Remember when Peter Griffin separated from the United States and founded Petoria? And that army guy with the megaphone said, "As you may presently yourself be fully made aware of, my grammar sucks"?


Yeah well, my wife has a co-worker who writes like that. He recently wrote a document as part of an RFP for a potential client. My wife is editing that document before it goes out to the client, and she is sharing with me some of the gems she finds there so that I can pass them along for your enjoyment.....


"It is this client partnership system that we implement in which we operate during client project development that makes us partners in the truest sense of the word, and we look forward to creating and building one with your firm as well."


"We consistently apply conventional and best practice execution approaches clearly outlined in our custom event production timelines to the delight of our clients - and their senior management - by executing easy to follow, cost effective projects time and again."


"To our development of social media communication elements has become a foundational building block of design and delivery for our clients that are interested in delivering their messages to their audiences in this vital communication delivery system –specifically with a 20-30 year old demographic."

Does the context of the sentence have anything to do with the order of "amount"
words?

The amount of kids in the classroom with prior knowledge of the subject ranges
from 1/3 to 2/3.

or

The amount of kids in the classroom with prior knowledge of the subject ranges
from 2/3 to 1/3.

When an operative word enters the situation it seems to make more sense:

The amount of kids in the classroom with prior knowledge of the subject GREW
from 1/3 to 2/3.

The amount of kids in the classroom with prior knowledge of the subject DROPPED
from 2/3 to 1/3.

i'd say when discussing ranges, it's standard to go from lowest to highest (although i'm sure there's exceptions)

you know when you totally misread something? took me a couple of seconds to realize you weren't talking about a subject known as the acronym GREW

Isn't "amount of kids" incorrect and should instead be "number of kids"?

Neither seems very satisfactory. Proportion of kids?

Percentage of kids and use "33% to 66%."

Those are wonderful examples of business bafflegab. (And in the last of these, of how easy it is for the writer to get lost in his own woolly language.) Thanks for posting these.

They should be used in classrooms as examples of all that can go wrong.

In general I think things that can be counted use the phrase "number of".

a number of birds
an amount of milk etc.

Anyway I was reading IMDB comments (lol) about the new movie Sanctum, and someone wrote something like this:

"It's a Jame's Cameron film so it is..."

HERE COMES AN "S"!!! MENTALLY PREPARE YOURSELF

All grammar nits should enjoy this (from the singer-songwriter Lorraine English, who's a bit of a grammar nit herself):

http://www.lorrainefeather.com/miss_english.html

Some good stuff in that link. Thanks.

This is one of my favorite threads in OOT and deserves a little bump. I've always thought the title of this thread is just brilliant!

Here's an excerpt from a post I just made in another thread in OOT:

Where I used "still", many people would today use "Having said that" (or its variants: "That being said", "That said", "With that said"...). I'm posting it here as an illustration of one simple alternative to those trendy, annoying phrases.


Bonus: here's a pic I just snapped at Washington National Airport on my way to work.

What interests me about your self-quote (would "self quotation" be better?) is your use of "may." I would have written "Still, there might be some deterrent value ..." because (it seems to me) you want to emphasize speculation.

But "may" is ok there, while its misuse in everyday journalism is so pervasive as to make me despair.

I agree and thanks for pointing this out. There is a difference and I can see that now.

**** that one tilts me every time I'm in terminal b. ****in' mayorga, how does it work?

what is the OOT-preferred way to apologize for not responding to someone at the start of the email in which I'm responding?

Sorry I hadn't responded to you.
Sorry I haven't responded to you.
Sorry I didn't respond to you [previously].

Sorry I hadn't responded to you sooner.
I apologize it has taken me so long to respond.

I apologize that, until this point, to you, I have but provided timely response.

shouldn't that be "for taking so long to respond," then?

Of those three, the second would be preferred. The third would be ok with some word like that in the brackets. The first is confusing in terms of tense.

On a side note, I think we all apologize too much about our "delayed" responses in this era of email. A week was fine in the days of regular mail. What is it now? Two days? 24 hours? less?

I thought hadn't has an understood "until this email I'm typing right now". I would have thought haven't sounds weird because I am responding now?

No. That would work if you were discussing, after the fact, a response that you've already made by the time of that discussion but was, when you made it, belated.

In other words: "hadn't responded" refers to a continuing action (or in thsi case inaction) that ended in the past. This is a continuing (in)action that continues up to the present.


Yes.


No; see above. The past perfect ("had" with participle) is used only for actions that ended already (before the utterance).


Btw, "didn't respond" would be used if there was a specific instance of failure to respond; "haven't responded" is for a continuing (in)action. So you "didn't" respond to the birthday greeting your grandmother sent three months ago (assuming you're not planning to), but you "haven't" responded to the e-mail you got yesterday (to which you're planning on responding, or are responding now).

hmmmm, great explanation. thanks!

While I agree with this, hadn't still sounds awkward for some reason. I prefer the third response. I tend to start apologizing after a full business day. I never apologize for personal emails.

What about 'yet' instead of 'previously'?

How about "Sorry for not responding sooner"?

Out of the alternatives listed above, I think "Sorry I haven't responded" is best.