Proofreading Service - Pain in the English
Proofreading Service - Pain in the English

Your Pain Is Our Pleasure

24-Hour Proofreading Service—We proofread your Google Docs or Microsoft Word files. We hate grammatical errors with a passion. Learn More

Proofreading Service - Pain in the English
Proofreading Service - Pain in the English

Your Pain Is Our Pleasure

24-Hour Proofreading Service—We proofread your Google Docs or Microsoft Word files. We hate grammatical errors with a passion. Learn More

Username

Warsaw Will

Member Since

December 3, 2010

Total number of comments

1371

Total number of votes received

2083

Bio

I'm a TEFL teacher working in Poland. I have a blog - Random Idea English - where I do some grammar stuff for advanced students and have the occasional rant against pedantry.

Latest Comments

Oral vs. Aural

  • September 11, 2012, 10:44am

bkdoc is absolutely right, and they are pronounced exactly the same in British English as well. The pair regularly appear in lists of homophones, such as this one: http://www.bifroest.demon.co.uk/misc/homophones-list.html

Sorry, me again, but I have just found this in Practical English Usage, by Michael Swan:

A different kind of first- and second-person reference is common in the relative clauses of cleft sentences. However, the verb is usually third-person, especially in an informal style - "It's me that's responsible for the organisation." (more formal - 'It is I who am responsible ...)
'You're the one that knows where to go'. (NOT the one that know ...)

Past tense of “text”

  • September 7, 2012, 10:06am

@Methatica - you're obviously more imaginative than me; I doubt I could manage five.:) Except as I live in Poland, I would have to say 'I sent you an SMS'; text is not really used much in international English, at least not here. Anyway, I see texted seems to be winning the day on your Facebook page. Good sense prevails!

@the naysayers
Other newish technology verbs:
ping - pinged (not pang)
tweet - tweeted (not twet or twat)
ngram - ngrammed
google - googled
rip - ripped

All these other new techie verbs are regular, so even if AnWulf is wrong and text is a new verb, why should it be any different from these other verbs? And I bet most people say they burned a CD, not burnt a CD, even in the UK, where in the standard meaning of burn, burnt is the more popular past form.

It's not as if the alternatives put forward have much to offer. And I really can't understand why anyone would feel he had to 'admit that he was guilty of using the word "texted" when telling someone that [he] just sent them a text message' ( @lush). If we can say 'I phoned you', 'I called you', 'I emailed you', why on earth should someone feel guilty for saying 'I texted you'. It's beyond me!

Idea Vs. Ideal

  • September 6, 2012, 1:39pm

I'd never realised that a PhD in Computer Science made you an expert on English, effing or otherwise. In any case you seem to be pretty well alone in your correctness. Google has precisely 9 hits for "I have an ideal about that" as opposed to over a million for "I have an idea about that". What's more Google Books, which is perhaps a better measure, as books get proofread and edited, has absolutely no hits for the 'ideal' version, although there are more than two thousand for the 'idea' version.

Past tense of “text”

  • September 6, 2012, 1:25pm

@Methatica - I totally agree with you that one of the joys of the English language is that it is organic, but the underlying principles don't change so much. There are precisely twelve active tenses, and eight passive, hardly hundreds. And even the 180 or so irregular verbs, of which we commonly use less than a hundred, follow relatively few patterns which are easily recognisable.

By the way, I was always brought up to believe that hang/hanged and hang/hung had two rather different meanings: people get hanged; things, like pictures, get hung.

@Monocle - The verbs you list form a pretty well closed group. How many of these verbs have been coined in the last hundred years? Or even two hundred? Precisely one - preset, and that's simply the prefix pre added to an existing irregular verb. Of the rest the youngest is bust, which dates back to 1764, and is really a variation of the irregular verb bust. All the others are from at least 1600, and many of them date back to 1200 or beyond, as I'm sure AnWulf will be able to verify. Incidentally two of your examples - sweat and knit - are totally regular. And interestingly, one - fit is regular in BrE, but can be irregular in AmE. There are really no precedents for totally new verbs joining this august band. And absolutely none for text texd.

Virtually every new verb that enters the language is regular, and even when old verbs are put to new uses, they tend to be given a regular form. Hence a baseball batter 'flied out', not 'flew out'. In fact, the number of irregular verbs is declining, not increasing.

There's an interesting discussion about this at StackExchange - http://english.stackexchange.com/questions/53660/is-it-possible-for-a-new-irregular-verb-to-appear-in-english-language.

Younger vs. youngest

  • September 4, 2012, 12:29pm

@Dean Harris - did you actually read anything John, goofy, mighty red pen and Logan said? Or follow up on their references? - here is a link for MWDEU to make it easy -

http://books.google.pl/books?id=2yJusP0vrdgC&pg=PA881

He was sat

  • September 4, 2012, 12:03pm

Just heard on BBC Radio 4 'Just a minute', where the contestants are pretty hot on the use of language - from comedienne Sue Perkins - 'When nobody's looking, I like to watch Graham [Norton] sat at a stool, braddle out, delving into a piece of wood'. So here we have it as a participle rather than part of a full verb. And it sounds absolutely fine to me. Interestingly, Perkins is London born, so it must be spreading from its Northern home.

“As per ....”?

  • September 2, 2012, 10:16am

@neilmac - 'with most contributors taking a prescriptive, if not disdainful and opinionated stance' - which is pretty well par for the course on PITE. Or should I have said - as per usual? There's none so disdainful as a pedant in full flight. Summed up beautifully by Stephen Fry here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J7E-aoXLZGY

Sorry, forget the examples with 'person' - that's 3rd person singular any way. I was getting the antecedent confused with the subject. I should have said: Is it only me who is going to do anything about this? (definitely NOT 'am going')

I think Jasper is spot on for the first part, although the 'I' version sounds very stilted to me. In Google Books there are slightly more occurrences of 'is it only I who' than 'is it only me who'. You could perhaps avoid the problem by saying:

'Am I the only person who thinks ...?'

He's also right in the second point, it's about agreement rather than singular or plural. It seems to me that relative 'who' always has to take a verb in the 3rd person, either singular or plural, whatever the antecedent.

Is it only me who thinks like this. (definitely NOT 'think')
Am I the only person who thinks ... ? (definitely NOT 'think')
Am I the only person who is going to do anything about this? (definitely NOT 'am going')
Is it you who has been saying these things about me? (NOT 'have been' if talking to one person)

I have no grammatical justification for this, only what 'sounds right'. I imagine what is happening is that the personal pronoun + 'who' is really standing in for 'the person who'.

Questions

When “one of” many things is itself plural November 27, 2011
You’ve got another think/thing coming September 29, 2012
Fit as a butcher’s dog May 22, 2013
“reach out” May 25, 2013
Tell About October 18, 2013
tonne vs ton January 25, 2014
apostrophe with expressions of distance or time February 2, 2014
Natural as an adverb April 13, 2014
fewer / less May 3, 2014
Opposition to “pretty” March 7, 2015