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> why complicate matters further by limiting yourself to perfect sentences and lose out on the extra nuance? My problem with that, and I'm sympathetic to both
by bmelton 13y ago
> why complicate matters further by limiting yourself to perfect sentences and lose out on the extra nuance?
My problem with that, and I'm sympathetic to both situations, but it seems as though the rules of proper grammar have been replaced with new rules that are less expressive than the old rules.
Sure, if the community infers a period as hostile, then clearly, one attempting to avoid seeming hostile would be wise to avoid using periods. However, why is that the case? How did it get there in the first place?
Yes, I know it's been this way for awhile, but the editor in my soul won't allow me to craft broken sentences, even where I know that they'll be more effective at communicating. Yes, I acknowledge that's a problem of mine, but I would argue that the bigger problem is that people are looking for more expressiveness by arbitrarily assigning connotation to things that otherwise bear none, while completely disregarding that there are ways to be more expressive through regular old English.
- gizmo 13y ago1. NO. 2. No. 3. no. 4. No 5. no Only number 2 is correct grammatically. You can expand the list with other versions of no (nope, no-no) and with other punctuation (exclamation mark, ellipsis). There are easily 20 different versions of "no" I can think of from the top of my head. Clearly being able to pick the "no" that fits best is an expressive advantage. I agree that there are ways to express yourself precisely in correct/formal English, but it's a lot more verbose. Language is really pliable. It's quite strange that "fuck no" offends only puritans but "uhm... no." can set off fireworks with nearly anybody. I guess we all just have to adapt.
- humanrebar 13y ago> Language is really pliable. It's quite strange that "fuck no" offends only puritans but "uhm... no." can set off fireworks with nearly anybody. I'd be more offended by the former than the latter, though I wouldn't be all that offended in either case. > I guess we all just have to adapt. I agree, if by adapt you mean we can all just chill out a little and be better listeners. I think the graph of grammatical and punctuation expectations is growing a longer tail.
- socillion 13y agoThere seems to be a common point of confusion in this discussion. It isn't the case that using a period implies hostility or anything else, it's using a period in a context where it's unexpected. In other words: if you avoid using periods in most messages, then use a period, it conveys just as much information about your tone as ending with an emoticon. If you always use a period, it's meaningless - but people don't, and therefore it has meaning in those situations.