CMStPnPCMStPnP wrote the following post 11 hours ago: Overmod The verb is not 'incent', it's 'incite'. Your actually incorrect the correct verb was "incent" look it up in the dictionary. Incent as to give people incentive. Using "incite" would be fairly crappy grammar.
Look who is giving grammar lessons.
BaltACD charlie hebdo Perhaps others need to realize that I and Overmod and Deggesty and others are language purists. 'Incent' was derived from the long-standing noun + verb syntax 'give an incentive' in the 19th c. and only in the US, The English language, in all its permutations (USA, Canada, England, Australia, etc.) is among the most dynamic of languages in the World - creating new words and idioms and syntax on a daily basis. The recognized Dictionary's of the language put new words into their publications every year, they also revise some of the definitions of words as their meanings have been changed by their evolving common usage. Grammar Nazi's are fighting a rear guard action trying to stop the continuing evolution of the language and how it is used, they are losing.
charlie hebdo Perhaps others need to realize that I and Overmod and Deggesty and others are language purists. 'Incent' was derived from the long-standing noun + verb syntax 'give an incentive' in the 19th c. and only in the US,
The English language, in all its permutations (USA, Canada, England, Australia, etc.) is among the most dynamic of languages in the World - creating new words and idioms and syntax on a daily basis. The recognized Dictionary's of the language put new words into their publications every year, they also revise some of the definitions of words as their meanings have been changed by their evolving common usage.
Grammar Nazi's are fighting a rear guard action trying to stop the continuing evolution of the language and how it is used, they are losing.
Obviously, but that's no reason to give up the good fight against language barbarians. And stop trivializing the acronym Nazi, please. A lot of people lost their lives to those scum.
.
That may be a new all-time record for number of simultaneous new postings of the same basic thing. Musta been a software 'upgrade' recently... or need for a poster upgrade...
BaltACDGrammar Nazi's are fighting a rear guard action trying to stop the continuing evolution of the language and how it is used, they are losing.
Don't expect me to EVER stop pointing out misuse of the greengrocer's apostrophe, which is wrong no matter how much we propose to let the language devolve. As is use of an apostrophe to imitate a correct plural.
Just because a dictionary 'recognizes' a word doesn't mean it 'should' be used in Standard Written English. There's no doubt, for example, that the word 'gift' as a verb is well-enough established to see print; there is equally no doubt that any educated reader seeing it will react just as Fowler did in the '20s to the 'Wardour Street' misuses he so deplored.
To be honest, I don't object to the term 'grammar Nazi' because it has such an established provenance as a term and a trope. It no more cheapens history than Wayne's earlier note that 'Nazi' itself is an insult. (And do we object when discussing Seinfeld's soup character?)
I'd argue that there's a difference between a full-on grammar Nazi and a 'comma cop', but I find the semantics somewhat distressingly ambiguous...
I move we get back on the subject of Amtrak discounts and their proper application to fairness and to marketing...
OvermodI'd argue that there's a difference between a full-on grammar Nazi and a 'comma cop', but I find the semantics somewhat distressingly ambiguous...
Trying to read 'proper English' of the 15th Century, in the 21st Century is a agonizing experience. I suspect reading 21st Century 'proper English' will be equally agonizing in the 25th Century. Languages move on or die.
Never too old to have a happy childhood!
BaltACDTrying to read 'proper English' of the 15th Century, in the 21st Century is a agonizing experience. I suspect reading 21st Century 'proper English' will be equally agonizing in the 25th Century. Languages move on or die.
This was actually a major concern in the early days of digital libraries (when, for example, we thought "permanent" glass WORM discs and the like were a sensible archival choice). One of the general themes was precisely that much of the necessary semantic drift that made, say, Middle English such a pain for modern readers won't be present as long as "Information Age" technologies keep some version of SWE common ... or are capable of converting one version to another on the fly. This was before the wonderful innovation of things like the IBM "Writing to Read" program, which stress expression and creativity over knowing grammar and notation conventions. ("There will always be editors to fix those niggling little details...")
