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"Grammar" and "Punctuation" nit's unite! You're "head" will literally explode! "Grammar" and "Punctuation" nit's unite! You're "head" will literally explode!

07-29-2012 , 06:28 PM
Quote:
Originally Posted by private joker
isn't this technically correct?
"Grammar" and "Punctuation" nit's unite! You're "head" will literally explode! Quote
07-29-2012 , 07:38 PM
Quote:
Originally Posted by five4suited
isn't this technically correct?
No. Just because the situations don't literally pick you up and heave you across the room doesn't mean there isn't a second definition of throw; thus no quotation marks are required.
"Grammar" and "Punctuation" nit's unite! You're "head" will literally explode! Quote
07-30-2012 , 02:44 AM
"Grammar" and "Punctuation" nit's unite! You're "head" will literally explode! Quote
07-30-2012 , 02:54 AM
I feel they're pane.
"Grammar" and "Punctuation" nit's unite! You're "head" will literally explode! Quote
08-01-2012 , 09:22 PM
Figured this was the place to ask this.

I had stock email templates in my office which were riddled with commas. I fixed the most egregious ones, but I've gone back and forth on the following two. Though I'm fairly sure they don't belong, I've taken out so many commas lately that I'm beginning to second guess myself.

"If you have any questions, please do not hesitate to contact our office. If you are receiving reports via U.S. Mail and would like to be contacted via E-mail instead, please make request to this address.
"Grammar" and "Punctuation" nit's unite! You're "head" will literally explode! Quote
08-01-2012 , 09:25 PM
love this thread
"Grammar" and "Punctuation" nit's unite! You're "head" will literally explode! Quote
08-01-2012 , 10:49 PM
Quote:
Originally Posted by Hector Cerif
Figured this was the place to ask this.

I had stock email templates in my office which were riddled with commas. I fixed the most egregious ones, but I've gone back and forth on the following two. Though I'm fairly sure they don't belong, I've taken out so many commas lately that I'm beginning to second guess myself.

"If you have any questions, please do not hesitate to contact our office. If you are receiving reports via U.S. Mail and would like to be contacted via E-mail instead, please make request to this address.
I sure can't see anything wrong with those.
"Grammar" and "Punctuation" nit's unite! You're "head" will literally explode! Quote
08-01-2012 , 11:43 PM
They're both correct. "If..." is a dependent clause, and when a dependent clause is followed by an independent clause, there's a comma.

I learned it as "D,I" or "ID." Meaning: if the independent clause is first, no comma.
"Grammar" and "Punctuation" nit's unite! You're "head" will literally explode! Quote
08-02-2012 , 12:24 AM
Quote:
Originally Posted by Hector Cerif
Figured this was the place to ask this.

I had stock email templates in my office which were riddled with commas. I fixed the most egregious ones, but I've gone back and forth on the following two. Though I'm fairly sure they don't belong, I've taken out so many commas lately that I'm beginning to second guess myself.

"If you have any questions, please do not hesitate to contact our office. If you are receiving reports via U.S. Mail and would like to be contacted via E-mail instead, please make request to this address.
I have no problem with the commas, but "please make request to this address" sounds like English being translated from another language.
"Grammar" and "Punctuation" nit's unite! You're "head" will literally explode! Quote
08-02-2012 , 01:21 PM
how old's that template, from 1996? update "E-mail" too.
"Grammar" and "Punctuation" nit's unite! You're "head" will literally explode! Quote
08-02-2012 , 04:16 PM
David Foster Wallace on prescriptive and descriptive usage:
http://harpers.org/media/pdf/dfw/Har...04-0070913.pdf
"Grammar" and "Punctuation" nit's unite! You're "head" will literally explode! Quote
08-03-2012 , 03:16 AM
"Everybody is not bright." vs. "Not everybody is bright."

Is there any way the two sentences above can be considered to be saying the same thing, logically or grammatically?

Does anything change if the sentences contained the word "everyone" instead of "everybody"?
"Grammar" and "Punctuation" nit's unite! You're "head" will literally explode! Quote
08-03-2012 , 05:21 AM
Quote:
Originally Posted by Kvitlekh
"Everybody is not bright." vs. "Not everybody is bright."

Is there any way the two sentences above can be considered to be saying the same thing, logically or grammatically?
No, I mean the first one is a syntactical mess and most directly means that all people are stupid. The second is a little more clear and directly means what it says: not everybody is bright. Some people may be, or nobody may be. It could be that 100% of people are stupid, or 50% or 2% of people are stupid. But it's only ruling out the possibility that 100% are smart.


