4 ms·

"He could no longer pay for the personnel, produce and precision that go into charging one-star prices." Apparently the NY Times can no longer pay for the preci

"He could no longer pay for the personnel, produce and precision that go into charging one-star prices." Apparently the NY Times can no longer pay for the precision that goes into subject-verb agreement.

banku_brougham 9y ago
A bit off topic, but journalism thses days is brimming with minor grammatical errors, such as omissions of articles, repeated ‘the’, etc. It seems no one cares enough to hire rigid proofreaders and the software tends to miss little things. Does anyone care?
- nkrisc 9y ago
  Call it the evolution of language. I'm sure there's a reason, but I always thought it strange that when the subject in singular, the verb often gets an 's' ending (mirroring the plural ending for most nouns) but when the subject is plural (often ending in an 's') the verb normally doesn't get an 's' ending. The frogs play in water. The frog plays in water. Why does the 's' effectively swap locations? Why not, "the frogs plays in water." Or "the frog play in water"? Or why not drops the singular/plural distinction from verbs altogether?
  - umanwizard 9y ago
    What makes you think the -s ending is naturally plural, rather than just being completely arbitrary? I am pretty sure the etymology of the plural ending -s and the third person present verb ending -s (which used to be -eth in pre-modern forms of English) are unrelated, and they just sound the same by coincidence.
    - nkrisc 9y ago
      Well at it's core language is sort of completely arbitrary, but that's beside the point I'm making. I'm not debating the origin or why it is the way it is, but simply observing that this is how it is currently and it looks strange and counterintuitive.
      - umanwizard 9y ago
        I still don't understand what's strange about it. There is nothing inherently plural or singular about "s" or any other combination of sounds. English evolved a 3rd person singular verb ending. It randomly happened to be "s". It also evolved a plural noun ending. That too randomly happened to be "s". There's nothing deeper going on than that.
        nkrisc 9y ago
        I'm not suggesting there's anything deeper nor do I understand why you think I am. I'm just pointing out that as English exists today, an 's' on the end of noun makes it plural while an 's' on the end of a verb makes it singular. And I think that's strange. That's it.
  - Radim 9y ago
    Plurals evolved to serve a practical role in languages, so that'd be more devolution than evolution :-) You could also go Indonesian: repeat a noun for plural. "Frog-frog play in water!"
    - nkrisc 9y ago
      I'm not suggesting plurals be removed from language, merely a different way of representing it. Such as the Indonesian structure you mentioned, I like that.
  - d_burfoot 9y ago
    What's interesting to me is that we use the same morphological operation (-s suffix) to express two very different concepts. You see this in other places as well, for example the Germanic -en suffix is used in at least 3 different ways in English: as the past participle verb tense (speak -spoken), as a way to transform adjectives into verbs (wide-widen) and (a very old) way to transform nouns into adjectives (gold-golden). Why not use different morphology for these different grammatical concepts? The language would be cleaner and more consistent. My theory is that, basically, it's hard to learn to pronounce many different sounds, but it's easy for our brains to sort through the ambiguity that the morphological overlap produces.
  - Todd 9y ago
    It's because that's the way English verbs are conjugated. English actually has a very simple way of conjugating (regular) verbs. Most of the complexity of the ancestral Germanic has been lost. Contrast that to other Germanic languages. Swedish present tense, for example, is very simple. German still retains a complex morphology. The only inflection English retains in the present indicative is the -s suffix for 3rd person singular (frog). Third person plural (frogs) does not have an -s. The -s suffix for noun plurals, and for possessives (vestigial genitive case), add exceptions that make learning English a little harder. Edit: grammar :)
- logfromblammo 9y ago
  The amount that people care is measured in dollars. We can likely conclude that the amount that people care is less than the prevailing wage of a professional proofreader. A publication may one day be able to accumulate those who care the most as their customer base, and thereby assure the production of grammatically correct ephemera, but for now, other business interests prevail.
brchr 9y ago
This sentence looks fine to me vis-a-vis subject-verb agreement: "[personnel + produce + precision] go." How do you think it ought to read instead?
- liveoneggs 9y ago
  maybe he would refer "goes"? It's seemed okay to me.
- 8note 9y ago
  I think he thought produce was a verb and not a type of raw food
hackeraccount 9y ago
Technically there's a cost to precision.
dang 9y ago
Please don't take HN threads into such nitpicky weeds, whether you happen to be right or not. In this case I don't think you were—Muphry's Law and all that—but there's nothing wrong with being wrong as such. Far worse on HN is being snarky. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newswelcome.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newswelcome.html

banku_brougham 9y ago

A bit off topic, but journalism thses days is brimming with minor grammatical errors, such as omissions of articles, repeated ‘the’, etc. It seems no one cares enough to hire rigid proofreaders and the software tends to miss little things. Does anyone care?

