RE: [tips] Pet peeve: Grammar Nazis

2011-03-13 Thread Wuensch, Karl L
Perhaps if our students viewed this video they would become more likely to consider grammar important: http://www.collegehumor.com/video:1935115 Cheers, [cid:image001.jpg@01CBE17B.62285AF0] From: Annette Taylor [mailto:tay...@sandiego.edu] Sen

RE: [tips] Pet peeve: Grammar Nazis

2011-03-13 Thread Mike Palij
Not to dump on everyone's fun but there are a few points to keep in mind. (1) What people refer to as "grammar" is a set of conventions about the usage of a language that have developed over time and have been influenced by class distinctions, social and cultural factors, economics, political

RE: [tips] Pet peeve: Grammar Nazis

2011-03-13 Thread Kennison, Shelia
the Psychological Sciences (TIPS) Cc: Mike Palij Subject: RE: [tips] Pet peeve: Grammar Nazis Not to dump on everyone's fun but there are a few points to keep in mind. (1) What people refer to as "grammar" is a set of conventions about the usage of a language that have developed ov

Re: [tips] Pet peeve: Grammar Nazis

2011-03-13 Thread Rick Stevens
I like the video. However, I am not that concerned about the use of 'data'. When we speak about the results of an experiment we don't say, "Participant 1 recalled 12 words, participant 2 scored 9 words, ...". We might condense it into one number, often a mean. Or, after comparing 2 or more mean

Re: [tips] Pet peeve: Grammar Nazis

2011-03-13 Thread Claudia Stanny
I think Rick has hit on an important clue to this controversy. I've been thinking about this since the last go-round about whether *data *should be treated as plural or singular. What "sounds right" will be whatever is consistent with the implicit grammatical rule the listener applies. I also su

Re: [tips] Pet peeve: Grammar Nazis

2011-03-13 Thread Jim Clark
Hi I plugged data and datum into google's ngram word counter. Should appear here if link works http://ngrams.googlelabs.com/graph?content=data%2C+datum&year_start=1800&year_end=2000&corpus=0&smoothing=3 Datum is virtually absent from 1800 to 2000, whereas data becomes increasingly frequent.

RE:[tips] Pet peeve: Grammar Nazis

2011-03-13 Thread Allen Esterson
On the use and alleged misuse of grammar, Mike Palij writes: > What people refer to as "grammar" is a set of conventions >about the usage of a language that have developed over time >and have been influenced by class distinctions, social and >cultural factors, economics, political factors, and so o