As in, doesn’t matter at all to you.
End a sentence with a preposition if you want to. And start one with a conjunction.
That’s not just you, that’s people who know the rules of the English language and don’t care about Latin or what dead idiots thought.
https://www.merriam-webster.com/grammar/prepositions-ending-a-sentence-with
Gotta love Merriam Webster. They are fantastic.
I like ending my sentences with and.
Putting question marks or exclamation points after “quotation marks”! I’ve never understood the point of putting the punctuation inside the quotation unless it’s part of the quotation itself.
Quote is full sentence: inside. Quote is part of sentence or word: outside.
Eg:
“Oh no!” he gasped.
And
Apparently she’s “done with me”!
Love, an editor.
This is how you’re supposed to do it in Dutch.
The teacher said “silence!”.
Vs
The teacher said “silence”!
Mean something completely different. Although a few large literature publishers do punctuation before bracket because of translation ease, and novels almost never contain partial quotes anyway AND they include the optional comma at all times, which causes
“Silence!,” said the teacher.
Shudder
Especially also when you’re using them to be facetious.
He’s “talented”.
He’s “talented.”
For me it depends on if you are quoting someone (punctuation inside quote) or just using a phrase like “woke” (punctuation outside).
I really like to write ‘gonna.’
I spells it like I says it
I’m never gonna give it up.
If I am clearly referring to myself (as in a text), I shouldn’t have to inlude myself in the sentence. Ex: “just grabbing food” vs “I’m just grabbing food”.
And we can drop “the” sometimes, “close gate”.
I see you also play 80s text adventure games…
Close gate? No it’s all the way over there.
“Where wolf? There wolf! [points] There castle!”
A lot of languages are pro-drop and do this when the context is clear (and sometimes when it isn’t). I remember learning Japanese and people saying “we would never do that in English!”. My counterexample was always that, if someone came to my house and asked where the beer is, I’d say “fridge.” because that’s all the information the hearer needs.
In Spanish, the conjugation of the verb lets you drop the subject, which is eloquent.
“¿Qué haces?”
“Estoy
llegandollevando comida.”I’m not sure “I’m arriving food” is the best spanish out there
Whoops, that should be llevando, not llegando.
Ending a sentence with a preposition has been standard in English for longer than the language has existed, it’s nothing to be ashamed of.
I see what you did there.
Nothing about which to be ashamed. 🤓
There’s a funny bit in “the last man on earth” where Kristen Schaal’s character always corrects people when they end their sentences with a preposition. It shows how much more ridiculous her correction sounds.
… Not a great show, but that bit was pretty funny.
The right to gleefully split infinitives.
Adverbs as a rule can go anywhere in a sentence, so split away, I say!
It is perfectly cromulent to use “less” in place of “fewer”.
Some would say it’s fewer correct, however.
lol
The fact I understand all the vocabulary you used embiggens me.
I feel like a lot of the grammar sticklers out there only speak one language, and their lack of sympathy towards people speaking English as a second or third language is low.
If you can convey your point– good enough for me!
To anyone who has a problem with singular they:
Roses are red, violets aren’t blue
Singular they is older than singular youAnyone who has a problem with singular they can eat my non-binary ass.
I think outside of highly formalized writing (usually found exclusively in academia) grammar only matters to the extent that it doesn’t interfere with the voice of the author.
It matters because it makes things easier to read. A wall of text with no punctuation or capitalization is difficult to parse, both for the reader and for the writer if they need to go back and make changes.
On the other hand, punctuation can be used incorrectly to convey things that might be part of how the author speaks. Examples being: using ellipsis to indicate trailing off at the end of a sentence, perhaps because you’re still trying to find words to finish the thought, or using parentheses to indicate a slight tangent or clarifying statement, or failing to use a period at the end of a text message to indicate a softer tone and an openness to a response.
Capitalization and misspellings can be used similarly. Such as intentionally misspelling a word to indicate that it should be pronounced differently than usual, or capitalizing all or part of a word to add emphasis.
TLDR: Proper grammar matters for clearly conveying information, but intentionally breaking grammatical rules is a good way to add your voice, personality, and tone into your writing. And that is more important than being technically correct.
I’m really fond of using “I’mma” and “gonna”.
I obviously wouldn’t use these words in a professional document, but everywhere else I’mma use “gonna” and “I’mma” whenever I feel like it.
I like to put apostrophes where they do’nt belong.
I don’t know if shouldn’t’ve is grammatically correct but I hear it a lot so it seems like fair play. Same for other contractions that I never see in text, possibly because they’re wrong. Because’ve. He’d’ve.
Also like I’ma which can’t possibly be ok, but “I am going to” is for suckers.
Would’ve: fine. Would have: fine. Would of: me go mental! Why do people do this?! Argh!
I will accept “would ve” before “would of”
Agreed. I enjoy that I confused “because of” with “because have” in my own example tho
Don’t confuse dialectal differences with bad grammar, please.
I like y’all’re
Y’all’d’ve (YAWL-duh if your drawl is heavy enough): You all would have
Good effort, let’s make it bigger: y’all’d’nt’ve
Because have? When and how has that ever been used?
Hah! I mightn’t’ve thought enough about that example, probably because of a lack of sleep.
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who/whom.
Maybe it’s because that English is not my first language but I always find it confusing.
If you can replace the word with “he”, you always use who. If you can replace the word with “him”, you can use whom if you want to.
Whom did you lead into battle?
I led him into battle.
Who ate all the cake?
He ate all the cake.
The key takeaway is you can always use who and it will be correct, because who is both a subject and an object. So, if you don’t want to bother with the rule, just stick to who and you can’t go wrong.
Ah it’s kind of like Jeopardy! You’ve gotta visualize the answer to know how to phrase the question.
To whom/for whom is supposed to be the rule for when to use whom, but in American English it sounds way too formal.
Whomst is a fun one.
Whomst’d’ve
There’s a pretty trivial rule for getting this right. Phrase your sentence using who/whom as a question. Respond with he/him. If your response contains a “he”, your initial statement should be “who”; if it contains a “him” then you’re looking at a “whom” use.
- ex: “To who/whom should the gold be given?” -> “To him” -> “whom”
- ex: “Who/whom wants the gold?” -> “He wants the gold” -> “who”
- ex: “Who/whom did you see at the party?” -> “I saw him” -> “whom”
- ex: “The man who/whom called earlier is here” -> “Who/whom called?” -> “he called” -> “who”
I tell people this and say, “Follow the M.”
if you are familiar with object vs subject in grammar you already know the rule,
whois used when it’s the subject,whomwhen the object:Who is that?
That’s who ate my ice cream.
Whom did you give ice cream to?
The ice cream went to the one whom I saw first.
This rule is the same as knowing when to use
sheorhevs when to useherorhim, it’s no different.However, most people don’t use
whomcorrectly and it can just be avoided entirely, most people will just usewhoas the object anyway and it will sound more natural to them:Who did you give ice cream to?
The ice cream went to the one who I saw first.
Using
whomin these cases can make you sound formal or fancy, and draws attention.It’s pretty much a dead language feature anyway, at least in my area. Whom sounds pretentious as hell if you actually say it. Like, you’d get away about as well with thee or thou.
i’m not prescriptive with grammar. it is descriptive. so “common usage” is fine by me.
and there are even racist undertones to a lot of it. sometimes the word “ask” gets pronounced as “axe” which some people throw fits of hissy all over the place.
Chaucer, the grandfather of modern English, had no problem using the “axe” version. so i’m more down with common usage for speech but knowing the variety of rules and how they have been used historically is a fun exercise in linguistic study and discourse.
but its all good.
