What are your grammar bugbears?
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'Who' Vs 'whom'.
Answer the question with 'he' Vs 'him' and match the 'm's is an easy rule of thumb.
He went to the park: who went to the park?
You called him: Whom did you call?
I understand why it's falling out of usage, as the strong SVO eliminates the need for accusatives, I wouldn't be surprised if 'him' and 'her' go away next. Knowing and using 'whom' sure helped me with the '-n' affix when learning Esperanto though, also fuck '-n' signed: English speakers. Replace the word with whom, him or her and if it's clumsy you don't need the -n.
Now, if I could just wrap my head around 'si' Vs 'li', 'ŝi' and 'ri'. Or, a solid rule of thumb, that would be so nice. I promise I'm not a toddler, I just talk like one.
Whom ya gonna call? Ghostbusters!!!I'm sorry
I always wondered why it wasn't "Dr. Whom."
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I see where you're coming from. In school we were also taught to NOT put a comma before 'and' if it's a list. I also didn't quite get it, and found it weird. However, if you consider 'and' and a comma serving the same purpose (linking the elements in a list), then putting a comma before 'and' would just make either of them redundant. I'm not saying I prefer either of the two, but at least there is a reason to it.
The issue comes in when you consider there are times you'd want to group things. Example:
I would like a toolbox with 4 drawers: Nuts and bolts, screws, washers and chisels.
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You do something ON purpose or BY accident, you don't do anything ON accident!
“On the weekend”. I think that fits too.
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“Then” when it should be “than”.
People starting sentences with “I mean”, and no prior context.
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“On the weekend”. I think that fits too.
Eh, you can have things you need to do on the weekend, but you can also have things you need to do by the weekend.
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Eh, you can have things you need to do on the weekend, but you can also have things you need to do by the weekend.
Quite happy to be wrong but my original point was it’s grammatically incorrect. I think so anyway.
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When people formulate questions as statements, because it throws me out of my reading flow ha ing to correct my inner voice.
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I'm sorry, but, without commas, this is just a mess, and I'm not going to torture myself into reading it.
Your comment, takes 5 minutes to read with that many commas
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None. Prescriptivism isn't how the world actually works.
I do wonder what the second "is" in "the thing is, is that" means. Presumably, there's a logical answer for the speakers.
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The issue comes in when you consider there are times you'd want to group things. Example:
I would like a toolbox with 4 drawers: Nuts and bolts, screws, washers and chisels.
Oh, if anything, unless it's in the last element, it's easier to see paired items in the list ( ',' -> next element; ' and ' -> still the same element, with 'and' inside). When it's the last element, it's indeed ambiguous. And then there's /u/hakase 's comment:
“They went to Oregon with Betty, a maid, and a cook”, where Betty is the maid mentioned.