And, indeed, that's a point made extensively with respect to Internet boards: that it isn't important to observe grammar or rhetoric conventions as long as the posts are comprehensible.
But, as with Sam Kinnison on the subject of same-sex necrophilia, just don't go calling it normal any more.
To take up Balt's original point in a different way: even in the 1970s we were able to write effective translators from Middle or Old English into reasonably contemporary, and often directly readable, SWE as that was then described. Perhaps needless to say, it will be dramatically simple for coders ... perhaps AI by that point ... to write translators, perhaps on the fly, that adapt any inputtable text to some other format ... whether 'marching morons' devolved or hypercomplicated on the other side of some singularity or other.
And if civilization falls, or the language devolves for some other reason like lack of education, we'll still likely have enough technical means to convert one to the other if there is the interest and the will.
What's more important, at least to me, is to keep the various kinds of sloppiness and poor rhetoric distinct from legitimate evolution of the language -- going forward*. Just because a buncha slackers don't want to use punctuation correctly doesn't automatically make the language itself have to change.
*and yes, I'm highly conscious of the fact that a great many 'sloppy' shifts of both grammar and spelling have come to be encapsulated in standard 'correct' written English. For over 40 years I've been agitating to get sex-related singular pronouns out of English, optionally, by using exactly the same convention applied to the plural -- we're actually starting to see this get some traction, albeit driven by a very different set of priorities and sensibilities! You could easily call this 'devolution', but it's a recognition just as significant as the invention of "Ms." as a removal of a more pointless sex-related distinction ... now we have to start figuring out an honorific and abbreviation that lacks sex entirely, just as "Dr." or other professional ones already do. (I have suggested the French "M." as a logical standard to start with.)
York1 John
York1You wouldn't need to move to get back on the subject if you hadn't corrected someone's grammar.
You're right. But I didn't expect the thing was going to take the turn that it has. (Not meant as an excuse for continuing.) Had I known it would have gone where it has, I'd have held my figurative nose and gone on.... no, probably not, I'm too much the 'comma cop', but you're right that most people coming here to read about Amtrak discounts aren't going to care about points of English grammar.
Someone needs to get back to the thread topic. Since I see you're not going to be the one to do it, let me reiterate that I think we should get back to posts about the discounts.
Overmod York1 You wouldn't need to move to get back on the subject if you hadn't corrected someone's grammar. You're right. But I didn't expect the thing was going to take the turn that it has. (Not meant as an excuse for continuing.) Had I known it would have gone where it has, I'd have held my figurative nose and gone on.... no, probably not, I'm too much the 'comma cop', but you're right that most people coming here to read about Amtrak discounts aren't going to care about points of English grammar. Someone needs to get back to the thread topic. Since I see you're not going to be the one to do it, let me reiterate that I think we should get back to posts about the discounts.
York1 You wouldn't need to move to get back on the subject if you hadn't corrected someone's grammar.
The Law of Unintended Consequences in action. Your ideas have been discounted and the thread moved in its own direction.
BaltACDThe Law of Unintended Consequences in action. Your ideas have been discounted...
Good point!
BaltACD Overmod I'd argue that there's a difference between a full-on grammar Nazi and a 'comma cop', but I find the semantics somewhat distressingly ambiguous... Trying to read 'proper English' of the 15th Century, in the 21st Century is a agonizing experience. I suspect reading 21st Century 'proper English' will be equally agonizing in the 25th Century. Languages move on or die.
Overmod I'd argue that there's a difference between a full-on grammar Nazi and a 'comma cop', but I find the semantics somewhat distressingly ambiguous...
False analogy. Nobody is suggesting we revert to archaic 15th C. constructions. Could you kindly desist from imputing your words to others?
charlie hebdoFalse analogy. Nobody is suggesting we revert to archaic 15th C. constructions.
