as formal as the "mid-atlantic" accent is today.
And maybe OTOH, thats just the way language is...it perpetually evolves....it just feels this time more like a regression since it isnt just new words, but sloppy misspellings/abbreviations of them.


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## colchar (May 22, 2010)

SWLABR said:


> I’ll give you the “boss’s vs bosses” one. Not sure where I failed by capitalizing Front Line (as that’s my title) or Hip-Hop, again… title “proper name” of the genre.



It wasn't clear that 'Front Line' was a title. It came across as a description, which wouldn't be capitalized. 

As for hip-hop do we capitalize rock, country, blues, etc.? Those names have become common nouns and as such are not capitalized.


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## Granny Gremlin (Jun 3, 2016)

colchar said:


> Nope, still adjectives.



They have become nouns in the compound form with the word 'the" in front of them. What you are forgetting is the implied "those that are," which is shortened to '"the." Yes the word "young" etc is still an adjective, but the phrase as a whole is a noun, de facto, by usage. English is not unique in having a mechanism for turning just about any adjective into a noun. This is further evidenced by being able to make such adjectives-cum-nouns plural ("the young" is already plural, the singular being "the youth, " but that's a weird one, as is often the case with English vs most other languages; you can also pluralise "The Dominican" to 'The Dominicans") - there is no such thing as a plural adjective (there are some very specific exceptions to this, but none of the words in question apply - when a noun is used as an adjective e.g. the drinks cabinet - and it is more common in British English and nearly non-existant in American English, but neither are consistent on this - see "tooth paste" - bloody English, eh).

So following that to "The Dominican" this would be correct when speaking about a person (or other object, in the grammatical sense) from the Dominican Republic (or any other place/institution so named such as the Dominican Order in Catholicism) vs the country itself (or the order itself). Except colloquially, which I'm sure happens all the time, and people will still understand contextually, but is not technically correct. 

The only officially recognised abbreviations of Dominican Republic are DR and DO. Contextually you could also say "The Republic," but not the other way around.


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## colchar (May 22, 2010)

Granny Gremlin said:


> They have become nouns in the compound form with the word 'the" in front of them. What you are forgetting is the implied "those that are," which is shortened to '"the." Yes the word "young" etc is still an adjective, but the phrase as a whole is a noun, de facto, by usage. English is not unique in having a mechanism for turning just about any adjective into a noun. This is further evidenced by being able to make such adjectives-cum-nouns plural ("the young" is already plural, the singular being "the youth, " but that's a weird one, as is often the case with English vs most other languages; you can also pluralise "The Dominican" to 'The Dominicans") - there is no such thing as a plural adjective (there are some very specific exceptions to this, but none of the words in question apply - when a noun is used as an adjective e.g. the drinks cabinet - and it is more common in British English and nearly non-existant in American English, but neither are consistent on this - see "tooth paste" - bloody English, eh).
> 
> So following that to "The Dominican" this would be correct when speaking about a person (or other object, in the grammatical sense) from the Dominican Republic (or any other place/institution so named such as the Dominican Order in Catholicism) vs the country itself (or the order itself). Except colloquially, which I'm sure happens all the time, and people will still understand contextually, but is not technically correct.
> 
> The only officially recognised abbreviations of Dominican Republic are DR and DO. Contextually you could also say "The Republic," but not the other way around.


I wasn’t forgetting anything implied, I was just too busy and too lazy to write out a more in depth reply. I thought about it, but then said fuck it.


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## laristotle (Aug 29, 2019)

Granny Gremlin said:


> "the young" is already plural, the singular being "the youth, " but that's a weird one


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## knight_yyz (Mar 14, 2015)

Lol, there is a CTV new story about Walmart pulling a toy off the o line store because it's swears and talks about doing cocaine. I can't remember the exact wording but I swear it made it sound like the toy was doing lines on the Walmart website... So I told them about it and now it doesn't mention doing the cocaine online. Lol. I'll see if I can find the before and after


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## SWLABR (Nov 7, 2017)

colchar said:


> It wasn't clear that 'Front Line' was a title. It came across as a description, which wouldn't be capitalized.
> 
> As for hip-hop do we capitalize rock, country, blues, etc.? Those names have become common nouns and as such are not capitalized.


I capitalize the genres. Pretty sure I write Rock ‘n Roll, Classical, Country. But, now you got me think’n. Maybe I don’t. 

Wurdz is hard


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## laristotle (Aug 29, 2019)

knight_yyz said:


> Walmart pulling a toy off the o line store because it's swears and talks about doing cocaine


Rick James doll?


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## SWLABR (Nov 7, 2017)

“Charlie Murphy!”


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## mhammer (Nov 30, 2007)

Diablo said:


> I call it the trickle-down effect.
> The slang starts in the streets, schools, wherever. social media/MSM gets wind of it, next thing you know 65 yr old women on The View are saying it, followed by every other white middle class (or higher) person bc its fun/makes them seem more hip/younger etc. And it gets to a point when noone realizes where the words they use even come from (bling, dope, lit, on fleek etc) or how stupid they sound saying it. the one that comes to mind for me is "sick"....like "that Ferrari is so sicckkkkkk!". It makes zero sense. But I guess in the 70's ppl started saying "bad" in the same reverse way.
> Makes me wonder if 30 yrs from now, people will look at the way, for example, those of us on this forum speak/write as being as formal as the "mid-atlantic" accent is today.
> And maybe OTOH, thats just the way language is...it perpetually evolves....it just feels this time more like a regression since it isnt just new words, but sloppy misspellings/abbreviations of them.


Slang goes back a loooooooonnnnngggg way. Shakespeare is full of it. Do you folks know what a "nunnery" is, or what a "fishmonger" is? Willie the Shake knew who his audience was and played to the house.


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## colchar (May 22, 2010)

mhammer said:


> Slang goes back a loooooooonnnnngggg way. Shakespeare is full of it. Do you folks know what a "nunnery" is, or what a "fishmonger" is? Willie the Shake knew who his audience was and played to the house.



There is no consensus on whether Shakespeare was using fishmonger as a euphemism in Hamlet.


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## Diablo (Dec 20, 2007)

mhammer said:


> Slang goes back a loooooooonnnnngggg way. Shakespeare is full of it. Do you folks know what a "nunnery" is, or what a "fishmonger" is? Willie the Shake knew who his audience was and played to the house.


Nunnery is pretty self explanatory….a convent for nuns. Alas, poor Ophelia…I knew her, Horatio. ….oh well, that didn’t exactly work.
much like my Brit coworkers would refer to cookery classes (what we called home economics when I was in school).
I never really thought of them as slang, just synonyms.

but ya, I’m sure there’s been slang throughout times. It may have been just as bad in the Wild West as now. Although I suspect lack of education often has something to do with it.


