Comments on: Prescriptivism and Descriptivism

By: Kari

Kari — Fri, 04 Nov 2016 17:12:43 +0000

Your grammar is atrocious.

By: shellarc

shellarc — Tue, 25 Oct 2016 21:49:01 +0000

a pair is two pairs are

By: anon

anon — Tue, 15 Mar 2016 22:56:30 +0000

"It's wrong to use 'they' as a singular pronoun!". It's not. There are these things called 'gender neutral pronouns'. And 'they' is one of them. Tell those people they don't know what they're griping aboht

By: YY

YY — Thu, 10 Mar 2016 20:57:33 +0000

Thanks, really helped me... not with the English grammar to be exact but my understanding of legal theory haha. That's how helpful you've been

By: Joachim Murat

Joachim Murat — Mon, 22 Feb 2016 00:35:38 +0000

I wanted to kill you after reading that.

By: Brian Ess

Brian Ess — Sun, 10 Jan 2016 18:41:59 +0000

"An apple, I ate." would be Yoda's shibboleth. Surely that would fall into prescriptivism?

By: Mike

Mike — Fri, 27 Feb 2015 18:40:27 +0000

I'm a prescriptivist in the sense that the rule I'd love to enforce with ruthless efficiency is that linguistic snobbery be 'incorrect'.

My ire is raised by the pointless whinging. All the griping about people not following the "rules", rules about such asinine things ("It's wrong to use 'they' as a singular pronoun!"), things that make no sense ("'i' before 'e' except after 'c'"), and things that half the time aren't even manageable ("Thou shalt not end a sentence with a preposition").

'I an apple ate.' Is a perfectly fine sentence, as Yoda would tell you.

A little less worrying about 'less' over 'fewer' and we'll all live a little longer and be a little happyer.

By: Holland Marx

Holland Marx — Thu, 15 Aug 2013 16:58:15 +0000

I must be a prescriptivist because "begging the question" is certainly used here in error.

By: StoneyB

StoneyB — Thu, 18 Oct 2012 21:30:41 +0000

A very judicious treatment. You almost convince me that “prescriptivist” and “descriptivist” could again become valuable terms of civil discourse rather than mere party-labels. (But not quite. Yet.)

By: lex

lex — Thu, 18 Oct 2012 00:55:42 +0000

This is one of those you freedom ends where mine begins kind of top picks. For one who lives through the gradual change from prescriptionism (when even speech was eminently understandable and idioms were not a thing of mystery, it does seem possible to the balance to tip to far in either direction. I think there can be a problem when it comes to the command of English that should be aspired to be students, teachers, and parents alike. Some might say the teaching to a descriptive level could handicap the less prosperous in the employment market place. Others could counter, that with mosts tasks reduced to the level where skills mental skills are largely replaced--consider cash (voucher) register scanning and hand-a-wad and receipt change "making--so is complex communication replaced.