Pedants' Paradise

[french frank]

But referenda are rather different to referendums. The Latin plural does not relate to the modern use of referendum as a plebiscite.

That is accurate. The only argument in favour of referenda would be that one word can have different meanings. Maybe 'referends' would have solved the objection - and suscitated others.

[Maclintick]

But referenda are rather different to referendums. The Latin plural does not relate to the modern use of referendum as a plebiscite. See https://www.cambridge.org/core/journ...FE0056A1D4C78E

Wow ! - a feast of hyperpedantry which throws up more questions, e.g. if agendum and memorandum are gerundives, are we not in error to speak of agenda & memoranda ? And what are we to make of the authors who write of "anglicizations" and "pluralizations" ?

[Mal]

David Crystal in "The English Language" says there is uncertainty over the use of "It's no use my/me asking her." Older grammars analyse words like asking as 'verbal nouns' (gerunds) and insist on the use of possesive pronoun ('my',...) Modern grammars do not use the term gerund, and 'asking' here would be analysed as a verb. Then the possesive is the preferred usage in a formal style, the alternative more common in informal styles.

Personally, being a pleb, I would always say, "It's no use me asking her'.

More importantly, being modern followers of grammar, aren't we now wrong to use the term gerundive in analysing English phrases?

Drawing on Crystal's example, isn't memorandum a noun? And memorandising the gerund (if gerunds exist...)

There is some doubt that "memorandising" is a word - if it isn't, doesn't that totally rule out it being a gerund?

For the moment, let's assume it is a word, but it still isn't a gerund because gerunds are not allowed any more - "memorandising" is a verb.

As memorandum is a noun, then memoranda is allowed.

[smittims]

I think grammar is a matter of clarity.

It's the asking which is no use. Whose asking is it? Mine.

My grammatic liking is for the common gender, which seems to have been forgotten in the wave of political correctness.

'applicant' is common gender : 'The applicant should complete his form' does not imply that all applicants are male, since 'his' is the pronoun of the common gender

[gurnemanz]

The Oxford Dictionary of English Grammar has an example sentence which illustrates the inappropriateness of the terms, gerund and gerundive, with reference to English syntax:

"My smoking twenty cigarettes a day annoys them."

Here "smoking" is both noun-like in having a determiner "my" and being the heading of the phrase which is the subject of the sentence. It is also verb-like in being followed by a direct object, "twenty cigarettes", and an abverbial, "a day". It is both gerund and gerundive

[Serial_Apologist]

David Crystal in "The English Language" says there is uncertainty over the use of "It's no use my/me asking her." Older grammars analyse words like asking as 'verbal nouns' (gerunds) and insist on the use of possesive pronoun ('my',...) Modern grammars do not use the term gerund, and 'asking' here would be analysed as a verb. Then the possesive is the preferred usage in a formal style, the alternative more common in informal styles.

Personally, being a pleb, I would always say, "It's no use me asking her'.

More importantly, being modern followers of grammar, aren't we now wrong to use the term gerundive in analysing English phrases?

Drawing on Crystal's example, isn't memorandum a noun? And memorandising the gerund (if gerunds exist...)

There is some doubt that "memorandising" is a word - if it isn't, doesn't that totally rule out it being a gerund?

For the moment, let's assume it is a word, but it still isn't a gerund because gerunds are not allowed any more - "memorandising" is a verb.

As memorandum is a noun, then memoranda is allowed.

I suppose one could say "memorandomising" - maybe too much randomising there? Makings up new words is something random I enjoy doing!

[oddoneout]

I suppose one could say "memorandomising" - maybe too much randomising there? Makings up new words is something random I enjoy doing!

Oh I like memorandomising, it describes what happens on my desk. Numerous "note to self"s/"notes to self" (I dunno which is right) which are piled in a random fashion beside the monitor. Every now and then, (when the pile falls off the desk tends to be the nudge) they are promoted to proper memos or put in recycling or compost bin.

[Maclintick]

Oh I like memorandomising, it describes what happens on my desk. Numerous "note to self"s/"notes to self" (I dunno which is right) which are piled in a random fashion beside the monitor. Every now and then, (when the pile falls off the desk tends to be the nudge) they are promoted to proper memos or put in recycling or compost bin.

Your memorandising prompts recollection of a student holiday job I held in the 70s as a filing-wallah in the old Department of Health & Social Security -- known, of course, to those who toiled within its purlieus as the Department of Stealth & Total Obscurity. My section HEO had 3 trays on his desk marked "IN" "OUT" and "OBE", calculating that if he left a memo in the IN tray long enough, he would be able to move it straight to the OBE tray ( Overtaken By Events ).

[smittims]

My boss had a third tray labelled 'LBW' ='let the buggers wait'.

I'm told cabinet ministers have a 'too difficult' tray.

[kernelbogey]

I was once told of someone who never looked at his in-tray, until someone said 'Have you looked at my memo about such-such?', when he would dig out the relevant document. Every Friday he would decant the intray's contents into a bottom drawer of his desk, its current contents (the previous week's in-tray) going in the bin; and claimed this worked well.

[Pulcinella]

The lack of an Oxford comma (in this case it would actually be a semicolon, to match the initial punctuation used) makes nonsense of the whole structure of the third paragraph in this article in today's Times.

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/abolish-the-house-of-lords-says-gordon-brown-review-br0q9cll6?shareToken=8faa944860470a27118f5901025c5576

In the report seen by The Guardian, some of the recommendations were new tax powers for some devolved governments, which could include stamp duty; powers for local people to promote bills in parliament via democratically elected bodies and a constitutional guarantee of social and economic rights.

[smittims]

October the first and already I see the first poppy. Is it pedantic to deplore this?

To me, wearing a poppy on Remembrance Day (or Sunday) makes that day special. Wearing one on other days diminishes the significance of Remembrance Day . Worse, it sugggests to me that the wearer doesn't know when Remembrance Day is, or why he wears a poppy.

BBC TV have been criticised for their blanket (compulsory?) poppy-wearing from early October onwards, though they have insisted in reply that it is entirely voluntary (Ho, Ho). To me, it's like putting your Xmas decorations up in November just to shame the neighbours.

[french frank]

The Guardian this morning reports the grovelling speech of Steve Baker at the Tory party conference as having referred to:

"The demise of our late Majesty ..."

Can this be correct? Did he mean 'our late Queen' or 'Her late Majesty'? Or some other member of the ERG if it still exists? (Or a mistake by the Graun?)

[smittims]

I should guess it's his error. People often say things without thinking about what their words actually mean.

Not so long ago a Government minister referred to misogyny being just as bad if it was a man against a woman as a woman against a man.

I'll always remember Mrs. Thatcher planting the thousandth tree of a series and saying 'but let it also be the first tree of the next thousand' , a mathematic impossibility, as the first Prime Minister with a science degree should have known.

[Pulcinella]

I should guess it's his error. People often say things without thinking about what their words actually mean.

Not so long ago a Government minister referred to misogyny being just as bad if it was a man against a woman as a woman against a man.

I'll always remember Mrs. Thatcher planting the thousandth tree of a series and saying 'but let it also be the first tree of the next thousand' , a mathematic impossibility, as the first Prime Minister with a science degree should have known.

Technically, I suppose that you could start counting a new thousand at any point in the first thousand: you just wouldn't end up with 2000!