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

Username

dogreed

Member Since

August 19, 2010

Total number of comments

26

Total number of votes received

153

Bio

Latest Comments

all _____ sudden

  • October 21, 2010, 2:20am

Slobby: what's your point? That Kipling meddled with the idiom merely illustrates its malleability. I'm not a fan of "all the sudden." I never said I was. It ain't entirely grammatical, but if it's a regional idiom leave it alone, it does no real harm. English won't die from diversity.

all _____ sudden

  • October 18, 2010, 2:23am

Kipling truncated the idiom to "of a sudden." I suspect, Slobby, he'd read a book.

ahoff:

I was, I think, intemperate in my comment. You are clearly passionate about language. We agree, at least, on one point: [those] who teach English should teach it with reverence and love. That can be said of all teaching.

I do not teach English, but I have been a teacher. And I know that teaching is a very difficult thing to do. With your passion I suspect you do it well.

Ahoff said:

"It is my job as an English teacher to 1) uphold correct grammar and 2) defend the dignity and tradition of the language."

Is it? Really? I would have expected your job to be teaching English. Not upholding it, Not defending it. But teaching it, with reverence to meaning and love of nuance.

Who do you teach? If it's children, I pity them.

Afraid not

  • August 23, 2010, 3:25am

nappidesignm offers this:

"Furthermore, American English is often evolving unfortunately becoming more simplified thanks to black culture, I’m afraid."

Please explain this comment.

“Anglish”

  • August 19, 2010, 2:25am

For those only now noticing it, I point out that loan-words have been part of English since its beginnings: Google "Old Norse."

If Latin-borrowings "have no flavor, color, or feeling" for you, perhaps the problem is not with the words but with your understanding of English, and of its history. (By the way, "agglutination” is a noun. Gerunds like “heaping together” and “together-heaping” are verbs.)

Personally, I find agglutination a colorful word, full of flavor and feeling. Not a word I'd toss on the together-heap of history. (Whatever that means.)