If the above is what the person who wrote the first sentence means, then they're among the not-bright people.

Quote:
Does anything change if the sentences contained the word "everyone" instead of "everybody"?
No.
"Grammar" and "Punctuation" nit's unite! You're "head" will literally explode! Quote
08-03-2012 , 07:48 AM
Quote:
Originally Posted by Kvitlekh
"Everybody is not bright." vs. "Not everybody is bright."

Is there any way the two sentences above can be considered to be saying the same thing, logically or grammatically?

Does anything change if the sentences contained the word "everyone" instead of "everybody"?
I need as many people as possible to share their opinions about this.
"Grammar" and "Punctuation" nit's unite! You're "head" will literally explode! Quote
08-03-2012 , 09:11 AM
Quote:
Originally Posted by private joker
They're both correct. "If..." is a dependent clause, and when a dependent clause is followed by an independent clause, there's a comma.

I learned it as "D,I" or "ID." Meaning: if the independent clause is first, no comma.
Thanks, makes sense.
"Grammar" and "Punctuation" nit's unite! You're "head" will literally explode! Quote
08-03-2012 , 09:13 AM
Quote:
Originally Posted by Kvitlekh
I need as many people as possible to share their opinions about this.
PJ is right.
"Grammar" and "Punctuation" nit's unite! You're "head" will literally explode! Quote
08-03-2012 , 10:02 AM
+1 to everything PJ said. First sentence is awful even if you were trying to say that everyone is dumb (which is what it means).

I take it you need more opinions because someone you know is arguing that the two sentences are equivalent? In that case they're proof of the second one.
"Grammar" and "Punctuation" nit's unite! You're "head" will literally explode! Quote
08-03-2012 , 06:01 PM
PJ nailed it.

example 1 is a complete mess.

and the one v body thing makes no difference but everyone is considered a bit more formal, and more common in written form than everybody.
"Grammar" and "Punctuation" nit's unite! You're "head" will literally explode! Quote
08-03-2012 , 06:17 PM
Hey guys, in poker is it "two pair" or "two pairs?" Which is correct, and why? Thanks for your help.
"Grammar" and "Punctuation" nit's unite! You're "head" will literally explode! Quote
08-03-2012 , 07:55 PM
Quote:
Originally Posted by Online Veteran
Hey guys, in poker is it "two pair" or "two pairs?" Which is correct, and why? Thanks for your help.
Originally the plural of pair was pair, and during that period the game of poker was popularized -- hence the term "two pair."

In the intervening generations, the language evolved to using "pairs" as the plural for the word "pair," so now most dictionaries cite both being correct, though by far "pairs" is more common -- e.g., "She bought five pairs of jeans at the outlet store."

But people still use "pair" in poker because of its inception during the turn of the century.
"Grammar" and "Punctuation" nit's unite! You're "head" will literally explode! Quote
08-03-2012 , 08:00 PM
As a little sanity check here's one of the commas I removed:

"Please find attached, reports for the above mentioned projects."

?

Last edited by Hector Cerif; 08-03-2012 at 08:00 PM. Reason: Also now I don't know about the sentence above.
"Grammar" and "Punctuation" nit's unite! You're "head" will literally explode! Quote
08-03-2012 , 08:34 PM
"Reports for the above mentioned projects are attached as xxx files."
"Grammar" and "Punctuation" nit's unite! You're "head" will literally explode! Quote
08-03-2012 , 09:51 PM
Quote:
Originally Posted by Hector Cerif
As a little sanity check here's one of the commas I removed:

"Please find attached, reports for the above mentioned projects."

?
You were correct to remove the comma but the resulting sentence is still poorly constructed and probably about 3x longer than it needs to be -- mostly due to the types of unnecessary office-speak euphamism-drenched language that permeates the workforce.

I would say "The reports are attached." I would assume my readers are not so criminally ******ed as to be confused about which reports I'm talking about (duh, the projects I JUST ****ing mentioned), nor would they be so amazingly lazy as to fail to "find" (i.e. download or look at) the reports after I JUST told them said reports are attached.
"Grammar" and "Punctuation" nit's unite! You're "head" will literally explode! Quote
08-03-2012 , 10:07 PM
I basically work in a science lab so grammar isn't the most important thing to our customers--it's more a matter of me not wanting to look at it all day. I also just started so I don't want to completely rewrite their templates yet.

Also, I don't think I've ever proofread anything I've written as closely as I have when writing in this thread.
"Grammar" and "Punctuation" nit's unite! You're "head" will literally explode! Quote

      
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