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## tdotrob (Feb 24, 2019)

Literacy rate is the highest it’s ever been. As with all things the boomers on this site like to scream the sky is falling and things will never be as good as they were. They are wrong. A few anecdotal news tickers and dumb social media posts are not evidence of jack shit. And to be clear I’m not talking about OP I get what he is saying in a professional setting.

Same with violence, we live in the safest time in the history of the world yet the old timers would have you believe that BLM is coming for us all and it’s just not like it used to be. Right, it’s better actually.


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## mhammer (Nov 30, 2007)

Diablo said:


> Nunnery is pretty self explanatory….a convent for nuns. Alas, poor Ophelia…I knew her, Horatio. ….oh well, that didn’t exactly work.
> much like my Brit coworkers would refer to cookery classes (what we called home economics when I was in school).
> I never really thought of them as slang, just synonyms.
> 
> but ya, I’m sure there’s been slang throughout times. It may have been just as bad in the Wild West as now. Although I suspect lack of education often has something to do with it.


"Nunnery" was vernacular for a brothel at the time. And a "fishmonger" was slang for a pimp. The current generaion of youth aren't the first to purposely use words to mean the opposite of what one thinks. "Sick".


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## mhammer (Nov 30, 2007)

tdotrob said:


> Literacy rate is the highest it’s ever been. As with all things the boomers on this site like to scream the sky is falling and things will never be as good as they were. They are wrong. A few anecdotal news tickers and dumb social media posts are not evidence of jack shit. And to be clear I’m not talking about OP I get what he is saying in a professional setting.


Have you ever taught at the post-secondary level?
The Kucera-Francis word-frequency list examines a broad swathe of written documents, popular, informal and formal, and counts how often each of the words employed are used. It is often used in research for the purposes of presenting words of higher and lower frequency-of-use. There are other comparable lists, and certainly more contemporary lists that survey different and/or broader text sources, in addition to word-counts of spoken , rather than printed, language, but I'll use this one as an illustration. Out of the tens of thousands of words on the list, one could probably reconstruct the written or spoken content of the average high school, college or undergraduate student with the top 100 words. 

"Literacy" can be defined in many ways. Able to read? Check. Comprehend what's read? More or less check. Breadth of vocabulary? Hmmm, I'll get back to you.


> Same with violence, we live in the safest time in the history of the world yet the old timers would have you believe that BLM is coming for us all and it’s just not like it used to be. Right, it’s better actually.


Former classmate Steven Pinker proposed more or less the same idea in his book " The Better Angels of Our Nature", and I tend to agree with his approach. Admittedly, it is difficult for the average person immersed in the 24hr news cycle and social media to accurately estimate levels of violence around them. We know from so much work that the constant repeated presentation of the same isolated events creates a false impression of their frequency and likelihood (so Kahneman & Tversky's "availability heuristic"). We know that people who watch more television tend to overestimate the prevalence of crime in their neighbourhood.

Not that everything is perfect. People are still too often bereft of conscience, too easily aggressive in their interactions, and exploitative in their actions. And certainly the countries we rarely hear much about, be they Guatemala, Congo, or Turkmenistan, are not exactly paradises, populated entirely by generous souls. But there's a reason why so many people feel so able to travel around the world and not feel like a war correspondent in a flak jacket and helmet.


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## SWLABR (Nov 7, 2017)

tdotrob said:


> Literacy rate is the highest it’s ever been. As with all things the boomers on this site like to scream the sky is falling and things will never be as good as they were. They are wrong. A few anecdotal news tickers and dumb social media posts are not evidence of jack shit. And to be clear I’m not talking about OP I get what he is saying in a professional setting.
> 
> Same with violence, we live in the safest time in the history of the world yet the old timers would have you believe that BLM is coming for us all and it’s just not like it used to be. Right, it’s better actually.
> 
> View attachment 389465


I’m no Boomer… far from it, but I challenge the sliding scale the umbrella of “literacy” carries. Yes, a higher percent of the population can read if compared to “old times”. As someone who’s kids are literally ending their public school years, they (as a collective, not just my kids) cannot read and write as well as we (me and my peers) were expected to. The bar has been lowered. 
So, yay!!! The “wealth” has been better distributed, but boo, it was done with less intensity, accuracy, care, attention to detail?? 

I’m not an educator, I cannot share studies or hard facts, I just see it slipping. And everyone seems OK with it.


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## Dorian2 (Jun 9, 2015)

colchar said:


> I wasn’t forgetting anything implied, I was just too busy and too lazy to write out a more in depth reply. I thought about it, but then said fuck it.


I'm just reading through the thread and wanted to ask you a question about punctuation. Shouldn't athere be a period mark after implied to indicate the end of a sentence? Isn't that considered a run on sentence with the comma? Or is it simply a typo? Can't tell as "I" is capitalized either way.


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## colchar (May 22, 2010)

Dorian2 said:


> I'm just reading through the thread and wanted to ask you a question about punctuation. Shouldn't athere be a period mark after implied to indicate the end of a sentence? Isn't that considered a run on sentence with the comma? Or is it simply a typo? Can't tell as "I" is capitalized either way.



Nope, no period and it isn't a run-on sentence either - it is a compound sentence. Technically a compound sentence should contain a comma and a coordinating conjunction but there are instances, such as my sentence above, where a compound sentence can be created without the coordinating conjunction.


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## mhammer (Nov 30, 2007)

colchar said:


> Nope, no period and it isn't a run-on sentence either - it is a compound sentence. Technically a compound sentence should contain a comma and a coordinating conjunction but there are instances, such as my sentence above, where a compound sentence can be created without the coordinating conjunction.


My own preference would be to use a semicolon, rather than a comma in that sentence. Retains the compound nature of it, but acknowledges the beginning of a new thought.

I'll have to reclaim my copy of Strunk & White from my son to confirm, though.


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## colchar (May 22, 2010)

mhammer said:


> My own preference would be to use a semicolon, rather than a comma in that sentence. Retains the compound nature of it, but acknowledges the beginning of a new thought.
> 
> I'll have to reclaim my copy of Strunk & White from my son to confirm, though.


If being highly technical, it should have a semicolon but I have an avowed hatred of them, partly due to how often they are improperly used. Until earlier this year there wasn’t a single instance of my having used one in all of my academic writing unless I was directly quoting someone. Thousands of pages, and not a single semicolon. I would go so far as to write things differently, usually in a more complicated manner, just to avoid using a semicolon.

