Good grammar thread

[AdamSmith]

Taking up deej's call to arms, or to quills. In another thread he posted:

 

::chuckle::

 

Been a while since we've had a good grammar thread. (I'll leave it up to the reader to decide whether that means a thread about good grammar or a good thread about grammar.)

 

There are certainly times this site puts the greengrocer's apostrophe to shame.

 

I think Fowler would decree that "good grammar thread" would most readily be construed to mean "a good thread about grammar."

 

Whereas to communicate "a thread about good grammar," you would hyphenate: "good-grammar thread."

 

To wit, from The King's English:

 

1. Hyphens are regrettable necessities, and to be done without when they reasonably may.

 

2. There are three degrees of intimacy between words, of which the first and loosest is expressed by their mere juxtaposition as separate words, the second by their being hyphened, and the third or closest by their being written continuously as one word. Thus, hand workers, hand-workers, handworkers.

 

3. It is good English usage to place a noun or other non-adjectival part of speech before a noun, printing it as a separate word, and to regard it as serving the purpose of an adjective in virtue of its position; for instance, war expenditure; but there are sometimes special objections to its being done. Thus, words in -ing may be actual adjectives (participles), or nouns (gerunds), used in virtue of their position as adjectives; and a visible distinction is needed. A walking stick is a stick that walks, and the phrase might occur as a metaphorical description of a stiffly behaved person: a walking-stick or walkingstick is a stick for walking; the difference may sometimes be important, and consistency may be held to require that all compounds with gerunds should be hyphened or made into single words.

 

4. Not only can a single word in ordinary circumstances be thus treated as an adjective, but the same is true of a phrase; the words of the phrase, however, must then be hyphened, or ambiguity may result. Thus: Covent Garden; Covent-Garden Market; Covent-Garden-Market salesmen.

 

http://www.bartleby.com/116/405.html

[+ deej]

>1. Hyphens are regrettable necessities, and to be done without when they reasonably may.

 

I absolutely love that sentence. It could easily be rewritten as:

 

Hyphens are necessary except when they aren't.

 

;-)

 

(And #4 comes awfully close to saying "any noun can be verbed".)

[+ Charlie]

Any noun can be adjectived, as in "message-board-Lounge-forum posts."

[+ Charlie]

My favorite new phrase from a foreign student's paper which I read today:

 

"...and so fourth and so fifth."

[eeyore]

'The old grey donkey, Eeyore stood by himself in a thistly corner of the Forest, his front feet well apart, his head on one side, and thought about things. Sometimes he thought sadly to himself, "Why?" and sometimes he thought, "Wherefore?" and sometimes he thought, "Inasmuch as which?" and sometimes he didn't quite know what he was thinking about.'

A.A. Milne, Winnie the Pooh

[+ deej]

I always knew Eeyore was the thinker in the crowd. ;-)

[Guest zipperzone]

What a strange thread!