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I for one wholeheartedly disapprove of an app like this. We don't need things enforcing old, arbitrary modes of prescriptivist grammar. If you spent time writin

I for one wholeheartedly disapprove of an app like this. We don't need things enforcing old, arbitrary modes of prescriptivist grammar. If you spent time writing this, and you didn't realize along the way that natural language is far too complex and nuanced to support such reductivist, Cartesian attitudes, then you're entirely missing the point of how natural language works. You're sending the wrong message and masquerading as a language expert, when really you're just codifying meaningless, pedantic complaints about how other speaker groups utilize a roughly identical system using shared constructions. Those attitudes lead to unnecessary prejudice against others at best and bigotry at worst. You want to know the best way to determine whether or not a construction is grammatical? Whether someone said it, and another person understood it. Because well-formedness is ultimately determined on a gradient scale, and not a categorical one with a series of by-laws like some kind of rulebook for a secret club.

apl 14y ago
> well-formedness is ultimately determined on a gradient > scale So you're willing to admit there's a scale. That's great. Use stylistic rules as a guide for where you are on that scale; they're a brilliant heuristic. After all, it's not all relative. Once you've accumulated sufficient experience, you'll know when to ignore a rule.
cynicalkane 14y ago
Someone posts a really neat language tool, and the top-voted post is not talking about the technical merits or interest of the tool, but is instead a pretentious rant about how real language is what ordinary people speak and understand. You know, phrases like "Cartesian attitudes" and "identical system using shared constructions". This is the descriptivist-approved language for the masses. Using 'whereas' instead of 'while' is an elitist habit that must be stopped, whereas name-dropping dead philosophers out of context is the mark of a humanist. Anyway, I'm primarily interested in hacking, not in seeing some angry nerd on the Internet make excuses to take down someone else's technically challenging work.
fredsted 14y ago
I tried this tool on a few texts and it recommended some fixes on ambiguous and redundant words. It didn't change the style as much as it improved the clarity and comprehensibility of the text. I think you're overreacting.
_delirium 14y ago
The bigger problem imo isn't so much that language changes, but that many of the rules enforced here (and in some older style guides) never existed to begin with, in the sense that not even elite or literary usage followed them, let alone common usage. There was an unfortunate period in English grammar, around the late 19th and early/mid 20th centuries, where grammarians tried to "purify" the language with invented rules, often modeled on Latin grammar. Strunk & White's Elements of Style is one of the offenders from that era that sadly lingers on in reprintings. A tool based on rules that bear some closer resemblance to actual English grammar would be interesting to me. Maybe something that checked against the recommendations in a recent edition of the Chicago Manual of Style. The technical aspects of this tool don't seem hugely tied to the specific constructs it currently flags, so perhaps that could be done (though the source is not available, so perhaps not).
jamesbritt 14y ago
Whether someone said it, and another person understood it. The problem for me is that when I write something I may not know that what someone understood is really what I intended. No matter what I write there's no magic way to make every reader understand exactly what I meant, but if I adhere to some rules of grammar that I expect are reasonably comprehended than I have a better chance. So, for example, if I write, "The result was less bugs", some people may take that to mean the total number of bugs went down (i.e, "fewer bugs") while others may think that the number of bugs stayed the same but that the bugs were not as serious ("lesser bugs"). Pedantry can be helpful here.

apl 14y ago

> well-formedness is ultimately determined on a gradient > scale So you're willing to admit there's a scale. That's great. Use stylistic rules as a guide for where you are on that scale; they're a brilliant heuristic. After all, it's not all relative. Once you've accumulated sufficient experience, you'll know when to ignore a rule.

cynicalkane 14y ago

Someone posts a really neat language tool, and the top-voted post is not talking about the technical merits or interest of the tool, but is instead a pretentious rant about how real language is what ordinary people speak and understand. You know, phrases like "Cartesian attitudes" and "identical system using shared constructions". This is the descriptivist-approved language for the masses. Using 'whereas' instead of 'while' is an elitist habit that must be stopped, whereas name-dropping dead philosophers out of context is the mark of a humanist. Anyway, I'm primarily interested in hacking, not in seeing some angry nerd on the Internet make excuses to take down someone else's technically challenging work.

fredsted 14y ago

I tried this tool on a few texts and it recommended some fixes on ambiguous and redundant words. It didn't change the style as much as it improved the clarity and comprehensibility of the text. I think you're overreacting.

_delirium 14y ago

The bigger problem imo isn't so much that language changes, but that many of the rules enforced here (and in some older style guides) never existed to begin with, in the sense that not even elite or literary usage followed them, let alone common usage. There was an unfortunate period in English grammar, around the late 19th and early/mid 20th centuries, where grammarians tried to "purify" the language with invented rules, often modeled on Latin grammar. Strunk & White's Elements of Style is one of the offenders from that era that sadly lingers on in reprintings. A tool based on rules that bear some closer resemblance to actual English grammar would be interesting to me. Maybe something that checked against the recommendations in a recent edition of the Chicago Manual of Style. The technical aspects of this tool don't seem hugely tied to the specific constructs it currently flags, so perhaps that could be done (though the source is not available, so perhaps not).

jamesbritt 14y ago

Whether someone said it, and another person understood it. The problem for me is that when I write something I may not know that what someone understood is really what I intended. No matter what I write there's no magic way to make every reader understand exactly what I meant, but if I adhere to some rules of grammar that I expect are reasonably comprehended than I have a better chance. So, for example, if I write, "The result was less bugs", some people may take that to mean the total number of bugs went down (i.e, "fewer bugs") while others may think that the number of bugs stayed the same but that the bugs were not as serious ("lesser bugs"). Pedantry can be helpful here.