On another note, there are far better guides out there than Strunk & White.


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## Dorian2 (Jun 9, 2015)

colchar said:


> Nope, no period and it isn't a run-on sentence either - it is a compound sentence. Technically a compound sentence should contain a comma and a coordinating conjunction but there are instances, such as my sentence above, where a compound sentence can be created without the coordinating conjunction.


Thanks for straightening that out for me. Been decades since I've taken any English classes.


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## mhammer (Nov 30, 2007)

colchar said:


> On another note, there are far better guides out there than Strunk & White.


But my copy is illustrated.


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## colchar (May 22, 2010)

mhammer said:


> But my copy is illustrated.



Illustrated or not, I don't recommend it:









50 Years of Stupid Grammar Advice


This year marks the 50th anniversary of Strunk and White's much-loved The Elements of Style. But Geoffrey K. Pullum won't be celebrating.




web.archive.org


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## mhammer (Nov 30, 2007)

colchar said:


> Illustrated or not, I don't recommend it:
> 
> 
> 
> ...


That fellow sure got up on the wrong side of the bed! Not a particularly persuasive writing style, unless one has decided that whatever he is against, one wants to be against it as well. His examples come from writers of fiction, whereas The Elements of Style is not for that purpose at all (although I imagine some may turn to it). It is first and foremost a guide for clearer and more concise expository writing. I have found it immensely helpful for that purpose. So, as much as Prof. Pullum's bona fides are impressive, he seems to be arguing that a soupspoon is the worst-ever piece of cutlery ever invented for eating a steak dinner.


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## colchar (May 22, 2010)

mhammer said:


> That fellow sure got up on the wrong side of the bed! Not a particularly persuasive writing style, unless one has decided that whatever he is against, one wants to be against it as well. His examples come from writers of fiction, whereas The Elements of Style is not for that purpose at all (although I imagine some may turn to it). It is first and foremost a guide for clearer and more concise expository writing. I have found it immensely helpful for that purpose. So, as much as Prof. Pullum's bona fides are impressive, he seems to be arguing that a soupspoon is the worst-ever piece of cutlery ever invented for eating a steak dinner.



It is a book of English usage and is not just for expository writing. He is not its only critic, there are others.


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## Wardo (Feb 5, 2010)

colchar said:


> ... there are far better guides out there than Strunk & White.


That book was so fucking useless. I tossed it on the fire after reading it for 5 minutes. Fuck was it boring.

I initially learned to write by reading P. G. Wodehouse, Evelyn Waugh and John Mortimer. Also got some writing style from Kurt Vonnegut but I'm not quite sure what it was. Then I figured out how to structure an academic paper by reading dissertations on file in the library. Must have worked because when I was in the second year of my undergrad they said I was writing at a graduate level and I started to get invitations from profs like Ian Green the Constitutional Law dude to attend colloquium coarses which had 5 or 6 people in them and the idea was to get something published. Only snag was that I had no interest in an academic career and was only there to get a bunch of A grades and a good LSAT. All the same though, not bad for an ignorant fuckin red neck like me .. lol


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## mhammer (Nov 30, 2007)

colchar said:


> It is a book of English usage and is not just for expository writing. He is not its only critic, there are others.


So he should say that it is more helpful for expository writing but much less useful or appropriate for fiction, rather than dismissing it outright, as yourself and Wardo seem to find appealing. Contempt is only persuasive for the already persuaded.

Personally, I find it useful. Its brevity also sets a good example. And this is coming from a forum member who is all too often taken to task by others for the length of his posts.


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## 1SweetRide (Oct 25, 2016)

mhammer said:


> That would be true IF it was an attack by England on France. Colchar's reasonable irritation concerns when "France" is being used as an adverb or adjective, rather than an object.
> 
> Do they even teach about adjectives and adverbs, definite and indefinite articles, and prepositions, in school anymore?


No idea. Without any kids, I’ve lost track. Last I heard, Archie and Jughead were required reading for grade 10 English Lit.


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## mhammer (Nov 30, 2007)

1SweetRide said:


> No idea. Without any kids, I’ve lost track. Last I heard, Archie and Jughead were required reading for grade 10 English Lit.


The originals or the Classics Illustrated version?


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## colchar (May 22, 2010)

mhammer said:


> Have you ever taught at the post-secondary level?


Taught at it? I doubt that dumb twat has been anywhere near a university.




> "Literacy" can be defined in many ways. Able to read? Check. Comprehend what's read? More or less check. Breadth of vocabulary? Hmmm, I'll get back to you.


Exactly, but some are too simple to grasp that.


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## tdotrob (Feb 24, 2019)

colchar said:


> Taught at it? I doubt that dumb twat has been anywhere near a university.
> 
> 
> 
> ...


Trade school probably doesn’t count but I know what pussy feels like. If you stop busting in the real doll you have to hide from company and try a real woman you might chill a bit and make some friends.


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## mhammer (Nov 30, 2007)

Jeez. Insulting each other is not "debate", so let's omit that part.
Suffice to say that those who regularly have to deal with post-secondary students have a different experience of today's young people and their language skills. I refer all to the parable of the seven wise blind men and the elephant. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blind_men_and_an_elephant


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## laristotle (Aug 29, 2019)

1SweetRide said:


> No idea. Without any kids, I’ve lost track. Last I heard, Archie and Jughead were required reading for grade 10 English Lit.


According to my wife, it was part of the ESL curriculum.


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## tomee2 (Feb 27, 2017)

SWLABR said:


> I’m no Boomer… far from it, but I challenge the sliding scale the umbrella of “literacy” carries. Yes, a higher percent of the population can read if compared to “old times”. As someone who’s kids are literally ending their public school years, they (as a collective, not just my kids) cannot read and write as well as we (me and my peers) were expected to. The bar has been lowered.
> So, yay!!! The “wealth” has been better distributed, but boo, it was done with less intensity, accuracy, care, attention to detail??
> 
> I’m not an educator, I cannot share studies or hard facts, I just see it slipping. And everyone seems OK with it.


Same here, 2 finishing high school in the last 2 years. Your description matches my observations pretty well.
And new grads coming to work or on co-op terms can't write a paragraph that makes sense.

And I also find online news articles are full of bad grammar. I put it down to the fact they can fix it later and few will notice so they rush the article out, unlike newsprint which is permanent and archived.


