Comments

1

Sigh, these grammar queens drive me crazy! The language used in the letter communicated the ideas effectively. Why be such a snot about this? If you're going to go out and publically insult the intelligence of a stranger, why not do it over something important, like climate change or how Trump's policies will affect their personal finances?

2

Oh, Dan, you missed the opportunity to write "At least one reader was deeply effected".

3

What is missing from the discussion about buying sex toys for kids is the notion of boundaries. There's certainly nothing wrong with buying/using/contemplating etc., but as a society we have seem to have agreed that not everyone wants to hear about it (for example, your average high school teacher or the receptionist at work may very well not). One area we put boundaries around is parents/kids & sex. Is the LW ready to hear the details about what kind of dildo his mom uses to bone his dad? I bet not. This is a prime opportunity to begin understanding when sexual conversations are/are not appropriate. In a time when anyone with a computer can easily buy a gift card and order whatever he/she wants (thereby effecting his/her goal - I want bonus points for use of the word), it seems like involving the parents is not necessary.

4

People make a lot of assumptions about teens and the availability of cash. The fact is that you just don't know what a given teen's situation is regarding personal funds.

5

“Everything is a dildo if you’re STUPID enough.”
And, also...

“Everywhere is within walking distance if you have enough time.”
-Stephen Wright

6

I feel bad for the kids of Liberated Painmother. She seems so hell bent on humiliating them for committing the crime of being horny.

Sarah I would say cleaning the toy is his responsibility and that the LW's job should end the with the use of her credit card. Checking on the status of a sex toy is a major boundary breach and downright creepy.

@1 I remember when these folks would proudly call themselves 'grammar nazis'. Kind of tells you all you need to know about them.

7

To the anti-grammarians, it already seems as if a significant portion of the population cannot distinguish between their/there, to/too/two, lose/loose, your/you're, etc. I don't think we can afford to get much worse. If we could contain this to the level of twenty years ago or so, it's actually useful, serving to tell one all one needs to know about people. As I've mentioned before, when I worked in a place that played conservative radio all day, I always knew to root against callers (It would be rather chic to say even the male ones, but alas that would be embroidering) to Dr Schlessinger when they began the call by using, "Me and my husband," as the subject of the first sentence.

One could make Austenian points on either side here. Ms Cute will doubtless recall how, during the Tilney siblings' country walk with Catherine Morland, Henry gets mildly snippy when Catherine asks whether the gothic novel Udolpho isn't "the nicest book in the world". He goes off a little, "...Originally, perhaps, it was applied only to express neatness, propriety, delicacy or refinement; people were nice in their dress, in their sentiments, or their choice. But now every commendation on every subject is comprised in that one word."
"While in fact," cried his sister, "it ought only to be applied to you, without any commendation at all. You are more nice than wise." (Point to Eleanor, I think.)

On the other side, we have Miss Austen's penchant for giving her less virtuous characters, particularly women, bad grammar. Lucy Steele is the prime case in point. Mrs Elton would be a second.

8

It’s been a while since the grammar freaks raised their heads. Perhaps being such fragile sorts, it might be best they stayed off the internet. Grammar-barbarians are everywhere.

9

@7@8, Pointing out every grammatic or punctuational error in an internet comment section is a fool's errand to be sure, but our communitive language, at its best as I remember it, should in some way be observed, preserved, if not enforced.

10

Why shouldn't a person's poor grasp of proper grammar color our impressions of them?

11

@10 I do believe you meant how should it "colour" our impressions of them.

12

@10 Let us read from Breitbart 4/17

13

Typos are annoying to read if you're someone who loves language. I get it, I majored in English and Theater. But there are a number of reasons why people make small mistakes like that. Are we really going to place value judgements on people for not noticing when their autocorrect ducks up? Or worse, for not having the same educational opportunities? Judging people's grammar is at best petty, at worst elitist.

14

English is a living language, and it evolves. Regional accents and dialects have been disappearing over the past 30-40 years due to the ubiquity of television. And people don't read books for entertainment or education, so words like "you're" and "affects" are indistinguishable from "your" and "effects". Plus texting shorthand. Throw in the affects of autocorrect and your ducked.

15

Beccoid @1: It's "publicly." :)

I agree both that it can be (CAN BE) rude and annoying to call someone out on spelling or grammatical mistakes. However, it is true that poor English will make the person who wrote it appear less intelligent. Generally I can tell -- and forgive -- autocorrect issues, dyslexia or English as a non-native language. On the other hand, while it may be haughty to correct it's stubborn and obtuse not to take politely phrased corrections on board. It's not necessarily a "judgement" (BabyRae @13), as no guess is being made as to WHY the person doesn't know that effect and affect are two different words; it's simply an attempt, probably futile, to get at least one or two people out there to understand there's a difference and improve their grammar ever so slightly. I've learned a few things from grammar nazis on the internet, so I have to believe that gentle, general corrections of common mistakes are worthwhile.