I actually think it's far from a false analogy; in fact, I think it is only less pronounced in some areas because the 'flattening' of the world through increased communications and trade (cf. Friedman) has reduced the tendencies that induced language drift.
Much of what made 15th-century literature excruciating is the same thing that makes much of the Bible hard to read: expressions and circumstances that would be familiar to contemporaries, but long changed for us. And it could just as easily be added that much of the poetry of the 18th Century, and prose of the Victorians, is excruciating to try to get through now... as very well may be our current styles of writing no more, perhaps, than a generation or two hence. (And that's before you get into things like Twitter than don't follow some of the conventions of SWE)
I find it a little amusing that our culture venerates Shakespeare as one of the Big Writers, and most people can't read him 'happily' in the original, let alone act his plays compellingly (or, taking Patrick Stewart as an example) even watchably. (Oddly enough that isn't the case with Henry Winkler)
While I don't think that either the fundamental structure of English as evolved from Addison and Steele or the adoption of different types of jargon will move the language to relative incomprehensibility ... it's a VERY long time in cultural years between now and the 25th Century.
And I can't argue that maintaining current linguistic 'precision' is important in English. It starts when we don't have an 'Academie Angleterrienne' that defines precisely and exactly what is, and more importantly perhaps what isn't, officially "English". And then veers and wobbles as various practitioners emphasize or downplay things of importance. We even have major 'forks' in what constitutes the written and spoken language: "Ebonics" even as a teaching tool is really an example, as are some aspects of 'Spanglish'. So I think it's quite reasonable for Balt to note that we could expect dramatic change in what we now perceive as 'standard' several hundred years from now.
What that doesn't change, though, is short-term deviation from presently-accepted norms of good grammar and proper rhetorical construction. Or just plain mistakes.
charlie hebdo BaltACD Overmod I'd argue that there's a difference between a full-on grammar Nazi and a 'comma cop', but I find the semantics somewhat distressingly ambiguous... Trying to read 'proper English' of the 15th Century, in the 21st Century is a agonizing experience. I suspect reading 21st Century 'proper English' will be equally agonizing in the 25th Century. Languages move on or die. False analogy. Nobody is suggesting we revert to archaic 15th C. constructions. Could you kindly desist from imputing your words to others?
Awfully high up on that horse aren't you?
Paraphrasing Joe McMahon's applicable, enduring words, high praise indeed from our resident "desk jockey."
charlie hebdoPerhaps others need to realize that I and Overmod and Deggesty and others are language purists. 'Incent' was derived from the long-standing noun + verb syntax 'give an incentive' in the 19th c. and only in the US,
Which would be OK if this was your personal website and you could police speech.
It's not and the discussion here is supposed to be informal, not papers for publication. And I will keep using the word 'your' just because I know it gets under a few peoples skins that need to learn tolerance of others.
I can actually write pretty well and have been published. I don't do so in my free time posting on a website that has nothing to do with grammar or the English language.
243129Look who is giving grammar lessons.
I'll never correct that either because there are two people that it really bothers and there is just too much entertainment value here to abandon the improper usage.
You might start by reading others's posts more carefully. In no way were either of us acting as syntactical enforcers. Mostly it was a rather private joke. People who write well do so naturally in all settings, obvious typos excluded.
CMStPnP 243129 Look who is giving grammar lessons. I'll never correct that either because there are two people that it really bothers and there is just too much entertainment value here to abandon the improper usage.
243129 Look who is giving grammar lessons.
Your sloppy writing does not bother me one jot, but is good for a laugh along with your inaccuracies.
charlie hebdoPeople who write well do so naturally in all settings, obvious typos excluded.
Oh thats news to me as I am sure it is to others. I can prove that wrong at any book store. The question is, can you prove it is correct?
charlie hebdo You might start by reading others's posts more carefully. In no way were either of us acting as syntactical enforcers. Mostly it was a rather private joke. People who write well do so naturally in all settings, obvious typos excluded.
