Pedants sign here.

[lionheart]

Is this new topic an attempt to contain the rampant pedantry that exists on MN?

Discuss.

Roxy - totally agree about "different than". It doesn't make sense!
SenoraPostrophe - I don't like "different to" either, but I accept that I am possibly in the minority with that one.

Well, I prefer "different from" on the basis that it matches "divergent from", although I wouldn't object strongly if someone described a line as "divergent to" another. So I think "different to" is okay, but I just think "different from" is better.

I got an email on Friday with the title

"10% Of All Orders"

On opening it it transpired it was 10% Off All Orders.

On second thoughts, no. If you turn "divergent" into a verb, then "to" doesn't fit at all. A line diverges from. It doesn't diverge to.

Still, if you have to be wrong, "different to" is a much lesser offence, inviting no more than a police caution. "Different than" should attract the death penalty.

...and talking of the death penalty, I'm suddenly reminded of something the novelist Paul Bailey read in an essay submitted to him when he was teaching at a college in America: "Only severe capital punishment, such as death, can defer criminals".

At last I know I am not alone.

lol at "severe capital punishment"

ace. I love quotes like that.

BUT you know a word's etymology doesn't and shouldn't necessarily define its usage. "fuck" has the same etymological root as "fork" apparently (both related to fertility originally - fork the land, fork yer mrs), but they have quite different usages. forked if I can think of an example though.

I think it was at the Hoffnung concerts back in the very old days (long before my time) that a cod-German professor spoke about "modern music", and dismissed tuning up as outmoded. "No longer are we having ze forking-tune"

(Yes, we've heard Stockhausen, and we have noticed!!!)

re. -ise and -ize, it's not just OUP, Collins use -ize as house style too in their dictionaries. The reason for this is that dictionaries these days are all based on actual usage, ie they generally take a descriptive rather than a prescriptive approach to language. The stats say that -ize is more frequent than -ise, so -ize it is.

My own personal grammar itch is 'fewer' and 'less'. It's like a reflex. A misplaced 'less' and my mouth opens to shout 'fewer!'. A bit like Pedants' Tourette's. I can't control it.

Split infinitives on the other hand, I can live with. Apparently the 'rule' about not splitting them comes from the fact that grammarians tried to force the rules of Latin and Greek onto English. Of course, in Latin, the infinitive is only one word, and therefore impossible to split, hence the rule that it is 'wrong' to split it in English.

I think it's silly to unduly worry about it (erk. I take it all back).

Okay, fair point about etymology, SenorA, but I think where language connects closely with material things like geometry or physics or whatever, a certain strictness ought to be observed. Will stick with "different from" as the only form that is beyond criticism.

That's the reason I object to "smoking gun". I believe I'm correct in saying (though some forker will probably correct me) that its first use was in Spycatcher back in the 1980s(forget the author). It was used in the intelligence services to describe a very particular kind of evidence that pointed directly at a culprit, as opposed to the circumstantial kind that only pointed at a culprit by accumulation. It was an excellent metaphor for when someone was caught red-handed passing over secrets to a Russian. But of course a good metaphor never stays out of the media long, does it? Soon enough Ronnie Reagan was shouting at journalists, in that grinning way he had just before escaping in his helicopter, "There's no smoking gun!", which meant nothing more than "I'm not guilty". And now, of course, its original meaning has completely gone. During the run-up to the Iraq war I was attacked with chemical weapons myself. Every time I switched on the radio or TV I'd be overcome with fumes from that fucking "smoking gun" and I'd have to leave the room.

(Oh! I'm so glad to have got that off my chest! Thank you for listening.)

midnightexpress: that's right, and there are lots more rules like that. double negatives used to be common in English before the prescriptive grammarians did their work too.

and roxy, I agree about a good metaphor being watered down through over use. but you are probably fighting a losing battle!

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that sounds like a good rule, pruners. so evangelise, not evangelize? (God, evangelize looks ugly doesn't it?)

a better rule is: do not make a verb out of a noun by adding -ize unless you are a moronic teenage business consultant.

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The ise/ize thing is a matter of personal taste, but naturally, once adopted you have to be consistent. Publishing houses in the UK will adopt one or the other, and stick with it religiously.

The OED prefers 'ize'. Contrary to popular opinion, 'ize' is correct English. I tend to use it now, but I must admit that there's a part of me which prefers the 'ise'.

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I was told that it's 'ise' in words that are not derived from Latin. (Please don't ask me to back this up, I have been at a PTA sub-committee meeting in the local and am a bit blotto.)

I agree about 'evangelize.' It looks better with the Z.

Then there's the auxiliary verb "of". It used to be an exclusively American thing, but recently I've heard it quite a lot over here - I of; you of; he, she or it ofs; we all of.

I should of gone. He could of waited. If only they could of been....

Oh, Roxy I hope it doesn't catch on. In written English it looks appalling. In spoken English, it sounds worse!

Message withdrawn

I am a pendant pedant.

And I am proud.

Oooh, I was right, but for the wrong reasons. S'good enough for me.