Pedants' Paradise

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

A good point.

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

This morning’s BBC News website has a headline referring to plans for the highest wind turbines in England.

Where would that be, I wondered? On top of Cross Fell perhaps.

As this is Pedants' Paradise, allow me to be pedantic.
Cross Fell is the highest point of the Pennines, but not of England.

[vinteuil]

Sotheby's are selling (a snip at £3.95 million, I wd have thought) Magna Carta island, including a main property with 7 bedrooms, 4 reception rooms, swimming pool, secondary cottage, tree planted by HM The Queen, etc.

I did enjoy their typo -

"The grounds were mostly laid out in the 1920s with an expansive lawn, topiary ewe trees whilst 402 metres of river bank frontage provides an ideal mooring for boats."

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

Perhaps the employee writing down the details was a bit mutton?

[Pabmusic]

... "The grounds were mostly laid out in the 1920s with an expansive lawn, topiary ewe trees whilst 402 metres of river bank frontage provides an ideal mooring for boats."

Surely an expensive lawn?

[Stan Drews]

"The grounds were mostly laid out in the 1920s with an expansive lawn, topiary ewe trees whilst 402 metres of river bank frontage provides an ideal mooring for boats."

http://uniquetopiary.com.au/zen/index.php?main_page=product_info&products_id=42

[vinteuil]

"The grounds were mostly laid out in the 1920s with an expansive lawn, topiary ewe trees whilst 402 metres of river bank frontage provides an ideal mooring for boats."

http://uniquetopiary.com.au/zen/inde...products_id=42

... well, clearly I shall have to go and inspect to see whether it's a question of sheep or trees!

Perhaps I might put in an offer while I'm there


EDIT -

sadly they have corrected the spelling on their website :

http://www.sothebysrealty.co.uk/buy/property/7-bedroom-detached-house-in-wraysbury,tw19-for-guide-price-gbp-3,950,000-ref-2600638/

[Don Petter]

As this is Pedants' Paradise, allow me to be pedantic.
Cross Fell is the highest point of the Pennines, but not of England.

I am well aware of that!

It didn't say (or even imply) they would be on the highest point in England. Just, seemingly, that they would be the highest turbines in England if erected. So I thought of what might be such a site - certainly not on Scafell Pike, one would hope!

[jean]

In Peter Conrad's review of Steven Pinker's new book The Sense of Style, I read:

...Pinker also forgives Churchill, who in his most rousingly prophetic speech vowed that “We shall never surrender”. Since he was speaking in the second person on the nation’s behalf, he should have said “We will never surrender”. Did the mistake reveal a certain unease – a suspicion that Churchill’s personal determination wouldn’t be shared by all his countrymen? It hardly matters, because Britain won the war...

I'm not sure if this oddity is Pinker's or Conrad's - but there's no second person there, and Churchill's mistake was surely only to use the ordinary future shall instead of the more determined will.

(That's according to the old rules for shall and will, anyway - I'm not sure Pinker would have much truck with them, though.)

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

(That's according to the old rules for shall and will, anyway - I'm not sure Pinker would have much truck with them, though.)

Which "old rules" are these, jean? Shakespeare (in Coriolanus) has "shall" as "the more determined" - "will" as just something that someone "wants"/"wishes".

[jean]

These 'rules':

The traditional rule in standard British English is that shall is used with first person pronouns (i.e. I and we) to form the future tense, while will is used with second and third person forms (i.e. you, he, she, it, they). For example:

I shall be late.

They will not have enough food.

However, when it comes to expressing a strong determination to do something, the roles are reversed: will is used with the first person, and shall with the second and third. For example:

I will not tolerate such behaviour.

You shall go to the ball!

In practice, though, the two words are used more or less interchangeably, and this is now an acceptable part of standard British and US English.


I'm not sure they're yet completely interchangeable, especially in the second and third persons; remember the example of the foreigner who is left to die because he doesn't know the rule, and tries to summon help by shouting "Nobody shall save me! I will drown!"

God knew of course, and we realise when we're told 'thou shalt not...' that we're being commanded to do something, not merely told what's (not) going to happen.

.

[Pabmusic]

Which "old rules" are these, jean? Shakespeare (in Coriolanus) has "shall" as "the more determined" - "will" as just something that someone "wants"/"wishes".

There are no real 'rules'. A convention grew in the (17th, 18th?) centuries whereby 'I will', 'you shall' (originally 'thou shalt'), 'he/she/it shall', 'we will', 'you shall' and 'they shall' (originally 'hie shall') represented intent, whereas 'I shall', 'you will' (originally 'thou wilt'), he/she/it will, 'we shall', 'you will' and 'they will' (originally 'hie will') merely represented simple factual future. There's no logic behind why we've taken the first person from a different verb to represent intent. It's an idiom, and most definitely not a rule of grammar.

[jean]

More detail here.

Especially interesting is the section The prescriptivist distinction. Here the writer quotes Pinker himself as saying he was skeptical that any Englishman made that distinction in the past century, which makes it even stranger that Conrad should think Pinker thought Churchill was making a 'mistake' in the section of his review I quote above.

[jean]

There are no real 'rules'. A convention grew in the (17th, 18th?) centuries...

I know there are no real rules, though the convention seems to be earlier than that - see the section I mention above.

But what I am interested in is the extract I quote from Conrad's review of Pinker's book, which makes no sense at all to me, and appears to invoke a 'rule' I've never even heard of. I'd better quote it again:

...Pinker also forgives Churchill, who in his most rousingly prophetic speech vowed that “We shall never surrender”. Since he was speaking in the second person on the nation’s behalf, he should have said “We will never surrender”. Did the mistake reveal a certain unease – a suspicion that Churchill’s personal determination wouldn’t be shared by all his countrymen? It hardly matters, because Britain won the war...

[Pabmusic]

...Since he was speaking in the second person on the nation’s behalf, he should have said “We will never surrender”. Did the mistake reveal a certain unease – a suspicion that Churchill’s personal determination wouldn’t be shared by all his countrymen? It hardly matters, because Britain won the war...[/url]

He was surely speaking in the first person, wasn't he? However, the writer (confusingly) probably means that Churchill was talking for the nation. Of course that's not "second person" in any grammatical sense, but it might just mean "at one remove". The writer's point is rather a silly one - on the whole, propaganda has to be very direct, not shrouded in obfuscation.