Conference thebay::joyoflex

    Re .0:
    
    > "We get a lot of business writing calls and how to deal with a
    > salutation when you don't know who you're writing to," Child said. 
    
    "Whom"!
    
    
    				-- edp

    I wonder if capitalizing the personal pronoun is due to the
    practicalities of typesetting?  The letter "i" in proportional
    characters is usually the thinnest of all the characters and the
    size of the space between words, making it hard to read if alone!
    
    Or maybe it's just "author's ego"!
    
    [ of course, it's not as bad form as someone's saying "I myself"!]
    
    	RMM
    

Northeastern University has a grammar hotline.  It was featured in a
newspaper writeup similar to .0 several years ago.  The number I have
for it is 617-437-2512, normal business hours, weekdays.

- tom]

["I" is likely capitalized because it is a "proper pronoun,"
that is, analogous to a named, proper noun.  The antecedant
is unique to the speaker.

    >> "We get a lot of business writing calls and how to deal with a
    >> salutation when you don't know who you're writing to," Child said. 

    edp's correction (.1):
    
    > "We get a lot of business writing calls and how to deal with a
    > salutation when you don't know whom you're writing to," Child said. 
                                     ^^^^
    
    This sounds awkward. I suggest that if one wants
    to use "whom" in this sentence then the preposition must be correctly
    positioned, as such:
    
    "We get a lot of business writing calls and how to deal with a
     salutation when you don't know to whom you're writing," Child said. 
                                    ^^^^^^^
                       
                                                   
                  /
                 (  ___
                  ) ///
                 /
    

    re .4:
    
    Don't pick on Eric's correction, especially when it's correct.
    
    :-)
    
    Steve Kallis, Jr.
    

For the capitalized "I" .2 is mostly correct, except it appeared first in
handwritten books before printing became popular.  There may be a little
bit of inflated ego in there, but mostly "I" became capitalized because
it looked stupid by itself in lower case.  This is from memory, so I may
be off...

-Mike

    Re .4:
    
    Say it a hundred times, and it will not sound so awkward.
    
    > I suggest that if one wants to use "whom" in this sentence then the
    > preposition must be correctly positioned, as such: . . .
    
    Oh, no, we're not going to get into that again, are we?  The
    preposition is fine where it is. 
    
    
    				-- edp

    
    We've got this backwards.  The letterform "I" was the original
    character used in the Roman alphabet.  Later, it was decapitalized
    to "i".  In the original, it also substituted for the letter "J"
    which wasn't invented until much later, having been ommitted, along
    with "U".  In the upper case section of a printer's type cabinet
    the letters "J" and "U" come after come after "X", "Y" and "Z".
    
    
    
    
    

    re .7:
                                
    > Oh, no, we're not going to get into that again, are we?  The
    > preposition is fine where it is. 

    No I was not trying to start "that" again. Maybe I should have not
    used "correctly". I was just saying that I thought it sounded better
    to say "...to whom one is writing"  rather than "...whom one is
    writing to". I did not mean to imply that you were violating any
    rule.
                                                   
                  /
                 (  ___
                  ) ///
                 /
    
    

re .8:  Sure capitalized letters came first, but during the time that only
capital letters existed, "I" was spelled (and pronounced) "ik" or "ich". So
even though that technically, "I" was originally capitalized (as "IK" or
"ICH"), so was everything else. It was during the time the "ik"/"ich" forms
evolved into "i" in written books that "I" became capitalized.  I got this
information from a trivia-type questions/answers display of the early English
language a university library had, so yell at them if you think they were
wrong.  They also had a display of (very) old books, which showed the
handwritten capital word "I".  The word "I" wasn't just capitalized, it
consisted of a whole bunch of scrolls and whirls that must have taken some monk
an hour each to draw.

J and U have nothing to do with this.

-Mike

    
    Grammar hotline sponsored by North Shore Community College, Beverly,
    Massachusetts.  
    
    	Telephone 593-7284
   
   	Hours: Monday through Friday  8:30 a.m. - 4 p.m.
    
   	
    
     

    Re: .6

    "For the capitalized "I" .2 is mostly correct, except it appeared first in
handwritten books before printing became popular.... This is from memory,
so I may be off..."

    
Inadvertantly showing your age ...

				by Dave Barry


I cannot overemphasize the importance of good grammar.

What a crock.  I could easily overemphasize the importance of good
grammar.  For example, I could say:  "Bad grammar is the leading cause
of slow, painful death in North America," or "Without good grammar, the
United States would have lost World War II."

The truth is that grammar is not the most important thing in the world.
The Super Bowl is the most important thing in the world.  But grammar is
still important.  For example, suppose you are being interviewed for a job
as an airline pilot, and your prospective employer asks you if you have any
experience, and you answer:  "Well, I ain't never flied no actual airplanes
or nothing, but I got several pilot-style hats and several friends who I
like to talk about airplanes with."

If you answer this way, the prospective employer will immediately realize
that you have ended your sentence with a preposition.  (What you should have
said, of course, is "...several friends with who I like to talk about
airplanes.")  So you will not get the job, because airline pilots have to
use good grammar when they get on the intercom and explain to the passengers
that, because of high winds, the plane is going to take off several hours
late and land in Pierre, South Dakota, instead of Los Angeles.

