MetaFilter posts tagged with grammar

Do not use "nonprofit" as an adjective. Use "broke."

emjaybee — Fri, 23 Oct 2009 12:39:51 -0800

Fake AP Stylebook is making Twitter worthwhile. (Single-link Twitter post. But damn, really; it's funny).

MétaFiltre!

Shepherd — Thu, 22 Oct 2009 06:21:54 -0800

The Canadian Government’s Translation Bureau recently made its French/English/Spanish technical terminology database, Termium, free to access after over a decade as a subscription-based service. While off-the-cuff translations are often available from free services like BabelFish, Termium focuses on technical terminology such as scientific, medical and legal terms. Of equal interest to the core service are other tools like The Canadian Style, the government’s official rules for how to write "Canadian" (an odd hybrid of British and American styles), HyperGrammar 2, a series of educational grammar modules developed for self-directed learning, and Word Tailoring, an attempt to create a translation database for idiomatic French words and expressions that don't necessarily offer a single literal translation. There are also a wealth of French-language tools for learning grammar, improving your writing style, and seeking alternate terms for common verbs and expressions. Also worthy of note is the always-free Grand Dictionnaire, the product of the Quebec government's Office de la langue française, which is far less robust than Termium but has a stronger focus on "proper" language for Quebec. And, if you're struggling to improve your French writing skills, Bon Patron is a (frequently slow-loading) Java-powered tool that will check your French spelling and grammar and offer correction suggestions in real time.

!

crossoverman — Thu, 24 Sep 2009 20:16:33 -0800

[",'...:.?;-) Dear John, Punctuation Products, bad punctuation photographs, and Punctuation meatloaf. National Punctuation Day!

hi cutie ur realy sexy. msn?

Kadin2048 — Mon, 14 Sep 2009 22:05:25 -0800

How (not) to write an online-dating message, based on a sample of 500,000 "first contact" messages. The average message from a man to a woman on OK Cupid has a 32% chance of getting a response. (Although longer is apparently better. Also, women seeking men, men seeking men, and women seeking women have somewhat better odds.) But not all messages are created equal: “netspeak, bad grammar, and bad spelling are huge turn-offs,” while the “top three most popular ways to say ‘hello’ were all actually bad beginnings.” OkTrends, the OK Cupid development/statistics blog, has come up previously. [Via Hacker News.]

Is this your homework, Larry?

Jon_Evil — Mon, 20 Jul 2009 16:57:05 -0800

The research, literary, and copy editors of Vanity Fair go to town on Sarah Palin's resignation speech.
seeing as nearly everyone I talked to at the 10th meetup was an editor of some kind, you'll all get a kick out of this

This post is very stylish.

jacquilynne — Sat, 11 Apr 2009 08:53:41 -0800

For the last 50 years, grammar and style have been learned from The Elements of Style. That's not necessarily a good thing.

Comic book grammatical and aesthetic traditions

Brandon Blatcher — Tue, 03 Feb 2009 13:31:38 -0800

Comic book lettering has some grammatical and aesthetic traditions that are quite unique. What follows is a list that every letterer eventually commits to his/her own mental reference file.

3d context free

signal — Fri, 02 Jan 2009 12:57:58 -0800

Structure Synth is an application for creating 3D structures from a set of user specified rules. It is an attempt to make a 3D version of Context Free.

The Long and Short of It

susanharper — Tue, 02 Dec 2008 06:49:16 -0800

Long and short of it continues in part 2 I loved reading the first part of this series and it now has the second part that I have put link to. Long and short of it goes deeper into an important topic: Whether we should have a long sentence or a short one when describing things. I would well go with the long sentence as written by Charles Dickens on his novel Oliver Twist a century ago. But it seems quite a few people prefer short ones! What's your take on this.

Single link silliness.

pedstel — Tue, 14 Oct 2008 22:25:39 -0800

The "best" of the internet.

