Your and you're, its and it's

[AndrewJ]

There's two in foc's'le meaning nautical forecastle at the front of a ship,

And if we followed "the rules", that would really be fo'c's'le.
We have a winner with three.

Andrew

[Atmos (Colin)]

Originally Posted by michaellxv

As long as we are being picky, I am amazed at the number of people who can't tell the difference between then and than.

Not one that I have ever come across, I never would have thought it possible!

Originally Posted by multiweb

Not at all. Just common sense. Grammar is there for a reason.

Originally Posted by GeoffW1

Hope you have your (note that) tongue in your (aha, another one) cheek.

If not that makes you an illiteracy Nazi.

Only half-joking too

Geoff

Most certainly was meant tongue in cheek, I am as much of a grammar nazi as the rest. When I am writing a text I will go back to fix a grammatical error. Spent so much time having to be grammatically correct that I do actually find it more difficult to write grammatically incorrect as it requires more of a forethought.

Originally Posted by Kunama

English, being such an easy language, should be mastered by the majority by the time they have completed their secondary education. Unfortunately many teachers have yet to do so thus perpetuating the problem.
English, as it is spoken today, is but a mere shadow of the language it was a century ago. There are now so many words and concepts that originated in other realms that the language has come to resemble vegetable soup.

The primary purpose of a language is to communicate effectively but there is nothing written that states such aims could not be achieved with some flair. On the subject of capitals, a paragraph or chapter written without correctly placed capitals and punctuation, or worse still in ALL UPPER CASE, takes more than twice as long to read with much reduced comprehension.

Please pardon my poor control of this language for it was not my first, second or third language, being preceded by Finnish, Swedish, Italian and German.

I watched this a while back and found it quite interesting/entertaining Good ol' Stephen Fry.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ovi7uQbtKas

Originally Posted by csb

I have often wondered what is the use of certain grammatical marks and conventions.

Using a capital at the start of a sentence is superfluous. There is a full stop AND a space at the end of the previous sentence. Do we really need three alerts to show a new sentence has started.

I use/try to use correct written grammar at all times but it is becoming a little time consuming in the digital age. Our written grammar will surely change due to technology. And change is not an unusual occurance for any language.

Originally Posted by julianh72

i have often wondered what is the use of certain grammatical marks and conventions. using a capital at the start of a sentence is superfluous. there is a full stop and a space at the end of the previous sentence. do we really need three alerts to show a new sentence has started.

Which version is quicker and easier to process when you read it?

Grammar, punctuation and spelling conventions are there to aid readability and comprehension (even if the rules do seem a bit arbitrary and even contradictory at times).

i shddr evry tym sum1 snds me an email in unpnctuatd txt-speek and xpcts me to undrstnd wot they r syng!

I personally find it considerably easier to read WITH capital letters at the beginning of each sentence. A full stop it pretty easy to glance over, as do all of the spaces between words because every wordhasone

Going back to the point that Stephen Fry was making, it is not always 100% about being grammatically correct, just getting the point across in the easiest and most comprehensible way possible. We've dropped all of the "thee, they & thous" out of todays speak, kids these days do not really know what they mean. Calling someone "dumb" in the distant past meant that you were a mute, unable to speak, hence the word "dumbfounded" or rendered speechless.

It was not that long ago that Tom Elliot on 3AW (talkback radio) was talking about grammar these days, bought up by what I think may have been a letter to The Age from someone saying that we should just have one “there” and forget all of the others.
The email I ended up sending in is as follows.

Originally Posted by Atmos

Here is a sentence for all those people who think "there" should be unified.

---
There're eating their lunch over there.
---

Just imagine trying to understand it without the three "there"s.

Cheers

[Geoff45 (Geoff)]

Amazing number of responses.! Wish I could get as many when I post an image.

[RB (Andrew)]

Originally Posted by Geoff45

Amazing number of responses.! Wish I could get as many when I post an image.

Just add or leave out an apostrophe or two in your description of said image.

[FlashDrive (Poppy)]

eye spose wee kan agwee on won ting .... fairynuff .

[GeoffW1 (Geoff)]

Originally Posted by MortonH

Misuse of apostrophes was almost non-existent a few years ago. Now hardly anyone seems to get it right. How did this happen?

People are changing by example.

