Grrr....just saw this again. Drives me nuts!

hipervintillate

 

Wrong!!!

 

Funny, I just ran across that one again this morning, when checking a blog written by somebody whom I really rate, and who has produced a traditionally-published nonfiction book that I own :

It's become such a common a mistake, it has evolved into correctness, right? We should no longer correct mistakes like this. As long as lots of people are making them, they are no longer mistakes, but 'evolved language,' and we should just be happy with that. Okay, I'm off to take my happy pill.

And breathe and breath describe the same thing? And are pronounced the same now as well? So we'll be saying things like "The breeeth of life has left him." "Take a deep breeeth." Or is it "You must breth normally?" Golly. What was I thinking? (I'm not having a go at you, btw, @Homer Potvin. It's just my OP topic again....)

I'll try one more time:

I would have thought that, of all places, a writers' forum would be where folks would care about maintaining standards of language and would not tamely allow sloppy or blatantly incorrect word usage to gain acceptance. If writers don't maintain language, who will?

 

I may screw up to/too and there/their, but I don't screw up breath and breathe.
Though I have seen around here that some use loose, when they meant lose.
Not sure why they do that, maybe they just like the extra o.

 

Yes. Anybody can make a mistake, or have a mental block about certain words. That's not a writing sin. What is a writing sin, in my view, is being unwilling to correct mistakes once you know you've made them.

One of the errors I've been correcting recently in my own writing is the difference between 'which' and 'that.' It requires some thought in every instance, and I've had to change a few spots in my novel where I've used the wrong one. However, I HAVE changed them, and will continue to do so every time I catch myself making this mistake. Why? Because I respect the subtle difference between these words—which I used to think were interchangeable—and I feel a bit silly that I didn't know about this rule long ago. I don't instinctively catch this mistake every time either, which bothers me. Probably because the mistake is so ingrained, after 68-plus years of making it.

It's the idea that we should be okay with allowing certain spelling and grammatical mistakes to get a pass that bothers me. Pick your favourite mistake, and then insist it's okay to make it because language evolves and anyway, you can't tell the difference? I am stunned that anybody on a writers' forum would take that position for real. However, I do suspect some here are simply playing devil's advocate, which is fine. It's good to be challenged by the opposite viewpoint, on occasion.

 

Eastenders....

 

Henry Higgins, come back, all is forgiven....

 

Based on

I thought we were done, but as the pearl-clutching and "some members" business has started anew... let me remind you of...

and

and

There are only so many posts we can make about breath/breathe. They're different words. Yup, yup, yup, carry on. I thought we were done so I broadened the discussion to the idea of words changing over time. Apparently "some members" weren't ready for the conversation to be broadened so they skipped the parts of my posts where I made it clear I wasn't talking about breath/breathe. Skipping parts of posts and then responding as if the poster was talking about something else certainly does add to the drama, but probably not to the discussion?

 

Actually, 'breathe' came back into the discussion earlier this morning, in response to what @Homer Potvin said in his excellent comment about him getting upset about 'lose' and 'loose'—another word confusion that some writers get worked up about. He said that the breath/breathe thing didn't bother him quite so much because they are more or less the same thing, while lose and loose are two entirely different concepts.

I understand that you were making a wider point last night, as was I—eventually. Unlike yourself, I don't want to take a laid-back, unbothered attitude towards language mistakes. I feel that's a bad direction to take. However, if somebody wants to deliberately write in a non-conformist way, that's fine with me. It's up to them to sell it to the public, or to publishers, like ee cummings did. I'm more concerned about people making mistakes and not being aware of them. That's where the ability to communicate starts to deteriorate.

I take the view that a mistake is a mistake, no matter how many people are making it. My point I made last night—which never got answered—is where do you draw the line? Either all mistakes are acceptable, or there has to be a line. Who draws that line, and under what circumstances? And when does the line shift?

Of course I'm not going to 'report' people on the forum for making grammatical mistakes or using a different kind of writing style! If I feel the mistakes are being made inadvertently, I'll certainly point them out, though, writer-to-writer. Same as I'd deal with any other writing issue.

 

What is the "line" you'd be drawing? For yourself? Draw it where you're no longer able to enjoy the writing, I guess. For an elementary school teacher? Draw it where you think will be most educational for the student and supportive of the student's attempts at creativity. For an editor? Where your publisher wants you to draw it.