Here we go again, argue, argue, argue. Nothing about trains just what you think is another persons short commings. And we got off the subject of Trains how? Was it me or you attempting to police other peoples posts.
You do know that is the role of Forum Moderator........right?
A feeble try at damage control.
You sound like Trump saying he's going to build a wall in Colorado and then said he was only kidding. Weak very weak.
CMStPnP charlie hebdo You might start by reading others's posts more carefully. In no way were either of us acting as syntactical enforcers. Mostly it was a rather private joke. People who write well do so naturally in all settings, obvious typos excluded. Here we go again, argue, argue, argue. Nothing about trains just what you think is another persons short commings. And we got off the subject of Trains how? Was it me or you attempting to police other peoples posts. You do know that is the role of Forum Moderator........right?
You apparently can't comprehend simple, declarative sentences. I was explaining what Overmod and I were and were not doing. Your shortcomings are manifest.
charlie hebdoYou apparently can't comprehend simple, declarative sentences. I was explaining what Overmod and I were and we're not doing. Your shortcomings are manifest.
My shortcomings?, you said earlier your a former shrink and your running around the internet putting other people down constantly or picking fights over minute items that the majority of the readership could care less about. I'd call it malpractice. What happened to you in your past that you feel so inferior to everyone? Maybe your treatment was a little off and you lost all your business or..... Was it life as a flatlander? Hell, I never had to change my screen name and reintroduce myself.
243129A feeble try at damage control.
.........and it's working, score for me! I guess your going to have to figure out how to live with this.
If I had to hazard a guess, I'd say Amtrak has more than one person or department implementing its "discounting" policies, and perhaps different ones involved in promoting them.
There's a variety of available discounts (see the left bar at for example https://www.amtrak.com/deals-discounts/everyday-discounts.html, some of which appear attractive ... take the 50% nominal discount for kids as an example ... but the effect of which is largely ruined by the fine print, restrictions, and problems. Note that the military children's discount looks as if it saves even more, 10% over the 'everyday 50% children's discount, but note that it carefully doesn't mention or repeat that the limitations of the basic children's discount also apply.
The basic option starts by saying "Children 2 through 12 years old ride half-price every day" and "Infants under 2 ride free". Go to "learn more" and almost immediately you see that you will 'make memories and save money when you take the kids on a journey they'll never forget'. What you'll want to forget is that immediately following this, Amtrak notes that the 50% only applies to one child; for additional children "the full adult fare will be charged." And it's figured not on the fare you're paying but on the 'lowest available adult rail fare' -- note how cleverly this avoids asking if 'available' means 'available for actual purchase at the time of "booking".
Then we see that "Infants ride free". Pretty straightforward English there, right? But wait... it's only one child under the age of 2, and they or their carrier can't occupy a seat. Then the semantic fun begins. A 'second' child under 2 can be booked as a "Child" and 'receive the 50% discount (if available) or as an "Adult" if the Children's fare is not available'. (This despite Amtrak saying elsewhere on its own site that 'passengers characterized as "infants" [defined as 'younger than 2 years of age' about two column inches up] do not pay a fare.' But hey! you can book more than eight infants (six or more at adult rate; remember that the children's fare was capped at only one, right?) where you can't do that with either children or adults!
And of course then we go down the rabbit hole of 'when is a child not a child' with the "booking limits per transaction' rigmarole at https://www.amtrak.com/planning-booking/tickets-reservations/booking-limits-for-number-of-passengers-per-transaction.html
Better not send unattended minors, either: they'll be detected and, as in a recent case, summarily put off the train whether ticketed as adults or not. After that their security is your problem, not Amtrak's ... but hey! Amtrak's liability for them has been terminated; it was all your fault for putting them on the train in violation!