I learned language by reading, anything and everything. Soon enough I had favourites (Biggles in Yr 3), as I do now (John Sandford, Iain M Banks). Now though, there is much more stuff our youngsters can spend their (twang) time with. Maybe grammar is not such a big deal with these new pursuits.

Apostrophe Man used to have a big presence, at least in Sydney, in the Herald. Then, I think due to cost-cutting, Fairfax sacked their (bull's-eye) sub-editors in 2011 and outsourced that work. As I recall it, Apostrophe Man was called upon less after then. They announced in 2014 they would do the same in their (again, ten-ring, wow) regional rags. Nowadays you can notice a shocking, just shocking, level of grammar in their (oh, it's hard to be humble, 2-in-1) articles and captions.

Now, I like good grammar, but am also aware that most languages evolve. New words appear (eg grammer, spelt, ignorence, untill), and others fall out of usage (eg grammar, spelled, ignorance, until). This happens to other languages as well. Older French were horrified when their youngsters began saying things like "Le Hamburger", and tried to ban the term. Fat chance, just like the food.

However evolution is not the same as mangling in situ (could have said 'mangulation', see?). If you have a particular word, and it is not being replaced in common usage by another, but simply being mangled and misused in context, that might be a horse of a different hue, do you think?

So all of us like myself who pine for the old ways probably should remember that Canute could not prevent the tide from advancing, and take to making squeaks of protest on sites like this

https://www.facebook.com/groups/18217727083/?fref=ts

Anyway cheerz

[KenGee (Kenith Gee)]

I'm going to buck the trend and say the whole thread is silly. The English language is quite hard to learn because there are very few rules. in fact many of the rules are actually wrong. I before e except after C is a classic.

More importantly English is very fluid and grammar changes as well as spelling, so...

you are = U R
you're = UR

and 1000 years ago it was ēower.

[Steffen]

Originally Posted by RB

Just add or leave out an apostrophe or two in your description of said image.

You probably meant this in jest but this is exactly how people are looking at the typical astro image. The subject is mostly well known and has usually not changed in recent memory. All everybody is looking for are technical defects or errors in the image. Focus, tracking, field rotation, exposure, post-processing etc. make up the difference between two images of the same DSO.

For me this is also the reason why I don't look at many astro images anymore, let alone attempt to capture any myself.

There are obvious exceptions, for example images of changing objects (planets, Sun, comets, nightscapes, astronomical events, etc).

[bobson (Bob)]

Ewe?

Is it about time to change how we spell "female sheep"?

[Steffen]

Originally Posted by KenGee

I'm going to buck the trend and say the whole thread is silly.

I agree, if only because most of the errors mentioned are not grammatical but orthographic in nature.

Grammar takes place in the language centre of the brain. It is a subconsciously performed task and allows people to speak and understand correct sentences with apparent ease. The grammatical rules (syntax, morphology) of the mother tongue are imprinted into the language centre from very early childhood on. Grammar does not concern itself with spelling, it exists independently from the written language.

Orthography is the standardisation of word images. It became necessary when people moved on from having to sound out written texts. In ancient Rome for example people could not usually read silently. Being able to do so seemed like a bewildering talent to regular people, much like reading musical notes and hearing the music would seem to us. People had to read written texts by speaking letter after letter and listening to what came out of their mouths.

Today (and probably for the last 1000 to 1500 years) we read silently by detecting whole words or phrases simply by their looks that we had to learn and memorise in a long and arduous childhood effort. If this act of pattern recognition is to be performed at any degree of efficiency and speed it requires a certain amount of standardisation. It is no surprise that the first orthographic rule systems evolved out of conventions developed among typesetters.

Besides those word images orthography also contains a number of signs that make up for the loss of information originally contained in the spoken conversation (pauses, melody, etc). Each of those signs indicates one thing and one thing only. A space indicates the end of a word, a full stop the end of a sentence, a comma indicates an enumeration, an apostrophe the omission of letters, and so on. The important thing about orthographic signs is that they are not processed by the language centre (like spoken language) but interpreted by the conscious mind. Even though they are often required to remove ambiguity and improve clarity they always make the brain stop and thereby disrupt the reading flow.

The sole purpose of orthography is to write fast and read even faster. When writing texts intended for others one should always have the reader in mind. It is therefore important to remove anything that is jarring to the reader and pulls him away from the sensual immersion in the story you're trying to tell. Really good prose for example doesn't need many commas at all. If a sentence needs a comma in order to be understood then it will most likely benefit from revision. See what I did there? And there? Writing orthographically correct is not always optimal.