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## mhammer (Nov 30, 2007)

When I used to work in employment testing, one of the tests used for the post-secondary recruitment campaign, (that the federal public service uses to bring new people in) is a writing test. The test provides the test-taker with a longer bit of non-partisan text about a policy matter. The individual has to summarize it in a much shorter form, making sure to include the most important points. They are scored on what they included, how they prioritized it, but also for clarity, grammar, etc. I will say that, during the time I was involved, there were cases where applicants appealed their score, largely because they mistakenly believed they would be scored for how "creatively" they wrote. Sorry, folks. Not the objective.

The key reason why I mention it is because it is ONLY administered to those who have already passed a number of other tests. Those tests can be machine scored. The writing test is FAR more labour-intensive to score, so it is last, once the big pile of applicants has been whittled down to a smaller bunch. 

And THAT may be the crux of the problem. One can pontificate about good writing 'til the cows get homesick, and high marks for those who do, but it takes far more time to evaluate, spot issues, and shape a student's writing skill in the desired direction, than it takes to try and teach them about it. Does the contemporary middle, high school, or undergrad instructor have time to do that? Often not. And at the post-secondary level, the emphasis on "access" results in large classes that make any sort of written assignment and coaching of writing a complete non-starter. If one has classes with fewer than 40 students, maybe, but as universiies and colleges scramble for money, that is less and less common until higher levels. What's true of so many things: post-hoc evaluation and adjustment often takes a lot more time and effort than simply doing the thing you started out to do, so it gets set aside.


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## tdotrob (Feb 24, 2019)

Every year I get to attend honours nights at local high schools to hand out an athletic/academic scholarship I’ve sponsored. I also have the pleasure of reading through many beautifully written applications beforehand. To me all I see is positivity, there are so many brilliant young minds with active interest in their education and advancement.

You guys paint a grim picture all the time of dumb lazy kids and how things are so much worse and I don’t see it all. I’m glad my children don’t have teachers with such a negative outlook and disdain for the minds they are SUPPOSED to be teaching and influencing.


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## SWLABR (Nov 7, 2017)

tdotrob said:


> Every year I get to attend honours nights at local high schools to hand out an athletic/academic scholarship I’ve sponsored. I also have the pleasure of reading through many beautifully written applications beforehand. To me all I see is positivity, there are so many brilliant young minds with active interest in their education and advancement.
> 
> You guys paint a grim picture all the time of dumb lazy kids and how things are so much worse and I don’t see it all. I’m glad my children don’t have teachers with such a negative outlook and disdain for the minds they are SUPPOSED to be teaching and influencing.


I’m not trying to tell you that you (personally) don’t have an insight that fills you with hope. I haven’t. 
We had to have correct spelling in word equations on a math test, my kids don’t get corrected on a “creative writing” assignment. They were only graded during the time dedicated to “spelling”.

We are what we experience I guess.


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## tdotrob (Feb 24, 2019)

SWLABR said:


> I’m not trying to tell you that you (personally) don’t have an insight that fills you with hope. I haven’t.
> We had to have correct spelling in word equations on a math test, my kids don’t get corrected on a “creative writing” assignment. They were only graded during the time dedicated to “spelling”.
> 
> We are what we experience I guess.


I understand and i don’t want to discount your experience either. 

I just have a hard time buying into the whole things are so much worse than before theme that is persistent amongst older generations that want to convince us the old days were so much better and kids now are so much lazier and dumber than they used to be. I just don’t believe it to be true.


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## tomee2 (Feb 27, 2017)

tdotrob said:


> I understand and i don’t want to discount your experience either.
> 
> I just have a hard time buying into the whole things are so much worse than before theme that is persistent amongst older generations that want to convince us the old days were so much better and kids now are so much lazier and dumber than they used to be. I just don’t believe it to be true.


I actually do agree with that. It's tough to generalize an entire generation as better or not. I do believe that overall everyone is better off, and the top kids are probably doing even better now than in the past. Way more opportunities for them too, and the ways to learn things on youtube or web based courses is astounding.

My issue is my kids were allowed to miss-spell words and make mistakes in grammar right up till grade 10. And even after that, the mistakes get pointed out sometimes. I think the teachers don't actually see them anymore because they dont need to correct them. Why was this introduced? I think it's political so I won't bring it up...
With math, not having to know the times table at all is just the starting point of what's wrong with that curriculum.

Then there's the errors in the text books and assignments. About 1 out 10 math or physics questions I helped my boys out with were wrong. I know this extremely well, and the books are full of errors. Some are numerical, but sometimes the errors are in the concepts.
My daughter in grade 7 or 8 physics was told wind was an invisible force just like like gravity, magnetism and electric fields. Really. I blew my top at that one and gave her a good lecture on force fields vs reactionary forces. After that I basically told my kids to question everything the teachers say to you.


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## tdotrob (Feb 24, 2019)

tomee2 said:


> I actually do agree with that. It's tough to generalize an entire generation as better or not. I do believe that overall everyone is better off, and the top kids are probably doing even better now than in the past. Way more opportunities for them too, and the ways to learn things on youtube or web based courses is astounding.
> 
> My issue is my kids were allowed to misspell words and make mistakes in grammar right up till grade 10. And even after that, the mistakes get pointed out sometimes. I think the teachers don't actually see them anymore because they dont need to correct them. Why was this introduced? I think it's political so I won't bring it up...
> With math, not having to know the times table at all is just the starting point of what's wrong with that curriculum.
> ...


I hear you but I don’t believe this is any different than before. I remember correcting text book mistakes with my teachers in schools in the 80’s and 90’s. It was a fun challenge to find them.

There is a perfect example of the problem right here on this site, a teacher, who professes his hatred and disdain for the students he teaches. A miserable old coot that has nothing positive to say about anything ever and acts like his word is the end all authority.

Maybe weeding out dickheads like that from the profession and replacing them with people who truly care about the success and well being of their students is a start. They are out there. I’ve met some truly inspirational teachers that have the ability to change lives for the better and I’ve met the opposite as well that have this all knowing authority and just love to beat a struggling kid down till they don’t care anymore. It goes beyond correcting grammar and spelling.

Being a positive force in the world goes a long way in shaping and guiding the future.


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## mhammer (Nov 30, 2007)

tdotrob said:


> Every year I get to attend honours nights at local high schools to hand out an athletic/academic scholarship I’ve sponsored. I also have the pleasure of reading through many beautifully written applications beforehand. To me all I see is positivity, there are so many brilliant young minds with active interest in their education and advancement.
> 
> You guys paint a grim picture all the time of dumb lazy kids and how things are so much worse and I don’t see it all. I’m glad my children don’t have teachers with such a negative outlook and disdain for the minds they are SUPPOSED to be teaching and influencing.


