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

  • From: "Geoffrey Marnell" <geoffrey@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
  • To: <austechwriter@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
  • Date: Mon, 1 Feb 2010 09:32:56 +1100

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.

 

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