Proofreading Service - Pain in the English
Proofreading Service - Pain in the English

Your Pain Is Our Pleasure

24-Hour Proofreading Service—We proofread your Google Docs or Microsoft Word files. We hate grammatical errors with a passion. Learn More

Proofreading Service - Pain in the English
Proofreading Service - Pain in the English

Your Pain Is Our Pleasure

24-Hour Proofreading Service—We proofread your Google Docs or Microsoft Word files. We hate grammatical errors with a passion. Learn More

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jayles the unwoven

Member Since

June 3, 2014

Total number of comments

201

Total number of votes received

214

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Latest Comments

Subjunctive? Yoda speak?

  • January 30, 2016, 12:54pm

Subjunctive with inversion tends to mean "if" or "though" or "whether" as in:
"Yes, dearest, it is an awful moment to have to give up one's innocent child to a man, be he ever so kind and good..."
"As it might be, perhaps, were I a woman, ... " (12th night)

see also :
http://random-idea-english.blogspot.co.nz/2011/06/exploring-grammar-subjunctive.html

@HS Doubtless you are not alone. I must say I despair of modern English - I notice people no longer pray like they used to - whatever happened to :
"Oure fadir that art in heuenes, halewid be thi name; thi kyndoom come to; be thi wille don in erthe as in heuene: gyue to us this dai oure breed ouer othir substaunce; and forgyue to us oure dettis, as we forgyuen to oure gettouris; and lede us not in to temptacioun, but delyuere us fro yuel."

How times have changed!

Comma in long date format

  • January 7, 2016, 9:35pm

“Can I get” vs. “May I have”

  • November 26, 2015, 7:01pm

Overhead yesterday in a coffee shop:
Customer: Excuse me; I was wondering if I could trouble you for a side salad.
Waitress: Side salad?

Slight mismatch of styles!

@WW Sorry, I assumed 'cacography' was just a made-up word - it's all Greek to me ;}

Is ‘love’ continuous or not?

  • November 17, 2015, 1:07pm

The exact origin of the continuous aspect in English is debatable. The theory that I find most useful is that it corresponds to the dialect German eg: "Sie war am Buegeln" = She was an-ironing. This exists in English in phrases like:
"A-hunting we wil go"; "The cocks were a-crowing"; and so on.
The "a-" prefix was, as I understand it, originally a preposition as in "asleep", "awake", "abed", and so forth. In time the prefix fell by the wayside to form the continuous aspect, but the meaning of being in the process/activity remained.
The reason I favor this explanation is that it makes sense of the so-called "present perfect continuous" - "What have you been doing? I've been hunting. (cf I've been a-hunting.) The root idea behind the continuous is still to this day about being engaged in an activity or process.
Thus if one could say:
"How's the burger, Rastus?" "I'm a-loving it"
then it would all make sense. That it does not quite - as "loving" is not really an activity unless it involves bodily movement - demonstrates the underlying meaning of the continuous.

The whole thrust of the original question is misguided. Why do we need "a word" for "intentionally incorrect spellling". Surely the "word" is "intentionally incorrect spelling" if that is what one means. Why bury the meaning in some obscure word that few know or understand? Where does this mentality come from? We seem to do it all the time; for example "arachnophobia"? Who are we kidding? It's just very Stephen Fry and snobby. What's so wrong with "fear of spiders" - or even "spider-dread" or something that a normal person would understand. After all, isn't language for communicating with normal people? Why make it so esoteric?

@HS Why are you resorting to Greek? Why do you think that we must find and borrow a Greek/Latin word in order to make up a "proper" word for something? Why not just use an English expression like "willful misspelling" or something?
BTW "cacography" would just mean "bad writing" IIRC - 'kakos' means 'bad' and 'graphein' is to write cf 'cacophony' = bad sound

BTW when I started skool (and dinos roamed the earth) one of the beginner classes was named "2B", so we said:
2B, or not 2B?
Note the different pron!

There are three choices: question mark, period (full stop), or exclamation mark, depending on the intonation required.

http://www.chicagomanualofstyle.org/qanda/data/faq/topics/Punctuation/faq0068.html

Punctuation is there to show how the sentence is to be read, denoting pauses, intonation, interpolations and so forth.
Many rhetorical questions need a rising intonation at the end, so a question mark is appropriate. Sometimes a falling intonation is sought with a period (full stop). Try saying the following out loud and notice how the intonation changes:
To be, or not to be ?
To be, or not to be !
To be, or not to be.
To be or, not to be ??