That may be quite true, and I'm pleased and encouraged it gives you hope for future generations. Hope is a very precious commodity. But bear in mind that the people who attend post-secondary institutions are not ALL scholarship types. Many barely squeezed through.

My own teaching days are over, but I rarely had disdain for my students. Disappointment and discouragement? Yes. But never disdain. When it all works as intended, there aren't many better jobs than looking out at a sea of faces and seeing the wheels turn in their minds, because you opened a door for them.

As for language, flip through what was considered a "children's" book from 60, 80, or 100 years ago, and compare it to the vocabulary of the contemporary reading material and spoken vocabulary The current 18 year-old would have to have a dictionary open and at the ready, to read what a 12 year-old would have been expected to read on their own in earlier generations, or even what a parent might read to a 7 year-old. Speaking in the "language of the times" is no great sin. But we have allowed it to displace more complex language that stretches their boundaries. And the ever-expanding curriculum, that begins to feel like a mountain of chicken breasts on a stake, providing a "shawarma educational experience" (shave off a bit here and a bit there), doesn't allow for educators to get to what will matter to students as they try to become professional, and to the employers who would really like to hire them, but....

My own gripe is that disproportionate emphasis has been placed on expressive writing, with insufficient emphasis on expository writing, and especially "how to explain". It is important for teens to emote; bad poetry and all of that. But after they are done searching their souls and finding themselves, somebody else is going to have to rely on them, as an adult, being able to be clear, concise, and articulate, so they have to learn how to do that _as well as_ pouring out their emo burdens. My contention is that if one learns how to explain well, one can still express their feelings. But if one's training focuses on mere expression of feelings, there is little expectation that such persons will be comptent writers when clarity is called for.


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## laristotle (Aug 29, 2019)




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## colchar (May 22, 2010)

This headline is a perfect example of what we are (mostly) talking about in this thread:









Liberal bill would crackdown on health-care worker harassment and boost sick leave


In addition to amending the Criminal Code, the bill would also mandate 10 days of paid sick leave for federally regulated workers




nationalpost.com


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## colchar (May 22, 2010)

mhammer said:


> One can pontificate about good writing 'til the cows get homesick, and high marks for those who do, but it takes far more time to evaluate, spot issues, and shape a student's writing skill in the desired direction, than it takes to try and teach them about it. Does the contemporary middle, high school, or undergrad instructor have time to do that? Often not. And at the post-secondary level, the emphasis on "access" results in large classes that make any sort of written assignment and coaching of writing a complete non-starter. If one has classes with fewer than 40 students, maybe, but as universiies and colleges scramble for money, that is less and less common until higher levels.


We are currently in contract negotiations (not going well, so I expect a strike or a lockout) and the colleges want to cut down on the time we have for evaluation. They won't even consider an increase.

As for scrambling for money, most colleges are rolling in it as they are being run as for-profit enterprises.


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## colchar (May 22, 2010)

tomee2 said:


> I actually do agree with that. It's tough to generalize an entire generation as better or not. I do believe that overall everyone is better off, and the top kids are probably doing even better now than in the past. Way more opportunities for them too, and the ways to learn things on youtube or web based courses is astounding.
> 
> My issue is my kids were allowed to miss-spell words and make mistakes in grammar right up till grade 10. And even after that, the mistakes get pointed out sometimes. I think the teachers don't actually see them anymore because they dont need to correct them. Why was this introduced? I think it's political so I won't bring it up...



The term before Covid hit I had a student ask me how to write an essay. While talking it came out that she had never written one in high school. She was a bit of an airhead so I didn't buy that until she called over two other students - one who had gone to her high school and another who had gone to a different high school in the same board. I asked them both about essay writing and both told me the same thing, that they had never written one. Apparently in their high schools all writing was creative writing.


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## tdotrob (Feb 24, 2019)

mhammer said:


> That may be quite true, and I'm pleased and encouraged it gives you hope for future generations. Hope is a very precious commodity. But bear in mind that the people who attend post-secondary institutions are not ALL scholarship types. Many barely squeezed through.
> 
> My own teaching days are over, but I rarely had disdain for my students. Disappointment and discouragement? Yes. But never disdain. When it all works as intended, there aren't many better jobs than looking out at a sea of faces and seeing the wheels turn in their minds, because you opened a door for them.
> 
> ...


I like to see the statistics that support all your theories about reading comprehension now compared to then or are they really just that, your theories and opinions?

I mean can it be that the world is now in the hands of people that are barely able to comprehend and string together sentences in a way that pleases the all knowing minds of the GC professional class?

Or has it always been the case their are highly functional literates at all levels of society just as the same there are many not so perfectly read and educated salt of the earth people in all sorts of positions doing the work that makes the world turn day after day.

I’m not so sure you have one shred of evidence to support your negative assessments of today’s youth besides your pick and choose methods of relaying anecdote as factual business. Same to be said with your publicly poorly reviewed colleague professor doom and gloom nihilistic shitbag Colchar the Great, blowhard of a dying generation.


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## mhammer (Nov 30, 2007)

colchar said:


> The term before Covid hit I had a student ask me how to write an essay. While talking it came out that she had never written one in high school. She was a bit of an airhead so I didn't buy that until she called over two other students - one who had gone to her high school and another who had gone to a different high school in the same board. I asked them both about essay writing and both told me the same thing, that they had never written one. Apparently in their high schools all writing was creative writing.


I've had 4th year undergrads tell me they've never had to write a term-paper before my class. So not only is it possible to get through high school without doing anything but "creative" writing, but university as well!

As for colleges "rolling in dough", I doubt it. Real funding from provincial governments has shrunk. And while tuition has gone up, tuition is not the lion's share of universities' treasury. If one is a private university with big endowments, solvency is a cakewalk. For public universities, much less so. I doubt colleges are in any better position.


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## mhammer (Nov 30, 2007)

tdotrob said:


> I like to see the statistics that support all your theories about reading comprehension now compared to then or are they really just that, your theories and opinions?
> 
> I mean can it be that the world is now in the hands of people that are barely able to comprehend and string together sentences in a way that pleases the all knowing minds of the GC professional class?
> 
> ...


Yeessh! Put your sixgun back in your holster, there, pardner.

I said that if one compares normative typical reading material for young people from earlier generations to what it more typical and normative of today, the material is less complex in terms of language, providing less opportunity to stretch.

As for recent graduates being "barely able to comprehend and string together sentences", this is actually what surveys of employers say, not what I say. They might be over-exaggerating, but then, they are also making hiring decisions on the basis of those perceptions, so it is important to defy and defuse them. Although, admittedly, when one reads some of the drivel you get on exams or essays, it is easy to come to the same generalization.

