atw: Re: Correct usage conundrum: "Match to" vs "Match with"

  • From: Howard Silcock <howard.silcock@xxxxxxxxx>
  • To: austechwriter@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
  • Date: Mon, 1 Feb 2010 12:50:12 +1100

Hi Geoffey

I agree pretty much with the first part of your post. We need, as writers,
to be aware of what the general expectations of our audience are (including
what they think of as 'correct'), so that they can focus on our message
rather than having to struggle to work out our meaning, or even just be
distracted (to use your word) - for example, by thoughts like "gee, this guy
doesn't even know how to spell 'hear, hear'!" (sorry, couldn't resist
turning that one back on you!).

However, most of us are also aware that there are many stupid rules that
have been foisted on us by generations of pedants, usually
inappropriately carried over from Latin - for example, the one you mention
about starting a sentence with "And". A technical writer would probably be
well advised to at least know about these [yes, I do know I just used a
split infinitive!], because some people will object to them. And that means
that, if you're writing a document for a company, they may be concerned that
your document may not look good to their customers if they find you've used
a split infinitive or a sentence starting with 'And' and they've been taught
that that's incorrect. In these cases, you need to be ready to justify your
usage. And you need to decide when it's worth fighting for. I'd fight for
starting a sentence with 'And', but often avoid split infinitives when I
conveniently can, just because it doesn't seem worth fighting for.

That covers your comments about usage. But I'm not so sure I can endorse
your philosophical comments so easily.

First, I think it's arguable that for most words we can now identify a
correct spelling - and that the use of the word 'correct' is appropriate in
that context. Of course, you could say it's just a conventional spelling,
but in normal usage the word 'correct' often means 'correct according to
some standard', which is nothing other than a convention. If I take a
driving test, my answers will be correct if they reflect the conventions of
road usage that underlie our laws. According to this interpretation of
'correct', Shakespeare's spelling is often incorrect - but we all know that
our current standards weren't around when Shakespeare wrote, so what's the
harm? And a word's spelling can be correct according to American usage but
incorrect according to Australian usage. Again, everyone understands that.
The point is that it's ridiculous to restrict 'correct' to some absolute
interpretation - that just isn't how we normally use the word.

I can't see how you can apply Ryle's notion of 'category mistake' to this
usage. That amounts to claiming that the way we write isn't the sort of
thing that we can judge correct or incorrect. Well, if that's true, what
kind of thing could we apply that distinction to? Only to statements that
are true or false in some absolute sense? That just doesn't correspond to
ordinary usage. I'd say that, in ordinary usage, driving on the right side
of the road in Australia is incorrect (as well as unlawful). So we're really
arguing about the meaning of the word 'correct' - I just don't think it in
any way corresponds to truth or falsity.

(If you want an example of a category mistake, one possibility would
be asking whether 'Never split an infinitive' is true or false. That
sentence isn't a proposition, so it can't have a truth value.)

Howard
On 1 February 2010 09:32, Geoffrey Marnell <geoffrey@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

