Cato's Grammar Grumble

[listener]

...as opposed to littorally, which we'd sea-side issued (and you can bank on that).

[False_Dmitry]

From what I know of the British Parliament, I wouldn't rule out the literal meaning, although I admit it is unlikely that it could happen more than once.   

Regrettably...

[Scarpia]

Regrettably...

I mean it couldn't happen more than once to the same person, even with modern medical science.   

[The Six]

I don't get the problems people have with markets having "10 items or less" signs, insisting it should read "or fewer." Either way is perfectly acceptable English.

[Joe Barron]

Yeah, the general rule that less refers to amounts, and fewer to numbers of discrete things, but in common idioms, indeed as in all common idioms, the line does get blurred. One could argue that the number of one's items constitutes an amount, like an amount of money, but that's a little too fine, and in any event it just sounds like special pleading.

It may be also be one of those "rules," like the distinction between that and which, that EB White more or less made up. At the paper, we're supposed to use "more than" instead of "over," the reasoning being that "over" refers to a position in space, but that seems rather arbitrary. Once the meaning of "more than" is understood and accepted, it should be quite acceptable to say that a tax, hike, for example, will be over four percent.

[Franco]

The less/fewer discussion reminds me of the good/well issue:

Q: How ya doin'?

A: Oh, I'm doin' good

Q: Yeh - who are you, Superman?

[karlhenning]

Q: How can something be a classic on its tenth anniversary?

A: When the culture suffers generally from ADD

[The Six]

People who put an in front of words starting with h should be flogged.

[karlhenning]

"He is an halibut."

[Opus106]

People who put an in front of words starting with h should be flogged.

An historic ruling that would be, if passed.

[Ten thumbs]

An historic ruling that would be, if passed.

Devised by Cockneys and other people who drop their aitches. Note however that 'an honorary post' is absolutely correct. Anyone who says 'a honorary post' equally deserves the punishment suggested.

[Opus106]

Anyone who says 'a honorary post' equally deserves the punishment suggested.

Five hundred floggings an hour.

[greg]

Five hundred floggings an hour.

Are you kidding? You mean, five hundred floggings a minute, right? We'd just have an team of floggers.

[Lethevich]

Amiable, amicable, affable: is there any contextual difference between these?

[knight66]

"He is an halibut."

I am off to book an hotel for myself. I am meeting an historian to discuss why the law is a ass.

Mike

[Ten thumbs]

Five hundred floggings an hour.

Well maybe they should be sent to an university as well.   

[karlhenning]

It's got to be an hour, since the aitch there is silent.

[DavidRoss]

I don't get the problems people have with markets having "10 items or less" signs, insisting it should read "or fewer." Either way is perfectly acceptable English.

  Good heavens, man!  Get thee to a grammarian, lest thy soul suffer eternal damnation! 

[Joe Barron]

Posted today on by blog:

I don't want to be one of those overbearing scolds who correct other people's grammar in public, but I was startled the other day by this sentence on page 68 of James Shapiro's informative book, Contested Will, which discusses a lawsuit filed in 1600 by one William Shakespeare: "Scholars still can't agree whether this was our Shakespeare or another who sued Clayton; whomever it was, it fit the pattern of a tight-fisted Shylock all too well."

Whomever? I realize that there are times when the who/whom distinction can be tricky, but this isn't one of those times. "Whom" should appear only as the object of a verb or preposition, and this sentence contains no verb or preposition of which whom could possibly be the object. The only verb is the vicinity is "was," which is a linking verb and doesn't take the objective case anyway. No matter how you parse it, "whomever" is out of place. And if you want to make the case for "fit," then whomever is being used incorrectly as the subject — drop the comma and the second it, and you get, "Whomever it was fit the pattern ... all too well," and the incorrect use of "whomever" stands naked before the world.

I do hope this was a copy-editing mistake and was not done at Shapiro's insistence. The guy is an English professor at Columbia, for heaven's sake. A slip like that makes me wonder about the value of higher education. (And so the grammar scold in me, so long supressed, rises to the surface once more.)

[MN Dave]

I'd say it's pretty tricky.