16

And yup, I should have edited out the "both" in my second sentence there. :) I am blaming jet lag.

17

Hope you had fun, Fan.
Why do people think it’s ok to go grammar corrector on Dan’s pages and the same people won’t be writing a lesson on other threads? It’s rude and unnecessary because we all get the meaning of the sentence.

18

Antiserumite@11, said it. It’s colour. It’s neighbour. It’s programme. Etc.
We proper English speakers have to hold our fingers over and over and over again.

19

Or is it, Us proper English speakers. Or maybe Me and my buddies, the proper English speakers. No. Others first. My buddies and I, being proper English speakers.

20

Lava @17: If the grammar nazis corrected EVERY instance of bad grammar they would never sleep. Presumably everyone has their personal bugbears or tipping points, or they just get fed up. Rude? No more than sharing any other bit of information, if it is not done in such a way as to intentionally make the writer feel stupid. Unnecessary? Not really because these errors keep happening. If anything, MORE correction is necessary. (But usually futile, hence my refraining from correcting every mistake I read.)

I did have a good time, thanks!

And it is indeed "we proper English speakers." We is a subject pronoun. Bring back sentence diagramming in schools! I must say that pompous mistakes grind my gears more than colloquial ones, ie, "Me and my husband like bondage," I can let slide, versus "MYSELF and my husband like bondage." Aaaargghghhhhh. See also the incorrect use of whom when it should be who.

21

BiDanFan @20: There's a simple rule: omit the husband. Even the most casual English speaker would find "Me like bondage" and "Myself like bondage" to be equally preposterous.

22

I remember seeing an interview many years ago of a smart, humorous black woman who was a scientist, talking about the experience of having gone to an all black college at one stage of her education. Among other things she said "If you said "ain't" now and then, everyone understood that it was just the word "ain't", a part of the dialect you were brought up with. They didn't assume you were stupid or incompetent. That was a big relief; I didn't have to deal with the language-based assumptions I'd had to face at a mostly white college."

I took that lesson to heart.

I was brought up in a grammatically sensitive household which had no patience with any dialect of English other than the dialect we spoke. I have since become a better educated user of English. I enjoy the variety of English dialects that exist in the world, I glory in the inventiveness I encounter, and I now understand that there's no "correct" version of English except in narrow contexts which require a specific dialect to be used in just that context.

I'm sure that some of those reading this will have been offended by such a modern approach, but others will have been comforted. There just ain't no way to satisfy everyone.

23

Loads of people mix up words like their/there or effect/affect b/c they honestly don't know the difference. Even more people do it b/c they were careless, just a mistake. Does this matter? Depends on the context. When someone does it (unintentionally) in a professional or artistic context, sure that matters. Language is a tool.

But if someone casually typing/writing makes a mistake for either reason- who cares? People who get worked up about this are probably the same people that worry about etiquette. Like, you shoveled your soup spoon towards you instead of away from you, donkey donkey in a stable, why are your elbows on the table! Or maybe they're people who were good at worksheets in middle school and therefore have their self-perception wrapped up in being good at rote learning and enforcement of the rules so they look for opportunities to demonstrate that?

The simplest explanation is just that we all like to bitch about stuff, and that's the second most common reason for using the internet in the first place.

Regarding the use of ME as a subject- it doesn't bother me in casual talk/writing. It's normal in regular speech to say stuff like "me and Bobby went to the sex dungeon". This is natural for a lot of the English speaking world. It bothers me more when they make the mistake in reverse and use "I" as the object ("The dom spanked Bobby and I") because it's unnatural. Whenever you hear this, it's someone over-correcting in an attempt to talk "properly". At some point in school, they were taught not to say their natural "Me and Bobby" but to say the correct "Bobby and I" and they never really understood the lesson and just internalized this part. I never say anything because we all say wrong things from time to time and there's no reason for us to run around like assholes pointing it out to each other all day long, but it makes me sad to hear "I" as a subject in the same way that it makes me sad to see someone wear a belt with suspenders.

24

I as object and sadness that is.

BTW I love the idea of old timey stuff combined with silly sexy stuff like the cross-stitch dildo message. I think Dan had pretty throw pillows that said "fuck first" on them, right? I wonder if there is a word for this kind of decor? Like placemats and napkin rings shaped like genitalia etc.

Also I've been out of the country and didn't see the comments on the original letter, but I saw it posted on Twitter and I don't think anyone ever gave the kid advice on how to actually buy the dildo himself? What can a poor boy do?

25

Okay, back on topic.
No one wrote in to say that the "fleshlights" were a poor substitute for a hand? I've used a couple. Meh.


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