this post was submitted on 25 Jun 2023
290 points (100.0% liked)
Asklemmy
43950 readers
865 users here now
A loosely moderated place to ask open-ended questions
If your post meets the following criteria, it's welcome here!
- Open-ended question
- Not offensive: at this point, we do not have the bandwidth to moderate overtly political discussions. Assume best intent and be excellent to each other.
- Not regarding using or support for Lemmy: context, see the list of support communities and tools for finding communities below
- Not ad nauseam inducing: please make sure it is a question that would be new to most members
- An actual topic of discussion
Looking for support?
Looking for a community?
- Lemmyverse: community search
- sub.rehab: maps old subreddits to fediverse options, marks official as such
- !lemmy411@lemmy.ca: a community for finding communities
~Icon~ ~by~ ~@Double_A@discuss.tchncs.de~
founded 5 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
Especially in English, which is incredibly idiosyncratic.
I have an English degree so obviously I care about this shit. But I’ve spent enough time in the world to understand that there is more than one kind of education. I know brilliant sofrware programmers who might fuck up less/fewer. They’re not stupid. They have lots of education. I’m an idiot compared to them when it comes to logic and math. I have a friend who’s a master gardener, accomplished photographer, welder, electronics teacher, small business owner, IT technician, and a really good cook. He probably screws up a word here and there. He’s vastly more educated and intelligent than me.
So yeah… we should all just back off on being pedants about grammar and vocabulary rules, just a little bit.
An English major that's not a dirty prescriptivist?!? I thought it was impossible.
Yep. Especially as there is a lot more than simple "pedantic" grammar rules (or stylistic prescriptions as they so often are) to be "educated" about when it comes to English as a language, good practice for both speaking and writing, and of course language in general.