By this time you're heartily sick of this, and by the further time you see a few details of other "offers" you begin dreading what you will "learn more" (how I've come to loathe that clever little Jobsism) when you see something on the apparently long laundry list of available offers that might apply to you.
Technically I'm all in favor of helping cut the Amtrak deficit by enhancing revenue collection wherever possible. But much of the point of a discount program (at least the way B-school marketing courses emphasize) is to gain incremental revenue from customers or clients who would otherwise not have patronized you ... and I think most American customers are sensitive to, and don't like, bait and switch.
I strongly suspect that less of the fine print applies to government discounts, although those have to be booked with a special secret government code through special authorized Travel Management Companies and will only appear in secret computer authorization. Be assured, though, that if for any reason there's a lower available special fare you may be billed that... well, that is, the 'system will always return to you the lowest available fare based on the rules your agency has set for refunds and other conditions.' (Do most government employees traveling on agency business actually care what their agency is having to pay?)
CMStPnP charlie hebdo You apparently can't comprehend simple, declarative sentences. I was explaining what Overmod and I were and we're not doing. Your shortcomings are manifest. My shortcomings?, you said earlier your a former shrink and your running around the internet putting other people down constantly or picking fights over minute items that the majority of the readership could care less about. I'd call it malpractice. What happened to you in your past that you feel so inferior to everyone? Maybe your treatment was a little off and you lost all your business or..... Was it life as a flatlander? Hell, I never had to change my screen name and reintroduce myself.
charlie hebdo You apparently can't comprehend simple, declarative sentences. I was explaining what Overmod and I were and we're not doing. Your shortcomings are manifest.
I think we all know what you are. You can't handle being called out. Consequently you need to attempt ad hominem attacks. Typical and lame.
My professional career was and remains beyond your inane and ignorant comments.
Amtrak certainly has cracked down on reduced fares. This not allowing children under two years to occupy seats seems a bit much for me.
I wonder if Amtrak employees may travel on passes. It used to be that employees could obtain passes for their own and their families, including dependent children, travel on railroads within the areas of their company's travel. Since my father worked for the ACL, my mother could obtain passes within the southern area (east of the Mississippi and south of the Ohio and Potomac Rivers, which did allow travel into Cincinnati and Washington). As a result, when we moved from Florida to South Carolina (where my mother's parents lived), we (mother and six sons) traveled at no cost for transportation.
Also, Amtrak's regulations for minors unaccompanied by a guardian are really restricting. When I was 15 and my youngest brother was almost 17, he and I took a trip that Amtrak would not allow; the two of rode a bus to Charlotte, and boarded there; we changed trains in Atlanta and spent the night between there and Birmingham, where we again changed trains to go to New Orleans--and took a bus to Baton Rouge. Our oldest brother did take us down to New Orleans where we boarded for an overnightg trip to Chattanooga, where we were met by our uncle there; he took us back to the station, where we boarded for Atlanta and spent the night between there and Charlotte, whereupon we took a bus home (though I hitchehiked the last ten miles because I had a dental appointment that morning in the city ten miles from home). I recall one question asked by a conductor--the conductor who boarded in Birmingham the next morning after leaving New Orleans asked, as he took our pass, "You two twins?"
Amtrak would allow the trip I took two years later, when I rode from Baton Rouge to Charlotte, changing in New Orleans, stopping over in Birmingham with my brother there, and hitchhiking home from Charlotte.
Johnny
DeggestyI wonder if Amtrak employees may travel on passes.
Here's a PDF of what the policy was in the late Boardman years:
https://docplayer.net/docview/71/64650247/#file=/storage/71/64650247/64650247.pdf
Note that you will have to follow up 'detailed procedures' in the Reference section (p.44) which, to my knowledge, are not on the greater Internet. Perhaps someone here knows them and can summarize, or knows how to provide relevant sections to read here.
Our community is FREE to join. To participate you must either login or register for an account.