OK, I'll bite :-) On Fri, 1 Oct 2004 10:29:17 +1000, Brian Clarke wrote: > Careful, now. There are several problems with the Bryant piece on > grammar. Firstly, there is the matter of conflict of interest - he > is not an unbiased observer - he has a particular ax to grind. He > has a wish to denigrate the prescriptive and replace it with the > descriptive approach to grammar. Notice that there was no balanced > approach in his presentation of these two forms of grammar usage. I think this means you disagree with his conclusions. This is your right, but if you put it this way, and I disagree with you, I= can as easily say you have a conflict of interest with a particular ax to grind.... etc... Doesn't really advance the argument at all. No balance ? Well he does say : That is not to say that taking a descriptive approach to grammar means= writing in the latest slang. Nothing could date a document faster, or be more= intrusive to a technical manual. Nor does it mean abandoning technical vocabularies= that are known to the audience or that make explanations easier. If anything, a descriptive approach demands a much greater awareness of the language than a= prescriptive one. Instead of learning the single correct version of the languages, writers who take a descriptive approach need to be= aware--probably through constant reading--not only of dozens of different versions, but of= how each version is changing. If necessary, writers can use descriptive grammars such as journalistic= style guides to help them. > Secondly, he is a self-confessed poet. This means that he focuses > on the use of language for emotional expression. I suspect that > most of our output is intended to be as non-emotional as possible - > I hesitate to suggest 'objective', because our various > objectivities may differ. However, emotional expression often > includes alliterations, elisions, ellipses, misspellings, > onomatopoeia, unusual word orders and so on, to achieve particular > rhymes, rhythms or other effects. > Wow ! A bloke confesses to being a poet and suddenly he's a grammar criminal ? Or disqualified from writing without all these things ? A metaphor junky ? All poets are <fill in the blank>? A bit tough as a generalisation, I'd suggest... > Thirdly, he is treading on the dangerous ground of suggesting that > we take 'what is' and let that be our new 'what ought to be'. One > of the problems with accepting 'what is' is that much of what > passes for English in some of our potential users/readers is > confusing, unclear, possibly offensive to some, and > incomprehensible without generous hand-waving. > But see the extract cited above. You appear somewhat unfair here. Nevertheless, we agree about the mess sports writers make of participles and the present tense. But not if you want to single out the ABC. My observation is that this habit started with commercial TV new sports writers.. Swans won. Kicking 5 goals in the final 5 mins. Lions kicking 2 behinds. Forward line missing frequently. Present participles predominating. Sentences missing. Past tense seldom appearing. Self screaming abuse at TV set. Turning off. Drinking more. -Peter G. Martin, Technical writer, Proxima Technology ************************************************** To post a message to austechwriter, send the message to austechwriter@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx To subscribe to austechwriter, send a message to austechwriter-request@xxxxxxxxxxxxx with "subscribe" in the Subject field. To unsubscribe, send a message to austechwriter-request@xxxxxxxxxxxxx with "unsubscribe" in the Subject field. To search the austechwriter archives, go to www.freelists.org/archives/austechwriter To contact the list administrator, send a message to austechwriter-admins@xxxxxxxxxxxxx **************************************************