I can’t believe that posting corrections to comments takes that much time away from real work.

blasdelf — Tue, 12 Aug 2008 11:59:53 -0800

So apostrophree corrects these kinds of errors before people see them, preventing employees from spending time posting corrections and engaging in online flame wars about English usage?

Two effect they're effluent capitol.

blue_beetle — Mon, 11 Aug 2008 14:29:53 -0800

Confusing Words is a collection of 3210 words that are troublesome to readers and writers. Words are grouped according to the way they are most often confused or misused.

I'M AWSOME

beaucoupkevin — Thu, 17 Jul 2008 15:54:11 -0800

The 10 Greatest Misspelled Tattoos, according to The L Magazine.

A dot's as good as a wink.

Horace Rumpole — Sun, 22 Jun 2008 11:16:39 -0800

Who killed the semicolon? Paul Collins fingers a 19th-century culprit; Trevor Butterworth finds an American anitipathy to this troublesome punctuation mark. [previously] [via]

I bet they hate Star Trek.

sonic meat machine — Sun, 01 Jun 2008 19:25:14 -0800

The Grammar Curmudgeon makes up for all of those snarky grammar comments we refrain from posting.

Errin' USA

Rhaomi — Wed, 21 May 2008 21:54:20 -0800

Immediately, Herson spotted an offense—a second-floor awning outside a tarot shop that advertised "Energy Stone's." They climbed the stairs to the second floor and approached a middle-age women with a quizzical expression. "We happened to notice the sign for energy stones," Deck said, "and there happens to be an extra apostrophe. 'Stone's' doesn't need the apostrophe."

"And?" she asked, her voice flat with annoyance.

"And we wanted to bring it to your attention," Deck said.

A look inside the daring lives of Jeff Deck and Benjamin Herson, vanguards of the Typo Eradication Advancement League.

Get Your Red Pens Ready.

laconic titan — Tue, 04 Mar 2008 16:48:26 -0800

Zip up that dangling modifier--it's National Grammar Day! Let the ranting begin...

Pedants

frobozz — Sat, 29 Sep 2007 17:10:39 -0800

Pedants; or, you're doing it wrong. Illustrated.

eBay Arctic Ale Ouchy

East Manitoba Regional Junior Kabaddi Champion '94 — Fri, 31 Aug 2007 08:12:40 -0800

Man buys Allsop, relists it as Allsopp - proving that on eBay, presentation is everything. via b3ta

Super French Web Sites

hama7 — Sat, 02 Jun 2007 17:20:27 -0800

Super French Web Sites.

a fascinating short timely rectangular (due to the CSS box model) white-on-blue American pixel-based educational post (about adjectives)

grumblebee — Sat, 19 May 2007 11:58:25 -0800

"The old, mean man" vs. "The mean old man." Here's an aspect of English (and other languages) I've never thought of before. If you're using a string of adjectives, there's a natural order for them to appear in: "opinion :: size :: age :: shape :: color :: origin :: material :: purpose". (Although I find "old, mean," due to it's strange order, sort of striking.) [more info: 1, 2, 3]

"Where's the 'T' at?" she asked.

staggernation — Thu, 03 May 2007 06:54:13 -0800

The caferteria had garbage an all tables. At my middle school in Staten Island, thought the dean, this cannot stand. So he sent home a letter.

A CAPTCHA for Internet Access

exogenous — Wed, 04 Apr 2007 20:22:54 -0800

A CAPTCHA to weed out certain potential users of the internet.

a grammar nazi's punctuation blues

progosk — Thu, 18 Jan 2007 14:51:08 -0800

Apostrophes, apostrophes, more apostrophes. Yet more apostrophes. They're "everywhere ". It's grammar hell - literally!

British dialectical prescriptivism from the voice of Today

anotherpanacea — Wed, 08 Nov 2006 12:13:35 -0800

John Humphrys is a militant grammarian: "We all care about language. Your concern may be different from the young hoodie's." On the other hand, he may have a point: "The simple fact is we cannot afford to be careless with our language, because if we are careless with our language then we are careless with our world and sooner or later we will be lost for words to describe what we have allowed to happen to it." (via)