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I’m not a prescriptivist either. Language usage changes over time, and that’s fine. And my personal conventions for usage can be different than yours. The mor

I’m not a prescriptivist either. Language usage changes over time, and that’s fine. And my personal conventions for usage can be different than yours. The more interesting (to me) question is whether spoken English and written English share the same conventions. I think it’s abundantly clear that in most languages, they are divergent, to the point that some spoken languages have multiple written forms, each with their own ruleset for handling topics like formality or gender. So to me, saying “gonna” all day long doesn’t automatically transfer to writing, where most people write “going to.” Same with commas—the written conventions are not, as far as I’m concerned, about mimicking speech pauses. If that rule works for you, great. It doesn’t for me, and I fall back to patterns that are drawn from reading the written word. For low bar, I didn’t mean to sound like I was taking a dig. What I meant was that a written sentence which isn’t comprehensible isn’t functional. Once you get past functional, there’s a world of expression and nuance that come from different writing styles.

xanderlewis 2y ago
> And my personal conventions for usage can be different than yours. I don’t think anyone would disagree with that. But what bothers me (enough to eventually write a comment) is not that others’ conventions differ — it’s that they don't have conventions at all. Words are just strewn all over the page with abandon and anyone who questions it is told to piss off, usually via a long counter-rant laced with moral superiority and mentions of the standard buzzword ‘prescriptivism’. I suspect it’s because it’s deeply insulting and humiliating to be told you’re ignorant about something so seemingly basic, and almost everyone is ignorant when it comes to effective punctuation. > If that rule works for you, great. You give people too much credit. It’s not that they’ve tried several styles and eventually landed on this one as a matter of personal taste. They’ve never even noticed the difference. Again: that there are ‘no formal rules’ for language use does not imply there’s zero value in caring how language is used and trying to keep it consistent and logical.

xanderlewis 2y ago

> And my personal conventions for usage can be different than yours. I don’t think anyone would disagree with that. But what bothers me (enough to eventually write a comment) is not that others’ conventions differ — it’s that they don't have conventions at all. Words are just strewn all over the page with abandon and anyone who questions it is told to piss off, usually via a long counter-rant laced with moral superiority and mentions of the standard buzzword ‘prescriptivism’. I suspect it’s because it’s deeply insulting and humiliating to be told you’re ignorant about something so seemingly basic, and almost everyone is ignorant when it comes to effective punctuation. > If that rule works for you, great. You give people too much credit. It’s not that they’ve tried several styles and eventually landed on this one as a matter of personal taste. They’ve never even noticed the difference. Again: that there are ‘no formal rules’ for language use does not imply there’s zero value in caring how language is used and trying to keep it consistent and logical.