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I'm American, lived there for 50+ years, pretty good with language and very observant of it. This teacher was talking about styles that we should use in official documents and said that for punctuation in quotes we should put the period or comma inside the close quote. John said, "I have a headache." I said, "Oh, you use the American form." She said, "no, that's the British form." I said, "nuh uh." She said, "uh huh." And so on.
I have always used that form and noticed that putting the punctuation mark outside the quotation mark was strictly British - I found it jarring when I saw it so I notice. OK. Trevor said, "You're a sticky wicket". She said that's American, and so on. I have never seen that in American writing, at least not that I remember.
Here's another:
Collective v. singular verbs. We were told to use the singular form of verb where a subject may be a collection of people like a corporation. "General Motors is selling more green cars." Again, I have always seen and used this as the American form.
The British form that I have always seen is "Jaguar are selling more blue cars." She claimed this is the American form. Nuh uh, etc. etc.
I consider what she is saying in both cases is 180 degrees opposite from common usage in each version of English. Am I wrong? (I'm not looking for exceptions but general, traditional, accepted usage of these forms.) I look forward to your help.
Thanks.
Steve in New Zealand.
Not your monkeys and not your zoo. You're right, but she is the one giving out the grades, so it's time to act like a good husband, and apologize for ever questioning her wrong ideas. Apologize for living, too, while you're at it, if you can make it sound sincere.
George Bernard Shaw's Law: He who can, does. He who cannot, teaches. From Maxims For Revolutionaries, 1903.
Welcome to the waywords forum, where wayward revolutionaries discuss use and history of words. You seem to be our sort. I hope you'll stick around.
I agree that the teacher seems to have it reversed from what my experience indicates. How I might deal with the teacher in question would rely on my assessment of their openness to correction and their level of intellectual curiosity. I learned early in life and the hard way to heed the admonition of Matthew 7:6. The less often quoted portion is "... they may ... turn and tear you to pieces." Really, they may.
I am also curious about the subjunctive that you refer to in your topic description. I don't see it mentioned in your post.
tromboniator said
I don't know, I've always thought education should be about knowledge, not grades, and that teaching wrong information is unacceptable. I would try to find examples to show the teacher that she's wrong.GBS is often extremely clever, but sometimes he's an ass.
Would you have preferred that I quoted Mark Twain as saying God invented jackasses for practice, then invented school boards?
Teachers are allowed to make mistakes. And great cooks can sometimes add too much salt.
The only people I know who claim inerrency are fundamentalists, referring to the Bible; even the Pope only claims extremely limited Papal Inerrency. But if you ask a fundamentalist how many of the ten commandments still apply, they will say all of them, but still, fundamentalists worship a trinity rather than only YHWH, and they set aside Sunday instead of remembering the Sabbath.
That doesn't make them evil. They just don't know any better. And whether the teacher involved had a brain fart or she was smoking weed when she was in college, the teacher is surely trying to pass along correct information.
My third-grade teacher said that gravity is caused by the spinning of the earth, which is why astronauts are free of gravity, and why space capsules always go from West to East. She wasn't evil. Well, not about that; she did steal squirt guns, though.
deaconB said
George Bernard Shaw's Law: He who can, does. He who cannot, teaches. From Maxims For Revolutionaries, 1903.
Grammatically the statement 'he who cannot, teaches' is missing an objective phrase: cannot what? It sounds weirdly hollow.
There is not the same problem in 'he who can, does,' because 'does' is both a verb to 'he,' and a stand-in for whatever is expected to follow 'can.'
Well the 2nd statement might be said to feed off the 1st. Still, it sounds weirdly hollow.
Martha Barnette
Grant Barrett
Grant Barrett
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