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Rewiring Klipschorns


bkwa1959

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6 hours ago, CECAA850 said:

VIN number

 

That's one I actually forgot to include, but again, it's the last term "reiterated again."

 

4 hours ago, Dave A said:

For instance in Detroit it would be  "Rewyering" and in the south it would be "Rewaaring". I wonder what it would be in say Missouri?

 

How about in Bahston?

 

4 hours ago, codewritinfool said:

Though not entirely the same, one of my favorites is PHP, the language.  It stands for "PHP Hypertext Preprocessor", incorporating the acronym into the first letter of what it means. 

 

Or GNU (GNU's Not Unix).

 

Your example reminded me of another pet peeve.  In "RPM" the "R" term is seemingly without exception a plural already, thus "RPM" itself is (most) usually already plural and "RPMs" is plain silly.  Or is it supposed to be "revolutions per minutes"?

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RPM, RBI, VIN, ATM, etc. , as acronyms, become a noun in their own right, therefore, making the acronyms plural makes sense and sounds right.  RBIs sounds OK and means the same thing as Runs Batted In, either of which beats the snot out of RsBI, which is correct in an anal OCD sort of way, but disregards its constituent words.

 

Remember, the purpose of language is to communicate, not to fixate on somewhat arbitrary rules.  Language is constantly evolving.   Double negatives have become almost the norm.  For example, “I ain’t got no money” is understood to mean the same thing as, I don’t have any money.”  

 

That said,  respecting some rules makes communication easier and more elegant.  Years ago, we hired some “experts” to prepare an opinion in some litigation.  I don’t recall the exact topic, but a young associate wrote “thru” instead of “through.” When we questioned the use of “thru” in a somewhat scholarly paper he pointed out that “THRU” is the spelling used on street signs (insert face palm and eye rolls).

 

Precise language, written and spoken, is going the way of the polar ice caps. Me and my wife were just discussing these ones.  Her and me could care less irregardless of what him and her think.  It’s where we're at.  See, it’s hopeless.

 

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1 hour ago, DizRotus said:

Ya think? Is that the only thing you didn’t like about the last paragraph?

You were lamenting the lack of precise language, so I found your use of the word ironic. No, I'm not with the grammar police - my wife (who is with the grammar police), regularly claims I make up words.

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On 8/30/2019 at 5:11 PM, DizRotus said:

Precise language, written and spoken, is going the way of the polar ice caps. Me and my wife were just discussing these ones.  Her and me could care less irregardless of what him and her think.  It’s where we're at.  See, it’s hopeless.

 

Me and my wife were discussing...

 

That's easy.  Just drop the other person from the sentence and you'll have the answer to whether you sould use "me" or "I".  (I realize the period should go inside the closing quotation mark but it's a conscious decision to do otherwise - me likes the way it looks better.)

 

I get a kick out of people using "whomever and I" even when "me" would be correct.

 

The paragraph is actually very cleverly constructed.

 

I've told my son that the only legitimate sort of use of "these (or those) ones" would be if you were standing by bins of numerals at the hardware store and you needed some 1s, and there were a couple styles from which to choose, you might ask an opinion of someone "do you prefer these ones or those ones?"

 

I'm not sure to which "Glen's Rule" Dean's referring, I have so many...

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22 minutes ago, Deang said:

I haven't been very successful with these two:

 

Effect

Affect

 

I was once told the best way to use them is to avoid them at all cost.

 

The effect of his affect has been to effect change among all affected. 

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31 minutes ago, Deang said:

I haven't been very successful with these two:

 

Effect

Affect

 

I was once told the best way to use them is to avoid them at all cost.

 

Not "hard and fast" as far as rules go, but you can't hardly go wrong with affect=verb and effect=noun.

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