RAF's Grammar Rant Wiki

Both of those issues are covered in Rule #1 of Strunk & White.   

That's why you always keep a copy at your desk. 

Adam:  There are major differences of opinion on the use of "'s" to form the possessive of words ending in "s".  Most grammarians agree that consistency is the most important thing.  One last thing, on those occasions when forming the possessive of a plural noun that doesn't end in "s" you should use an "'s."  For example, "women's."

I just stumbled across this discussion of my little Wiki (written on a slow day) and I'm glad to see that my article has fostered some interesting discussions here.  I don't consider myself a literary snob by any means but certain things do bug me, even when I encounter them in the rather informal, or should that be "inforumal," world of internet forums.  I'm not asking for perfection, but merely pointing out some of my pet peeves.  We all make grammatical mistakes from time to time as we type late into the evening (or early in the morning before first light and first caffeine) but those aren't the errors that I was addressing.  It's the constant use of glaring errors that gets under my skin by many of "today's" generation (I'm about two generations removed from that).  As we all know (and it was drummed into me because my Dad was a fairly well known linguist) language is an ever evolving thing and today's common usage often becomes tomorrow's accepted grammar.  That's why a lot of this is dynamic in nature and so difficult to nail down completely.

I really wish that more of our members would avail themselves of our built in spelling checker (the little green arrow) to catch the really bad stuff.  Not a cure all by any means (some of the "missing" words are quite laughable) but at least a good start.  And it won't separate the boys form the buoys of course.  It's also unfortunate that the people who probably need to see this discussion the most will never participate in this thread.  As a matter of fact I find it a bit refreshing that the literary level here is quite high by today's standards.

Finally, I wasn't trying to suggest that text messaging was the source of all the abbreviations.  BBSes were mentioned as an earlier example and I think that it goes back WAAAY before that.  Speaking of BBSes, I used to participate quite actively on Micronet (the forerunner of CompuServe for you old timers) in the late 70's when the first personal computers came out - I had a TRS-80 among others - and some of you might remember several of us from CEFORUM (The Consumers' Electronic Forum).  We were ripping along at 300 baud in those days (or even slower with acoustical couplers) so if anyone had an excuse to rush our writing we did because time was definitely money in tho$e day$.  It even gave rise to automated batch uploading and downloading of messages.  Anyone here remember TAPCIS and similar?

See, I am an old dude.

When I made that comment, I wasn't referring to you specifically, RAF. I meant it more as a general comment. I hear this sort of reference fairly often and I just have to laugh. True, I sure quick abbreviations does go way back, but in the general computer world of communications it had to start around then. Or at least that's when it first gained popularity.

I remember those lightning quick 300 baud days! We really started dancing when 1200 baud came out. Woohoo! Although, I was pretty young in those days.

My first modem had an acoustic coupler.

This is an IMDB user's review of Wolverine. And I've seen similar at youtube (I'm hoping it's the same person).


Whaaat!? 

Is this what the English language is evolving into?

Mine was two frozen juice cans (remember them?!?) connected by a piece of string.

You could freeze things back then? I thought that was a more recent technology (sub-freezing winter weather excepted, of course).

So, basically, the reviewer would like to have nine more hands added to his body?!?  What an odd number. 

Or maybe he really wants ten additional hands but will withhold on the 12th "thumbs up" for some really good movie to come along--like Saw XVII.

A couple of peeves that came up today:

"I've said my peace."

"The point is mute."

Because he's wishing for something he hasn't anyway, I think he just asks for 1 extra hand, with 9 thumbs on it.


Cees

What an economic and logical option. 

I give that one big thumbs up! 

I often wish it were.

Loose and lose are the two words that are driving me nuts nowadays.

They've been driving me nuts for a long time and it's not getting any better . http://www.hometheaterforum.com/forum/thread/293618/raf-s-grammar-rant-wiki/0#post_3613827