Blog Detail
Motivated Grammar
http://motivatedgrammar.wordpress.com
A lot of people make claims about what "good English" is. Much of what they say is flim-flam, and this blog aims to set the record straight. Its goal is to explain the motivations behind the real grammar of English and to debunk ill-founded claims about what is grammatical and what isn't.
- Added on: May 13th, 2008
- Country: United States
- Language: English
- Author: motivatedgrammar
- Listed in: Academics Writing
- Tags: english grammar linguistics descriptivism
Recent Posts
Is it dumb to say “stupidest”?
Sherry over at Literally, A Web Log had a post way back in May about some athlete who committed a venial grammar sin. Specifically, the athlete said that he had made “the stupidest mistake.” (Having made a number of gallingly stupid m...
“10 items or less” is just fine
Summary: The idea that "less" can't be used with count nouns isn't well supported; it's a rule that hasn't ever been strictly followed, especially for count nouns that can be perceived as masses. Groceries lend themselves to perception as a mass, so...
National Punctuation Day
No one ever tells me anything. Today, apparently, is National Punctuation Day, which you would think someone would have noticed and informed me of, given that I consume commas like some sort of giant comma-consuming machine — or an eighteenth...
The serial, Harvard, or Oxford comma
Summary: The Oxford or serial comma has been in use for centuries, but omitting it has always been fine as well. To this day the debate rages, but the fact of the matter is that both are common, and neither is without its flaws. Go with what you li...
In which I realize I’ll never use “shall” as an Englishman would
Summary: Unless you are already familiar with "shall", you'll save yourself a lot of bother by not even trying to learn to use it in the precise English way. You're welcome to my rules of thumb: "shall" is a future form that expresses a certain desti...
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