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: <http://www.abelard.com.au/> 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: <http://www.abelard.com.au/> 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. _____ Yahoo!7: Catch-up on your favourite Channel 7 TV shows easily, legally, and for free at PLUS7. Check it out <http://au.rd.yahoo.com/tv/catchup/tagline/*http:/au.tv.yahoo.com/plus7/?cmp=mailtag> . ************** IMPORTANT MESSAGE ***************************** This e-mail message is intended only for the addressee(s) and contains information which may be confidential. If you are not the intended recipient please advise the sender by return email, do not use or disclose the contents, and delete the message and any attachments from your system. Unless specifically indicated, this email does not constitute formal advice or commitment by the sender or the Commonwealth Bank of Australia (ABN 48 123 123 124) or its subsidiaries. We can be contacted through our web site: commbank.com.au. If you no longer wish to receive commercial electronic messages from us, please reply to this e-mail by typing Unsubscribe in the subject line. **************************************************************