>  Hi Chris,
>
> I'm not suggesting that anything goes, that everything should be
> acceptable. Drawing the line here is actually quite easy. If we write to
> communicate we don't communicate very well if the language we adopt
> distracts our readers. Thus we should use the language of our readers. Most
> readers are distracted by what you call "incorrect" spelling, so my advice
> would be spell as your readers are expecting. My point is that it is what
> the British philosopher Gilbert Ryle called a category mistake to call
> deviations from conventional spelling, grammar, idiom and the like
> "incorrect". By no common definition of "Correctness" are such deviations
> incorrect. They are merely unconventional. Otherwise we have to say that T S
> Eliot, William Shakespeare and and the like wrote incorrectly (or that we
> now write incorrectly by not writing like them).
>
> Language changes and will always change. There is nothing to be gained by
> calling one particular variant of English correct and another incorrect.
> There is effective writing and non-effective writing. End of story.
>
> Here's another angle: we come by knowledge by a priori means ("I think
> therefore I am") or by a posteriori means ("Water boils at 100 degrees
> Celsius at sea level"). Barring revelation, there are no other ways. How,
> then, would you justify or prove the truth or otherwise of "Never start a
> sentence with "and" or "but""? Or "Never split an infinitive"? Such claims
> are more like "Women must change their surnames after marriage": mere
> conventions that have no intrinsic epistemological value. Grammar is just
> like that. We need conventions so that we can understand one another. But
> that doesn't mean that conventions can't change or that they are up there
> with scientific truths. (Parallel:  to avoid mayhem on the roads, we needed
> a convention regarding what side of the road we are going to drive on. It
> doesn't follow that someone who drives on the right-hand side of the road in
> Australia is driving incorrectly. Unlawfully perhaps, but not incorrectly.)
>
> Cheers
>
>
> Geoffrey Marnell
> Principal Consultant
> Abelard Consulting Pty Ltd
> T: +61 3 9596 3456
> F: +61 3 9596 3625
> W: www.abelard.com.au
> Skype: geoffrey.marnell
>
>
>  ------------------------------
> *From:* austechwriter-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:
> austechwriter-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] *On Behalf Of *Virtue, Chris
> *Sent:* Monday, February 01, 2010 9:00 AM
>
> *To:* austechwriter@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
> *Subject:* atw: Re: Correct usage conundrum: "Match to" vs "Match with"
>
>    It’s tricky. There have been recent trends in school to have less
> emphasis on spelling and grammar and more on getting the meaning across.
> There are problems with this. Firstly, where does one draw the line?
> Secondly, and perhaps more importantly, the poor spelling, usage and grammar
> was so infuriating some people, including prospective employers, that it was
> getting in the way of the message. Some school teachers I know are now
> insisting on at least correct spelling.
>
>
>
> I was given a copy of a major bank’s “documentation standards” when I
> started a contract with them. In the usage section, there were a number of
> things that were incorrect, but, they were paying the bills, so I rolled
> over. If in doubt, do what the client wants.
>
>
>
> This issue isn’t just confined to English. I was in Singapore a few years
> ago and there were posters all over the place (in English) “Speak Mandarin,
> not dialect”.
>
>
>
> *Commonwealth *Bank
> Chris Virtue
> Process Documentation
> Group Property
> Level 3, 120 Pitt St
>
> Sydney
>
> P: 02 9312 3928
> M: 0413 189 976
> E: chris.virtue@xxxxxxxxxx
>
> *Our vision is to be Australia's finest financial services organisation
> through excelling in customer service.*
>
>
>
> *From:* austechwriter-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:
> austechwriter-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] *On Behalf Of *Geoffrey Marnell
> *Sent:* Saturday, 30 January 2010 18:10
> *To:* austechwriter@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
> *Subject:* atw: Re: Correct usage conundrum: "Match to" vs "Match with"
>
>
>
> Loosen up lads. Next you'll be saying that American spelling and
> punctuation is "incorrect". It's certainly not the same as our usage. Or
> maybe you'll be game and say that Shakespeare's English was
> "incorrect". Well, no-one writes like that these days, do they. So who is
> correct: Shakespeare or us? Or perhaps you think that the grammar of
> Yorkshire is "incorrect" because it is different from the grammar of the
> Home Counties (and hence Alan Bennett is a poor writer). If so, you are
> forgetting legitimate variety and unstoppable flux. One more example of a
> thousand possible examples: less than a hundred years ago, it was considered
> standard English to place a space between the last word in a sentence and
> the final question mark or exclamation mark. Was that practice "incorrect"?
> Or are we "incorrect" because we don't do that now ? Will you still be
> saying that "disinterested" means objective and impartial when 95% of the
> population understands the word to mean bored or lacking in interest?
> Perhaps a villain really is a serf, not a crook.
>
>
>
>  It's really time to stop using words like "incorrect" and "wrong" when it
> comes to what is purely conventional and forever changing. Words like
> "unconventional" or "unusual" are far better. In which case media might well
> be a legitimate source (one of many) of information about conventional
> usage. And in which case descriptivist dictionaries like the Macquarie are
> better friends than old-fashioned prescriptivist dictionaries.
>
>
>
> Let's go back to basics. Do you write to communicate? Or write to
> instantiate a set of supposedly immutable laws of grammar? If you want to
> write according to the so-called immutable rules of ninetieth-century
> grammar books, you risk communication breakdown as readers become
> increasingly distracted by what they perceive as quaint, odd or even stuffy.
> Put another way, if you write to communicate, it pays to adopt the language
> of your intended audience, whether you like it or not. Your prejudices
> shouldn't enter into the equation.
>
>
>
> Here's to the Macquarie Dictionary, the only authoritative source for
> information about how Australians use their language. And why shouldn't we
> use our language? I suspect, Brian and Ken, that you would rather us
> Australians to spell "organise" as "organize". (Wasn't that the spelling of
> so-called standard English?) And you are no doubt tut-tutting at the "and"
> at the start of this sentence, even though it is a common practice and has
> been so for many hundreds of years, by writers renown and otherwise.
> Shakespeare too.
>
>
>
> Finally, a pertinent quote from George Orwell, written in 1946:
>
> " The defence of the English language … has nothing to do with setting up
> a ‘standard English’ which must never be departed from [nor with] correct
> grammar and syntax, which are of no importance so long as one makes one’s
> meaning clear …”
>
>  Here, here. A grammatically perfect sentence punctuated majestically can
> still fail to get its message across. I'm with Orwell: it's time we worried
> more about communicating and less about what is supposedly correct and
> incorrect.
>
>
>
> Geoffrey Marnell
>
> Principal Consultant
>
> Abelard Consulting Pty Ltd
>
> T: +61 3 9596 3456
>
> F: +61 3 9596 3625
>
> W: www.abelard.com.au
>
> Skype: geoffrey.marnell
>
>
>
>
>  ------------------------------
>
> *From:* austechwriter-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:
> austechwriter-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] *On Behalf Of *Ken Randall
> *Sent:* Saturday, January 30, 2010 3:42 PM
> *To:* austechwriter@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
> *Subject:* atw: Re: Correct usage conundrum: "Match to" vs "Match with"
>
> I was using the media as an example of incorrect usage.
>
> --- On *Sat, 30/1/10, Brian Clarke <brianclarke01@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>* wrote:
>
>
> From: Brian Clarke <brianclarke01@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
> Subject: atw: Re: Correct usage conundrum: "Match to" vs "Match with"
> To: austechwriter@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
> Received: Saturday, 30 January, 2010, 2:59 PM
>
> 
>
> Only the Macq uses the media as an arbiter of correct usage. I use the
> media as Aunt Sallies at which to throw shies.
>
>
>
> Matched 'against' is another possibility - as in sports contests.
>
>
>
> Brian.
>
>
>  ------------------------------
>
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