Picking the wrong spelling from a set of homophones is almost always jarring to the reader because the word image points the reader in the wrong direction. This is why the there/their/they're example always features prominently in spelling Nazi threads, and justly so.

But just to prolong the nitpicking thread, my personal pet peeve is the overuse of quotation marks. Most often when I encounter them nothing is being quoted at all. The role of quotation marks is to interrupt the story teller's voice and let someone else have a word. They are not signs for emphasis, irony or any of the other purposes people often use them for.

[AstralTraveller (David)]

Originally Posted by AndrewJ

Lots of words now use double apostrophes
Shouldn't've is the one that most comes to mind ( Julian agrees :-) ).
I guess the rule of grammar club is that if a rule doesn't work,
make a special mnemonic up, then memorise the overrides.
ie I before E except after C
and then if that doesn't work, make a list of exceptions.
like "when the sound is E or A"

Andrew

Originally Posted by PCH

There's two in foc's'le meaning nautical forecastle at the front of a ship, and that's definitely valid

I certainly say "shouldn't've" but I would never write it. I find "shouldn't have" or even "should not have" much easier to read. Similarly I understand sailors shortening forecastle to foc's'le but if you were, for instance, labeling a diagram of a ship or putting up location signs on a ship I imagine you would write 'forecastle'. I think you only use these contractions when quoting speech.

"I shouldn't've left the foc's'le when I did", said the captain.

The captain said he should not have left the forecastle when he did.

[deanm (Dean)]

Accurate grammar in writing reduces ambiguity of meaning and adds precision of intent.

Spoken language is rather different - other non-verbal signals (tone of voice, inflexion, body language, gestures etc.) add cues that are (typically) absent from the written word.

A topical example: Donald Trump on TV.

The content of what he says is usually undiluted crap & repetitive.

But look at how he delivers his verbiage!

Dean

[julianh72 (Julian)]

Originally Posted by KenGee

More importantly English is very fluid and grammar changes as well as spelling, so...

you are = U R
you're = UR

and 1000 years ago it was ēower.

But "you're" is a contraction of "you are", so surely they are both the same in "Text-Speak".

And what about "your"?

[kittenshark (Cheryl-Ann Tan)]

Your're its'.

[xelasnave]

i fink speaking is good but writing it down means you have said nothing.
i blame all those who write stuff down but do'nt speak in a manner that couldn't be understood if it were written in a language not understood by the audience.

it is what it is and the fact humans can communicate using speech more sophisticated than grunts and hand movements is remarkable.

if stuff upsets you it is no ones fault but your own as it is ones qualification that all things take on a good or bad judgment( personalized judgemen)t call.
g
humans make rules humans break rules why does such behaviour require judgement if for no other reason than seeing oneself better or worse than another.

rwe write or notright grammer y should be less important than communicating ones speech via righting.

And I am not trying to clever I am just so drunkI can't move????

[PCH (Paul)]

Originally Posted by xelasnave

i fink speaking is good but writing it down means you have said nothing.
i blame all those who write stuff down but do'nt speak in a manner that couldn't be understood if it were written in a language not understood by the audience.

it is what it is and the fact humans can communicate using speech more sophisticated than grunts and hand movements is remarkable.

if stuff upsets you it is no ones fault but your own as it is ones qualification that all things take on a good or bad judgment( personalized judgemen)t call.
g
humans make rules humans break rules why does such behaviour require judgement if for no other reason than seeing oneself better or worse than another.

rwe write or notright grammer y should be less important than communicating ones speech via righting.

And I am not trying to clever I am just so drunkI can't move????

By the end of the first sentence I'd gathered that Alex. Cheers

[xelasnave]

well you can not, without breaking a rule, start a sentence with "and" so the last sentence must be struck out.
I believe the game is all about communicating so to get hung up on strict addhestsnce tp a rule perhaps Mrs the point.
I am in Sydney and I am as board as a plank.

[deanm (Dean)]

Good onya, Alex - part of the nocturnal life of many amateur astronomers (Hic!).

Cheers!

Dean

[xelasnave]

I lied I don't drink anything other than milk or orange juice Ior my rain water up home

[xelasnave]

sorry tea maybe coffee no booze
and sorry for being silly
had a hard but productive day