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comment by lil
lil  ·  3718 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: Are You a Grammar Nerd? What's Your Score?

I think the original writer of the poster might have accidentally inserted the double negative ("not" and "exclusive") because the original writer is not a grammar nerd.

I'd say that generally compelling writing and correctness might be mutually exclusive -- but only to those people who have a sense of "correctness" and care about it.

When does so-called correctness really matter?

Most student writing that I have to read might be technically correct but tedious and over-stated.

I believe that generally the more you perfect the form, the more you perfect the content -- but perfection is a point on a continuum with unclear end points.





b_b  ·  3718 days ago  ·  link  ·  

Don't you find that style often supersedes text book grammatical correctness? Form conveys content that is sometimes additive to the words themselves; subtext, perhaps, that can only be conveyed through the author's unique description. This, however, is often not given over to putting one's commas, periods, conjunctions, and prepositions in the pre-agreed upon places. (And notice the Oxford comma, which I am quite fond of! [Or, "of which I am quite fond," if we're being huge nerds.])

lil  ·  3718 days ago  ·  link  ·  

We can't hold on too firmly to any notion of textbook grammatical correctness. Whose textbook? Whose grammar? I would ignore any rule of grammar if the style moves me to connect with the author. So-called correct grammar often leads us into contortions, such as "of which I am quite fond." I believe there is a movement afoot to let the preposition rest at the end of many sentences.

By the way, if you are a writer of research papers, are you now allowed to use first person or do academic journals still force you to contort into a third person voice? There is a movement afoot to reclaim the first person.