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I haven't made a single grammar claim. I have, quite deliberately, not taken a prescriptive approach. Please quote and prove me wrong. Are you saying that my '

I haven't made a single grammar claim. I have, quite deliberately, not taken a prescriptive approach. Please quote and prove me wrong. Are you saying that my 'regretting nitpicking' is a grammar claim? It was true when I wrote it and doubly so now. Are you saying that when I wrote 'you could say' that I was making an assertion? "It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it," and all that. If everything is black and white to you then I'm not much interested in continuing this conversation. Are you saying that my reference to this as a grammar issue and not one of style is a claim? If so, I suggest you head over to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fewer_vs._less http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fewer_vs._less and correct all the text and metadata that mentions 'grammar' in the context of that argument.

dmm 13y ago
> I really really don't want to grammar-nitpick > I haven't made a single grammar claim. I interpreted you using the word 'grammar' to mean that you were making a grammatical claim. And I was thinking of grammar as binary thing, either right or wrong. I thought of grammar as a set of rules that would determine whether a statement was well-formed. You include in the idea of grammar not only correctness but also judgements like: "less bugs" sounds bad to me and probably isn't appropriate for professional communications. In my mind at the time that sort of statement wouldn't have been a matter of grammar. Maybe spending all day with formal languages and programming gave me that idea. I don't know how to communicate with you. It's hard to do sometimes with just the written word. Sorry for wasting your time.