If that were true, then your last phrase is incorrectly stated.

Which phrase?

If "people is always plural", then "people" are always plural.

Although by using quotes, he's really saying

so "is" is correct.

I know. Trying to make a joke, but not doing it well at all. Never mind. Carry on.

I almost included "(oh the irony)" after the last phrase. Oh vell.

If a character has multiple (two) sentences of dialogue within one set of quotation marks, and it's unfeasible to "wrap" the sentences around the tag¹, un-tag the dialogue², or combine the sentences into one³ -- or avoid this construction by rewriting the sentence and those surrounding it⁴ -- do you prefer capitalizing both sentences as such (?): [...] and said, "What the ****izzle man? I don't like that." Or do you prefer leaving the first sentence lowercasized as usual (?): [...] and said, "what the ****izzle man? I don't like that."

¹ "What the ****izzle man?" the helicopter asked. "I don't like that."

² The helicopter landed. "What the ****izzle man? I don't like that."

³ (one possible reason being that the first of the sentences is a question.)

⁴ Is it worth avoiding? It strikes me as ugly.

---

(Sorry if the footnotes + big-ass sentence are annoying. The Q is complicated in my head, so that's like the only way I'll spend way less than 10 minutes writing it.)

Wait, what? When is it ever conventional not to capitalize the first word in a piece of spoken dialogue? Or am I misunderstanding your example?

NIIICE (and it looks prettier too)

God I'm so inattentive to things like this. That's what I get for reading predominately stories in which either dialogue is untagged or like >90% of everything is exposition. Actually I shouldn't be too hard on myself -- most dialogue tends to start before a tag. Omg I'm an idiot.

Less than ten minutes?

Yeah that's 1 thing that's inexcusable. Thanks 4 pointing it out; your lesson won't be forgot10.

.emitynA

My second entry inspired by CYE: Saying "risk adverse" when you mean "risk averse." In yesterday's Car Periscope ep, Larry's potential new financial advisor says his investment strategy is risk adverse. You'd think even fictional investors would know this one.

Apostrophe fail.

I hate when people randomly use reflexive pronouns because they think it sounds "smart". Some reality show was on the other night and one chick constantly said crap like "They tried to form an alliance with so-and-so and myself" in the confessionals. She must have used it six times, not once correctly.

You have never discussed the parity of cats? Crazy dog-people.

This has nothing to do with the written word, but I can't think of a better place to ask about pronunciation.

What do you guys do about foreign words/names that don't have English equivalents -- do you think nits who correct the pronunciation are being pedantic or are the ruffians mispronouncing these words mere butchers?

Example: Sun Tzu and shih-tzu in Chinese. They are commonly spoken by English speakers but often mangled. (The former is "soon-zuh" and the latter is "sher-dzuh"). But can we really complain that people say "sun tsoo" and "shi-tsoo?" It's not even the same alphabet... but yet the words do have accurate and inaccurate pronunciations.

I tend to fall on the side of the following: If the vowel sound is close enough and it comes from a Western alphabet word anyway, then don't be so nitty. Saying burrito without trilling the R or making the "ooo" in the u sound (as opposed to "er") is fine, and people who correct you come across as huge nits. But I think it's fair to ask people who say Sun Tzu "sun sue" to change to "soon zuh" because that's a pretty big difference.

I don't know. I read on a language website that so many English speakers mangle Sun Tzu that it's become valid to accept the wrong pronunciation. Not sure I can abide by that!

Chinaman is not the preferred nomenclature, Dude.

i think it's absurd to ask english speakers to pronounce words in chinese. certain sounds in chinese simply have no phonemic equivalents in english. fwiw, "soon zuh" isn't close to the "correct" pronunciation either. so instead of sounding even more ridiculous, just stick to a commonly accepted anglicized version and move on.

There's a fine line between trying to pronounce things correctly and being Alex Trebek.

I'm a massive Trebek h8er.

Shouldn't it be "h8r?"

Both versions are correct, although "h8r" is superior in formal usage.

Shouldn't it be, "Shouldn't it be 'h8r'?"?

Back to British vs. American quotes again. I think quotes outside the question mark is officially correct, but it's a dumb rule.