We've probably wandered too far afield from the original bone of contention: poor editing and seeming absence of proof-reading in news media. But the assumption is that a competent writer, who is steeped in the rules of grammar, clear prose, and spelling, would catch enough to make a proof-reader's job easy, and even superfluous. And that leads ultimately to the consideration of where competent writing is supposed to be born.

Here's a thoughtful piece on the state of higher education in Canada. Worth a read and listen, though I would question some of the more extreme views in it. https://www.cbc.ca/radio/ideas/why-...prepare-students-for-the-job-market-1.6208196


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## tdotrob (Feb 24, 2019)

mhammer said:


> Yeessh! Put your sixgun back in your holster, there, pardner.
> 
> I said that if one compares normative typical reading material for young people from earlier generations to what it more typical and normative of today, the material is less complex in terms of language, providing less opportunity to stretch.
> 
> ...


No sixgun, I asked an honest question and also take every opportunity to mock professor virgin I can.


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## colchar (May 22, 2010)

mhammer said:


> I've had 4th year undergrads tell me they've never had to write a term-paper before my class. So not only is it possible to get through high school without doing anything but "creative" writing, but university as well!



That makes sense depending on their majors. Science, engineering, and comp sci students wouldn't have to write essays except in electives.




> As for colleges "rolling in dough", I doubt it. Real funding from provincial governments has shrunk. And while tuition has gone up, tuition is not the lion's share of universities' treasury. If one is a private university with big endowments, solvency is a cakewalk. For public universities, much less so. I doubt colleges are in any better position.



I am a college prof and a union steward. Trust me when I tell you that they are rolling in it. They claim poverty, but with the exception of one or two they are sitting on huge surpluses.

Check out page #15 at the link below. For those who don't want to check the table, this is from the paragraph immediately preceding it (bolded text mine):
"_Immediately after the faculty strike in 2017, the CEC commissioned corporate legal firm Price Waterhouse Coopers (PWC) to produce a report on the financial sustainability of the Ontario College System. The report predicted dire budget shortfalls in most colleges by 2024, thus creating a scarcity and austerity context for the next bargaining round. Despite the PWC report’s prediction,* most Ontario colleges went on to bank record budget surpluses in the 2018-19 fiscal year and to increase already sizeable capital funds. Over the past five years, the Ontario college system has generated close to $1.5 billion in budget surpluses*._"




https://www.opseu558.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/10/2021-09-24-Report-on-Education-EN.pdf







The problem here is that you don't seem to understand where the schools are getting the majority of their money these days:









The Miracle of Ontario College Funding | HESA


Let me tell you a sad story about Ontario colleges. In 2018-19, Ontario colleges got a huge influx of … Continued



higheredstrategy.com


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## mhammer (Nov 30, 2007)

tdotrob said:


> No sixgun, I asked an honest question and also take every opportunity to mock professor virgin I can.


I realize some folks can sometimes make it hard, but do try to take every opportunity to get along.


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## laristotle (Aug 29, 2019)

Speaking of headlines ..


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## colchar (May 22, 2010)

tdotrob said:


> I like to see the statistics that support all your theories about reading comprehension now compared to then or are they really just that, your theories and opinions?
> 
> I mean can it be that the world is now in the hands of people that are barely able to comprehend and string together sentences in a way that pleases the all knowing minds of the GC professional class?
> 
> ...


Oh isn't that cute, you're using words you don't understand in an attempt to appear erudite. You remind me of undergrads who make grand, sweeping statements in an attempt to come across as profound. 

But at least there is hope for them. You? Not so much as the raw materials simply aren't there. After all, you can't make something out of nothing now can you? Maybe if there had been some lifeguards in your gene pool you might have had a chance.................................


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## Paul Running (Apr 12, 2020)




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## Jim DaddyO (Mar 20, 2009)

mhammer said:


> We've probably wandered too far afield from the original bone of contention:


Threads alway seem to get derailed. This one I have been enjoying, for the most part, the read. Good topic.


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## tdotrob (Feb 24, 2019)

colchar said:


> Oh isn't that cute, you're using words you don't understand in an attempt to appear erudite. You remind me of undergrads who make grand, sweeping statements in an attempt to come across as profound.
> 
> But at least there is hope for them. You? Not so much as the raw materials simply aren't there. After all, you can't make something out of nothing now can you? Maybe if there had been some lifeguards in your gene pool you might have had a chance.................................


Lol, it’s funny you took me off ignore.

I got 2 trade tickets and working on a third. A loving family, a room full of guitars and amps, a band I play songs I wrote in front of people with and a positive outlook and enthusiasm that I like to share with people in my every day life.

You on the other hand, are an incorrigible loser that hangs his existence and lack of interest from the opposite sex on a meaningless life in academia teaching students you publicly profess to hate in the hopes they end up hating life as much as you do yours, so maybe later you can try and prove your intellectual superiority to them on Internet forums once they hit the rut you’ve been languishing in for the better half of their adult life.

Your abysmal 1 out of 5 approval rating as a professor proves it to be true.

I laugh at middle age creeps like you that think spending your life at universities you hate so much makes you more qualified at life than others.


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## colchar (May 22, 2010)

Jim DaddyO said:


> Threads alway seem to get derailed. This one I have been enjoying, for the most part, the read. Good topic.



And considering how many people here look at newspapers each day, we will constantly have new fodder.


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## laristotle (Aug 29, 2019)

Jim DaddyO said:


> Threads alway seem to get derailed. This one I have been enjoying, for the most part, the read. Good topic.


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## tdotrob (Feb 24, 2019)

The problem with Education isn’t the students not being willing to learn, it’s guys and gals like Colchar can literally get terrible reviews from 4 out of every 5 students and still keep their job.

I know, it’s all the students and parents fault and they are just too soft and sensitive to teach. In my experience those words are the cop out of life long loser excuse makers.
Any other profession in the world had that bad of a review rating from their customers they’d be fired or quick out of business.

Solution to producing better prepared students for the real world seems like a no brainer to me.


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## Jim DaddyO (Mar 20, 2009)

colchar said:


> And considering how many people here look at newspapers each day, we will constantly have new fodder.


I seem to recall hearing, in high school, or perhaps college, that newspapers were written at a Grade 6 level. If there is truth to that, reading newpapers is not a way to enrich your word power (a nod there to Readers Digest, at least the boomer version that I grew up with).


