Comments for Arrant Pedantry

Comment on Reflections on National Grammar Day by National Grammar Day: an outsider’s perspective « Sentence first

National Grammar Day: an outsider’s perspective « Sentence first — Thu, 04 Mar 2010 22:13:10 +0000

[...] the pleasure of its graceful handling, and to downplay the fussy fault-finding that has incurred the criticism of some language [...]

Comment on Grammar quiz by Brinestone

Brinestone — Wed, 17 Feb 2010 01:26:52 +0000

Your solution is fine but not necessary. There are times when the writer wishes to highlight the reason rather than the action; avoiding "The reason is . . . " altogether is impractical. The issue is because versus that.

Comment on Grammar quiz by SW

SW — Tue, 16 Feb 2010 23:39:35 +0000

What’s wrong with “She’s sleeping because she’s tired”? For that matter, why else might she be sleeping?

Comment on Eggcorns by Jonathon

Jonathon — Tue, 16 Feb 2010 17:37:15 +0000

Stan: The number of results Google is returning has changed since I wrote this post. I’m not sure why.

Comment on Not Surprising, This Sounds Awkward by Jonathon

Jonathon — Tue, 16 Feb 2010 17:35:48 +0000

I just came across another example in a proofread of the same book: “Interesting, Lehrer called for additional study. . . .” It doesn’t look like a fragment that was tacked onto a sentence. Obvious, the writer has a problem with sentence adverbs.

Bruce: I’m not sure what you’re talking about, unless you think there’s something wrong with the word “relevancy.” But that would be silly, because it’s in the dictionary and actually predates “relevance.”

Comment on Less and Fewer by Less or fewer? « Sentence first

Less or fewer? « Sentence first — Mon, 25 Jan 2010 21:53:32 +0000

[...] If you remain unconvinced: Bill Walsh, Motivated Grammar, Language Log, Bradshaw of the Future and Arrant Pedantry and have written very interesting posts about the less-fewer [...]

Comment on Not Surprising, This Sounds Awkward by Bruce

Bruce — Sun, 20 Dec 2009 18:49:40 +0000

My heart skipped a beat when I read “relevancy.” Ooh, genius! Either that, or it’s bait and I just bit.

Comment on Eggcorns by Stan Carey

Stan Carey — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 14:29:15 +0000

“The life in times” does seem to be a very common mistake, though I don’t remember noticing it before I read your post on it.

Incidentally, one of the numbers you quote at the end of the first paragraph seems to be out by a factor of 10.

Comment on Not Surprising, This Sounds Awkward by DeWitt

DeWitt — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 08:42:37 +0000

Could the examples be an attempt at brevity?

1) “It is not surprising the data show that…”
2) “It is quite possible yada yada yada”?

An attempt to mimic speech, where such phrases are used as fragments or interjections.

Example: “Professor, the monkey killed the rabbit with its tail!”
“Not surprising. In fact, monkeys perform many tasks with their tails.”

Comment on Not Surprising, This Sounds Awkward by Jonathon

Jonathon — Tue, 13 Oct 2009 17:42:17 +0000

Good question. In COCA, “not surprisingly” outnumbers “unsurprisingly” by about 14 to 1. A Google search turns up 3.5 times as many hits for “not surprisingly”. I’m not sure how to explain the distribution, but for whatever reason, it seems most people prefer “not surprisingly”.