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Pastimes : SI Grammar and Spelling Lab -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: The Philosopher who wrote (3231)	7/24/1999 9:36:00 PM
From: Dayuhan	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 4711

Three questions and a comment: As a sophisticated user of the language, do you strive to make your writing correct or do you strive to make it beautiful? Do you think the two are the same? Is the use of "dialogue" or "expertise" as verbs aesthetically pleasing, to your ear? I have flexible mental lists of the people on SI who I feel write well. These are the people whose writing I like to read, regardless of what they are writing about, whose writing is as pleasing to the ear as good music. I also have a flexible mental list of those who consider themselves sophisticated users of the language. The lists are not the same.

To: The Philosopher who wrote (3231)	7/25/1999 1:19:00 AM
From: jbe	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 4711

Christopher and E -- IMO, you are both right, and you are both wrong. Christopher has a point, I think, when he observes that the "truly learned" may accept a usage that the "mostly learned" will reject. Just remember those sneers: "Ain't ain't in the dictionary." Well, it is now. Just be careful how and when you use it! But Christopher, you are in danger of turning the OED into a fetish. (In fact, somebody may get mad enough at you to sneak into your study at night, gather all 30 volumes up, carry them to the roof, and then drop them right on your head when you walk out of the front door in the morning! <g> ) And by the way, the OED folks themselves warn you that the OED is NOT, as you put it, "the most widely accepted authority on the proper and improper use of words": The Oxford English Dictionary is not an arbiter of proper usage, despite its widespread reputation to the contrary. The Dictionary is intended to be descriptive, not prescriptive. In other words, its content should be viewed as an objective reflection of English language usage, not a subjective collection of usage "do's" and "don'ts". oed.com Furthermore, according to this Guide to the OED: The usage of each word, meaning, or idiom in the Dictionary is documented through comprehensive examples drawn from quotations taken from printed texts of the present and the past. These quotation paragraphs begin with the earliest recorded occurrence of a term, and follow its development up to the modern period, unless the documentary evidence shows that the term has fallen out of use along the way. Now, I don't know how long a term has to be "out of use" before the editors put a little dagger before it (which means it is considered obsolete). Two centuries? Three? Four? In any event, the last use of "dialogue" as a verb recorded by the OED was 100 or more years ago. Therefore, I personally would avoid it. Even if it is not officially "obsolete," it is still "quaint" enough to raise eyebrows. Just because a word is "in the dictionary," is no reason to use it, as the editors themselves take pains to point out. Joan P.S. And if you should think I am just being "sour grapes," since I don't have an OED myself, well, I was "sour grapes" -- until I decided to buy the new CD-Rom version, coming out this year. (I don't have any more shelf space!)

To: The Philosopher who wrote (3231)	7/25/1999 1:37:00 AM
From: E	Respond to of 4711

You mean I have to get SEVEN supplements to have the whole thing? eeek. I will get them for Christmas, then. I wonder if ebay...? Yes, of course there is the question of who ARE the most sophisticated users. I, personally, choose to figure my friends, who are almost all writers and editors, are the most sophisticated! It happens that all our good friends are from that world, and even the ones who are lawyers and academics also write books. With the exception of a few painters and a cartoonist and a printmaker, I think that is true. These happen to be the people we meet. And I know for a certainty that not a one would use dialogue as a verb! But you may be sure I shall do it soon, and when it provokes "DID I HEAR WHAT I THINK I DID?"s from the assembled, I shall tell them what you proved! It will be fun. Still, I wouldn't use it unless I knew I would get to say hahahaha to them, because I have my pride!-- and to my ear it is in a category with those corporate noun-verbs, or "share" instead of tell, or "animus against" when the "animus" you mean contains the "against" within it (special to Joan!<g>, and even though <g>, I mean it!) Here is an exact quote from a meeting in a Washington D.C. office: Question was, Where's Sam?) Answer was, He shared that he was going to the bathroom. (That was just for your amusement.) As for ranking users of the language, it is personal, of course. I agree that there are a lot of impressive and expressive and creative minds, and users of English, here. To me, Steven is, in his expression, so elegant and eloquent, and so often and apparently effortlessly, that he came to mind as a paragon. (Though I suppose I shouldn't have given him the satisfaction, what with his recent positions on various things!) I could go along with your penultimate para, btw! This has been fun.