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## colchar (May 22, 2010)

Jim DaddyO said:


> I seem to recall hearing, in high school, or perhaps college, that newspapers were written at a Grade 6 level. If there is truth to that, reading newpapers is not a way to enrich your word power (a nod there to Readers Digest, at least the boomer version that I grew up with).



Some are. The _Toronto Sun_ for example. Others are written at a higher level, but still one much lower than you would expect.

And while they will not enrich your word power, they will certainly provide fodder for the original purpose of this thread.


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## jb welder (Sep 14, 2010)

Jim DaddyO said:


> If you ever get tired of the lack of eloquence in journalism, just pick up an article by Rex Murphy. You don't have to agree or even like it, but the writing will be a relief.


Conrad Black is even better. He is either a walking thesaurus or actively uses one for all his writings.
I often find a new word to look up.
Don't agree with him all that often, but he's more eloquent than Rex with less frothing at the mouth.


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## Jim DaddyO (Mar 20, 2009)

jb welder said:


> Conrad Black is even better. He is either a walking thesaurus or actively uses one for all his writings.
> I often find a new word to look up.
> Don't agree with him all that often, but he's more eloquent than Rex with less frothing at the mouth.


Oddly enough, I find Conrad tedious to read. His style is just a bit too "forced" for my taste. It rings as an elitist talking down to, or about people. Rex I find much more graceful


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## colchar (May 22, 2010)

Of the two, Rex is funnier.


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## Paul Running (Apr 12, 2020)

I used to enjoy Rex when he hosted Cross-Country Checkup on CBC radio...it took a while to warm up to his style but he can be entertaining.


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## tomee2 (Feb 27, 2017)

jb welder said:


> Conrad Black is even better. He is either a walking thesaurus or actively uses one for all his writings.
> I often find a new word to look up.
> Don't agree with him all that often, but he's more eloquent than Rex with less frothing at the mouth.


Id like to see them do a podcast together, on Canadian politics.


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## mhammer (Nov 30, 2007)

colchar said:


> Of the two, Rex is funnier.


That's because he's a Newfoundlander.


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## Paul Running (Apr 12, 2020)




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## jb welder (Sep 14, 2010)

You know, if he still had the afro, I'd be all in.  
I'd completely forgot about that. If I can keep that image in my mind, I think I'll have much more appreciation for his humour. I'm going to give him another shot.


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## tomee2 (Feb 27, 2017)

tomee2 said:


> Id like to see them do a podcast together, on Canadian politics.


If 3 random people on a guitar forum like this idea then I'm pretty sure the CBC can fund a few million to make it happen.


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## laristotle (Aug 29, 2019)

tomee2 said:


> If 3 random people on a guitar forum like this idea then I'm pretty sure the CBC can fund a few million to make it happen.


Add Jordan Peterson for full-on conniptions over there. lol


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## mhammer (Nov 30, 2007)

If you like Murphy's sense of humour, I suggest you look up the late Ray Guy. Guy's columns reminded me a lot of Gregory Clark, who used to have columns in The Weekend Magazine that would accompany the Saturday paper back in the day. Wry, but friendly and gentle.


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## jb welder (Sep 14, 2010)

Paul Running said:


> View attachment 389964


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## 1SweetRide (Oct 25, 2016)

colchar said:


> Oh isn't that cute, you're using words you don't understand in an attempt to appear erudite. You remind me of undergrads who make grand, sweeping statements in an attempt to come across as profound.
> 
> But at least there is hope for them. You? Not so much as the raw materials simply aren't there. After all, you can't make something out of nothing now can you? Maybe if there had been some lifeguards in your gene pool you might have had a chance.................................


How about you stop with the personal attacks? It’s not only childish, it’s contrary to forum policy.


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## colchar (May 22, 2010)

1SweetRide said:


> How about you stop with the personal attacks? It’s not only childish, it’s contrary to forum policy.



That post was a response to a completely uncalled for personal attack launched against me in another thread. I was having a discussion with someone else about something and that inbred little shit jumped in with a personal attack. 

Being the bigger man, I did PM an admin to apologize for it and tell them to nuke my post if they wanted, but they didn't. The authorities had already been notified, so no need for you to play thread cop.


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## 1SweetRide (Oct 25, 2016)

colchar said:


> That post was a response to a completely uncalled for personal attack launched against me in another thread. I was having a discussion with someone else about something and that inbred little shit jumped in with a personal attack.
> 
> Being the bigger man, I did PM an admin to apologize for it and tell them to nuke my post if they wanted, but they didn't. The authorities had already been notified, so no need for you to play thread cop.


I’d just like to see folks getting along. I agree my reaction didn’t help. Take care.


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## colchar (May 22, 2010)

1SweetRide said:


> I’d just like to see folks getting along. I agree my reaction didn’t help. Take care.


A fair point.


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## tdotrob (Feb 24, 2019)

I have no regrets. 
Colchar is a huge prick and POS.

I received at least 20 PM’s telling me how much people agreed with me and got a laugh.

too bad they don’t have the balls to put in here and maybe he’d get the hint.


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## FatStrat2 (Apr 7, 2021)

I think this thread should be renamed:

Journalists Haven't Been Objective for Decades


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## Wardo (Feb 5, 2010)

jb welder said:


> Conrad Black is even better. He is either a walking thesaurus or actively uses one for all his writings.
> I often find a new word to look up.
> Don't agree with him all that often, but he's more eloquent than Rex with less frothing at the mouth.


Black is very well read and he brings a long view of canadian history to his writing. He also brings a blunt commentary to matters that contemporary writers are afraid to touch. He does tend toward extranious bombastic locution and that may well be lost on many people to the extent that they don't get what he is saying or give up trying to figure it out. I think that too many $5.00 words is self indulgent and you have to write in a straight forward manner for maximum impact but without dumbing it down. Black does have good stuff though like when he referred to some snot faced bitch as having come "snorting out of the undergrow" on an issue.

I like Murphy as well. He is not afraid to call things as they are rather than adopt the woke "newspeak" of this brave new world that has such losers in it.

Tarek Fatah is another one who I like and he has recieved a few death threats for his literary efforts but did not back down.

I recall some prof from ryerson technical college saying that she was shocked at the fact that her journalism students knew absolutly nothing about history.

When the likes of Murphy and Black are gone I wonder who will replace them.


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## 1SweetRide (Oct 25, 2016)

Can anyone find the error?


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## mhammer (Nov 30, 2007)

"Licensing", NOT "Licencing"


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## FatStrat2 (Apr 7, 2021)

What about "news rules"?


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## 1SweetRide (Oct 25, 2016)

It’s pretty major.


