-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 Ekhart,
A very persuasive and clear post! :-) Ekhart GEORGI (last name last) wrote: | Luke Myers wrote: | I'm not a linguistic expert, but based on the little i've read on the Nor am I, but being a native speaker and interested in writing and language that won't stop me weighing in. ;-) | "There was quite a variety in character among the participants of the | Lonely Singles Convention, ranging from lazy and coy on the one hand to | active and honest and/or outspoken on the other. Unfortunately, the lazy | and coy participants were often grouped together; this made it even | harder for the lazies to get a grip on themselves and for the coys to | learn to show their interest honestly or convincingly. On the contrary, | the (often too) active participants learned a lot from both the (often | too) honest and the (often too) outspoken ones, but only very few | romantic relationships arose between the outspoken and the active ones." | (not: outspokens; rarely: actives) Nor "lazies" nor "coys" IMHO. I'd like to point out that writing and speaking styles also vary greatly across different English speaking communities. The example you contrived above is very "American" in style. I could not envisage it appearing in the rest of the English speaking world. Whereas US speakers are fond of using verbs as nouns, nouns as verbs, adjectives as nouns etc., this happens much less frequently in British English and English in other parts of the commonwealth. Such misuse of words is generally frowned upon. We prefer to invent new words or use the correct one. Consequently most British English speakers actually have a significantly larger vocabulary than American speakers (according to a study I read a short while ago). | Not to mention that there are hundreds of Google hits with "two coys", | "three coys", etc. since coy is apparently a commonly used short form of | "company" in military circles. Once again US usage, but not here in the UK. I'd also like to caution against trusting what it written on the web, and particularly the language used; most is extremely poor. | There's also a verb "coy", which is obviously conjugated "she coys": | www.m-w.com/cgi-bin/dictionary?book=Dictionary&va=coys&x=0&y=0 A US dictionary. I simply mention this to reiterate that the English that is spoken in north America is typical of there, but does not represent English throughout the world. However, the main idea I'd like to put across is the function of the spelling checker and grammar checker in an office program for use by the masses. Its objective is to detect and flag most of the common errors made by ordinary people. If it is too comprehensive many common errors would not be detected, because an archaic or rare form of usage happens to be the same. On the other hand if it is too concise many errors will not be picked up. I'd argue that "coys" and "lazies" should definitely be flagged as spelling errors (even in US English). This principle is even more important for a grammar checker. A good writer will turn off grammar checking anyway. They may leave spelling checking on so that slips of the fingers are labelled as errors. So IMHO a grammar checker has to be aimed at the masses and those who are less proficient writers, and it should guide the author towards good simple grammatical language eschewing flowery, poetic and complex language forms. Just my 2p'th David. -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1.4.1 (GNU/Linux) iD8DBQFCkYjzgH46HTEjeiURAlHcAJ9qO2FUmfv37MUUSTFlty09+Sc9+ACgnp1M WnMhQQWFLiuGWgleIJ9ZX0A= =HyPe -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