nkrisc 9y ago
Call it the evolution of language. I'm sure there's a reason, but I always thought it strange that when the subject in singular, the verb often gets an 's' ending (mirroring the plural ending for most nouns) but when the subject is plural (often ending in an 's') the verb normally doesn't get an 's' ending. The frogs play in water. The frog plays in water. Why does the 's' effectively swap locations? Why not, "the frogs plays in water." Or "the frog play in water"? Or why not drops the singular/plural distinction from verbs altogether?
- umanwizard 9y ago
  What makes you think the -s ending is naturally plural, rather than just being completely arbitrary? I am pretty sure the etymology of the plural ending -s and the third person present verb ending -s (which used to be -eth in pre-modern forms of English) are unrelated, and they just sound the same by coincidence.
  - nkrisc 9y ago
    Well at it's core language is sort of completely arbitrary, but that's beside the point I'm making. I'm not debating the origin or why it is the way it is, but simply observing that this is how it is currently and it looks strange and counterintuitive.
    - umanwizard 9y ago
      I still don't understand what's strange about it. There is nothing inherently plural or singular about "s" or any other combination of sounds. English evolved a 3rd person singular verb ending. It randomly happened to be "s". It also evolved a plural noun ending. That too randomly happened to be "s". There's nothing deeper going on than that.
      - nkrisc 9y ago
        I'm not suggesting there's anything deeper nor do I understand why you think I am. I'm just pointing out that as English exists today, an 's' on the end of noun makes it plural while an 's' on the end of a verb makes it singular. And I think that's strange. That's it.
- Radim 9y ago
  Plurals evolved to serve a practical role in languages, so that'd be more devolution than evolution :-) You could also go Indonesian: repeat a noun for plural. "Frog-frog play in water!"
  - nkrisc 9y ago
    I'm not suggesting plurals be removed from language, merely a different way of representing it. Such as the Indonesian structure you mentioned, I like that.
- d_burfoot 9y ago
  What's interesting to me is that we use the same morphological operation (-s suffix) to express two very different concepts. You see this in other places as well, for example the Germanic -en suffix is used in at least 3 different ways in English: as the past participle verb tense (speak -spoken), as a way to transform adjectives into verbs (wide-widen) and (a very old) way to transform nouns into adjectives (gold-golden). Why not use different morphology for these different grammatical concepts? The language would be cleaner and more consistent. My theory is that, basically, it's hard to learn to pronounce many different sounds, but it's easy for our brains to sort through the ambiguity that the morphological overlap produces.
- Todd 9y ago
  It's because that's the way English verbs are conjugated. English actually has a very simple way of conjugating (regular) verbs. Most of the complexity of the ancestral Germanic has been lost. Contrast that to other Germanic languages. Swedish present tense, for example, is very simple. German still retains a complex morphology. The only inflection English retains in the present indicative is the -s suffix for 3rd person singular (frog). Third person plural (frogs) does not have an -s. The -s suffix for noun plurals, and for possessives (vestigial genitive case), add exceptions that make learning English a little harder. Edit: grammar :)
logfromblammo 9y ago
The amount that people care is measured in dollars. We can likely conclude that the amount that people care is less than the prevailing wage of a professional proofreader. A publication may one day be able to accumulate those who care the most as their customer base, and thereby assure the production of grammatically correct ephemera, but for now, other business interests prevail.

brchr 9y ago

This sentence looks fine to me vis-a-vis subject-verb agreement: "[personnel + produce + precision] go." How do you think it ought to read instead?

liveoneggs 9y ago
maybe he would refer "goes"? It's seemed okay to me.
8note 9y ago
I think he thought produce was a verb and not a type of raw food

hackeraccount 9y ago

Technically there's a cost to precision.

dang 9y ago

Please don't take HN threads into such nitpicky weeds, whether you happen to be right or not. In this case I don't think you were—Muphry's Law and all that—but there's nothing wrong with being wrong as such. Far worse on HN is being snarky. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newswelcome.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newswelcome.html