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## colchar (May 22, 2010)

news
two

There are multiple errors in that.


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## Wardo (Feb 5, 2010)

I’m lookin to hire someone an the fuckin resumes I’m gettin is all from fuckers what can’t write worth shit and seem to have fake offshore degrees describing themselves as an LLP which means limited liability partnership not a fucking bachelors degree. These people are obviously the future of this country but they would have a better chance of getting hired if they applied to the government of roxy road.


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## 1SweetRide (Oct 25, 2016)

colchar said:


> news
> two
> 
> There are multiple errors in that.


Yup. Two instead of tow. Such basic errors that a spell check would never catch. Didn’t see the other one. Good eye.


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## Jim DaddyO (Mar 20, 2009)

Just be happy the whole article isn't a series of emojis...lol


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## mhammer (Nov 30, 2007)

And now the embarrassing question: how many of you/us whined about "Why do we have to *learn* all this stuff?" throughout middle and high school and beyond? So many academic topics we thought were of no use to us, and should be replaced with something else...perhaps longer recess or spare periods. I was probably one of them as well.

We planted the seeds, and now we are harvesting the results.


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## colchar (May 22, 2010)

Wardo said:


> I’m lookin to hire someone an the fuckin resumes I’m gettin is all from fuckers what can’t write worth shit and seem to have fake offshore degrees describing themselves as an LLP which means limited liability partnership not a fucking bachelors degree. These people are obviously the future of this country but they would have a better chance of getting hired if they applied to the government of roxy road.



After my Master's I availed myself of the free employment service at the university. They offered resume and cover letter help, job search advice, etc.

One of the sections I had on my resume back then included skills or some such, and I had mentioned something about 'superior written communication skills'. When meeting with the counselor type person from that service she read that, rolled her eyes (she had obviously seen similar statements many times), and said "superior compared to who? What about Larry King? Are your written communication skills superior to his?" I have no idea why she chose Larry King, but she was obviously trying to make a point about people overestimating their skill level. My reply was "I've never read any of his writing but am betting I could give him a run for his money." She gave me a look that basically said 'give me a break you moron'. But as she was reading my mock cover letter she stopped about halfway through and said "ok yeah, you do write exceptionally well. So we don't have to worry about your cover letter and can focus on tweaking your resume." I got a bit of a laugh out of that after her Larry King challenge.

A month or two ago my PhD supervisor said "you write really, really well so it will be nice not to have to worry about the writing in your dissertation."

When it comes to more formal writing (ie. cover letters) and academic writing I considered myself good, but nothing special. I guess standards are a bit lower than I had thought. Reading the writing of many of my own students should have shown me that.


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## mhammer (Nov 30, 2007)

Why Larry King? Because he'd been married 8 times, so clearly he is an *effective *communicator, and a master at relationships.


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## Jim DaddyO (Mar 20, 2009)

colchar said:


> I considered myself good, but nothing special.


Perhaps in our day. The bar has been lowered considerably since then though...lol


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## laristotle (Aug 29, 2019)

Do teachers provide their lessons with 140 characters or less now?


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## colchar (May 22, 2010)

laristotle said:


> Do teachers provide their lessons with 140 characters or less now?



Considering some of the shit my students have told me they were taught in high school English classes, I wouldn't be surprised. I also wouldn't be surprised if they were taught how to properly use emojis.


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## laristotle (Aug 29, 2019)

colchar said:


> I also wouldn't be surprised if they were taught how to properly use emojis.











Emojis in the Classroom | NEA


Discover how to use emojis as part of history assignments, daily check-ins, and more.




 www.nea.org


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## mhammer (Nov 30, 2007)

colchar said:


> Considering some of the shit my students have told me they were taught in high school English classes, I wouldn't be surprised. I also wouldn't be surprised if they were taught how to properly use emojis.


This is why I keep harping about "the adolocentric society", and how the priorities and whims of youth are now centre-stage and considered to be the more legitimate aspiration. Youth don't have to learn to communicate like grownups; grownups are encouraged to communicate like youth, well into adulthood.

Expressing one's self is important in adolescence, as part of the path towards achieving a sense of self and identity. So, as insipid as all that poetry might be, it's an often necessary part of the growing pains of youth. But emphasis on expressing one's emotions in some written form, in the argot of the day, to the complete neglect of how to communicate in order to clarify for others, or acquire their thoughtful cooperation or independence, is what puts us where we are right now.

And yet once again, I refer to sociolinguist Basil Bernstein's distinction between "restricted" and "elaborated" codes of communication. The former relies on mutually-shared context and understanding, hence can be more informal, sloppier,and imprecise. "Want some?" "Nah" "You sure?" "Uh huh". Elaborated code is discourse that supplies enough information in clear form that it can stand on its own, without needing to have any or much shared understanding. Restricted code is what we use with peers and other in-groups, relied upon by youth to seperate their social group from others, and elaborated code is what one would find in a text and most journalism. There's nothing "wrong" with use of restricted code. The problem is that education has unwittingly coddled its use to the neglect of acquiring elaborated code skills. The people who grew up thinking that remaining an adolescent forever are now the generation in charge (many of them in their 40s and 50s) so they may not realize what they have cast adrift and robbed younger people of. Rap may be fun and appealing, but when one has to add "Know what I'm sayin'?", then clearly one is unable to communicate clearly to anyone BUT one's in-group.

It's not about pitting generation against generation, even though it may sound like that. It's about providing people with as complete a communicative toolbelt as possible. Flathead screwdrivers are great. Not just for turning flathead screws, but for opening paint cans, and many other tasks. So nothing against them. But if it's all you have, you will be limited in what you can accomplish.


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## laristotle (Aug 29, 2019)




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## Jim DaddyO (Mar 20, 2009)

mhammer said:


> but when one has to add "Know what I'm sayin'?",


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## jb welder (Sep 14, 2010)

Jim DaddyO said:


>


How someone who talks like that could end up the Principal of Xavier Academy is beyond me.


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## mhammer (Nov 30, 2007)

Given that Xavier Academy is just a short ferry ride and walk up the hill away from Dartmouth, not a stretch AFAIC. I still find it hard to drive along this street in Halifax without thinking "Hey, that's Xavier Academy!".









Google Maps


Find local businesses, view maps and get driving directions in Google Maps.




www.google.com


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## 1SweetRide (Oct 25, 2016)

There is a difference between bans and bands even if the image you are using is of a concert. #grammarishard


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## laristotle (Aug 29, 2019)




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## 1SweetRide (Oct 25, 2016)

Practicing safe social distancing?


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