We did not always have grammar.  In medieval England, people said whatever
they wanted, without regard to rules, and as a result they sounded like morons.
Take the poet Geoffrey Chaucer, who couldn't even spell his first name right.
He wrote a large poem called "Canterbury Tales," in which people from various
professions - knight, monk, miller, reever, riveter, eeler, diver, stevedore,
spinnaker, etc. - drone on and on like this:

	In a somer sesun whon softe was the sunne
	I kylled a younge birde ande I ate it on a bunne.

When Chaucer's poem was published everybody read it and said:  "My God we
need some grammar around here."  So they formed a Grammar Commission, which
developed the parts of speech, the main ones being nouns, verbs, predicates,
conjunctures, particles, proverbs, adjoiners, coordinates and rebuttals.
Then the commission made up hundreds and hundreds of grammar rules, all of
which were strictly enforced.

When the colonists came to America, they rebelled against British grammar.
They openly used words like "ain't" and "finalize," and when they wrote the
Declaration of Independence they deliberately misspelled many words.  Thanks
to their courage, today we Americans have only two rules of grammar:

Rule 1.  The word "me" is always incorrect.

Most of us learn this rule as children, from our mothers.  We say things
like:  "Mom, can Bobby and me roll the camping trailer over Mrs. Johnson's
cat?"  And our mothers say:  "Remember your grammar, dear.  You mean:  'Can
Bobby and I roll the camping trailer over Mrs. Johnson's cat?'  Of course
you can, but be home by dinner-time."

The only exception to this rule is in formal business writing, where instead
of "I" you must use "the undersigned."  For example, this business letter is
incorrect:

"Dear Hunky-Dory Canned Fruit Company:  A couple of days ago my wife bought
a can of your cling peaches and served them to my mother who has a weak
heart and she damn near died when she bit into a live grub.  If I ever find
out where you live, I am gonna whomp you on the head with an ax handle."

This should be corrected as follows:  "...If the undersigned ever finds out
where you live, I am gonna whomp you on the head with an ax handle."

Rule 2.  You're not allowed to split infinitives.

An infinitive is the word "to" and whatever comes right behind it, such as
"to a tee," "to the best of my ability," "tomato," etc.  Splitting an
infinitive is putting something between the "to" and the other words.  For
example, this is incorrect:

"Hey man, you got any, you know, spare change you could give to, like, me?"

The correct version is:

"...spare change you could, like, give to me?"

			*	*	*

The advantage of American English is that, because there are so few rules,
practically anybody can learn to speak it in just a few minutes.  The
disadvantage is that Americans generally sound like jerks, whereas the British
sound really smart, especially to Americans.  That's why Americans are so fond
of those British dramas they're always showing on public television, the ones
introduced by Alistair Cooke.   Americans love people who talk like Alistair
Cooke.  He could introduce old episodes of "Hawaii Five-O" and Americans
would think they were extremely enlightening.

So the trick is to use American grammar, which is simple, but talk with a
British accent, which is impressive.  This technique is taught to all your
really snotty private schools, where the kids learn to sound like Elliot
Richardson.  Remember Elliot?  He sounded extremely British, and as a result
he got to be attorney general, secretary of state, chief justice of the
Supreme Court and vice president at the same time.

You can do it, too.  Practice in your home, then approach someone on the
street and say:  "Tally-ho, old chap.  I would consider it a great honour
if you would favor me with some spare change."  You're bound to get quick
results.

    Hi, I remember entering a note in another conference last week that made
    me feel uneasy. Consider the following:

        Both Nancy and Paul are going to the movies.
	Either Nancy or Paul is going to the movies.

    This I have no problem with, but...

        Both you and I are going to the movies.
	Either you or I ___ going to the movies.

    At the time I wrote it, I chose "are" but didn't feel good about it,
    because you would never say "I are going to the movies".

    What would be correct, and why?

    - Jim

    The preferred way to handle this is to sidestep the issue by recasting
    the verb.
    
    	Either you or I will go to the movies.
    	Either you or I will be going to the movies.
    
    Alternatively, remove the ellipsis by breaking the sentence up into its
    components:
    
    	Either you are going to the movies, or I am [going].
    
    The third, and by far the weakest, alternative is to give the verb the
    mumber and person matching the nearest subject:
    
    	Either you or I am going to the movies.

I think the correct sentence is "Either you or I is going to the movies."

        [At least] one of us is going to the movies. :-)
        
        Dan

	"Either you are or I am going to the movies."

	or

	"No, I don't want to go to the movies with you."

    I'm going to the movies; you're going to the dogs.

        What movie are you going to see?

    Groundhog Day, again.  What else would suit this conference?

Could someone please be kind enough to explain what "functional" grammar is as 
opposed to "traditional" grammar?

Chele

>Could someone please be kind enough to explain what "functional" grammar is as 
>opposed to "traditional" grammar?

Functional grammer is the kind that works?

	mhp

    It's a while since I studied this sort of thing, so I can't claim to be
    alive to all the nuances of academic language. But if I saw the term
    "functional grammar" I wouldn't be surprised to find it meaning
    `grammar of language as it is found to work in everyday expressions,
    not massaged by a knowledge of "traditional grammar"'. A more
    widely-used distinction in my experience (but closely allied, if not
    identical, I suspect) is descriptive grammar vs prescriptive grammar.
    
    b

    My guess:  Functional grammar is what everybody uses; traditional
    grammar are the rules written down in books 75 years ago.