I don't think there needs to be a society-wide line drawn in the exact same place, which is good, because I don't think we'd have a prayer of ever deciding where that line should be or how to enforce it when someone steps over the line.

 

No. I just draw it using a dictionary or two. (I actually use three—Webster's, Collins's and The Oxford—plus online dictionaries as well.) If the dictionaries disagree (and they sometimes do) I'd say the line is shifting and I'll try to be open to accepting the change. If the dictionaries agree, then ...well, that's the line, isn't it?

I don't find that using correct grammar and spelling hampers my enjoyment of writing at all.

 

So it was a hypothetical question? That was my initial assumption, but then you made it sound as if you expected it to be answered... and now that I'm started...

Your enjoyment of writing isn't hampered, but you're obviously having trouble enjoying the reading of things that don't conform to your expectations. But as someone upthread noted, we don't often use who/whom anymore, and I think the dictionaries still distinguish between those words? So have you drawn the line for your own reading enjoyment somewhere non-dictionary for who/whom, but strictly dictionary for other words?

 

An inspirational thread indeed.

(Hint: I'm an incurable punster)

 

It's an aspirational thread! Not bad, eh, for a total non-punster?

 

Yeah, I did expect my question to be answered, because it's crucial to the discussion. There are either mistakes or there are no mistakes. If there ARE mistakes, then who or what decides what the mistakes are? I think it's important to answer that question.

I made it clear earlier this morning that I'm not immune to making mistakes. The who/whom one does kind of irritate me sometimes, but that's one I'm not entirely clear about in my own head, so I usually say nothing. However, it's next on my list to work on and get straight—or at least to better understand the difficulty.

But, in short, to answer your question directly, yes it bothers me when I read something that contains SPAG errors. At least the ones I do catch. I may not catch them all, but the ones I do catch certainly bother me. And if somebody points an error out to me that I'm making, I'll certainly learn what I'm doing wrong, and change it.

I'm less bothered with mistakes that are clearly typos when I'm reading, because they are simply slips of the finger and eye, and the writer didn't intend to make them. It's a proofreading error, not a grammatical one. I'll point them out if I'm doing a critique or beta read, just to help the writer, but I won't throw a published book in the proverbial trash because I encounter 'hte' instead of 'the.' Typos aren't likely to appear every time the word is used. However, the grammatical and spelling mistakes do tend to be repeated, which is a clue that they're not typos, and the writer should be willing to learn where they're going wrong on that particular issue.

 

So the line you'd draw isn't so much at the "dictionary" level, but more at your own personal level of grammatical/spelling knowledge?

For me, I fully understand who/whom but I've largely stopped using "whom" in my own writing because I think it creates a negative perception in many readers, as if the writer is trying too hard or is naturally pompous. I think it's more important to write with the reader in mind rather than the dictionary.

This makes it sound like it's almost a moral thing for you? Like, it's not the word itself that bugs you, but the perceived carelessness of the author?

 

I'm not sure where you got this from what I said.

What I said is that I can make mistakes. Everybody can. That doesn't mean they're not mistakes, though. There will be an accepted rule for this usage, even if I don't know it. It's up to me to find out what that rule is. It's not up to me to wilfully ignore the rule, if it exists.

 

You said you weren't sure about the who/whom thing yourself, and it didn't bother you as much. I'm not sure how it can bother you at all, if you aren't sure of the usage, but it seemed as if your lack of certainty made it less annoying for you when other people also weren't sure?

 

That's actually a very useful tip, which I'll work with. Thanks.

Oh, yeah. All grammatical bets are off when it comes to dialogue. (Well, maybe except for spelling?) The dialogue should reflect the grammatical state of the speaker, not necessarily the author.

 

No. I said I say nothing because I still don't understand how it works. Because I am not sure what's right and what's wrong in that instance. I didn't say it didn't bother me. In fact it does bother me. It bothers me that I don't fully understand how to apply the rule! I'm going to try the tip that @big soft moose just gave me.

I have read some discussions about this one recently, and if I can remember where, I'll cite them.

I think you're overlooking my point that there is a difference between wanting to correctly apply a rule, and not knowing exactly how to—yet. Like with the recent which/that thing, I'm keen to learn the right way to do it.