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Description: Are you an editor, author, journalist, verbivore, English major, English professor, English student, English teacher, grammarian? Assembling a style manual, writing manual? Dr. NAD's Prig Page features contest challenge quiz tests of grammar, usage, spelling, punctuation, and style in the English language. Submit future items. Contributors publicized. Answers are annotated. Answer by E-Z form. An interactive collection of submitted pet peeves and related links is maintained as well.
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Index
Who Cares?
Current Debates
Your Interactive ![]()
Strunk-Elements o Style Fowler- King's English Web Wonk- Perspicuity Rich. Lederer- Verbivore 10 Verbosities to Avoid NC State - well indexed ![]() The Electric Editors ![]() ![]() Some current debates on priggery - commas & quotes - possessive apostrophes - 'a' vs 'an' with acronyms - comma & last list item - genderless 'he': sexist? - as, like, such as, etc. - 'that' vs 'which' - split infinitives - ending with preposition ![]() Science prigs esp.: Big-wig sci. editors cry & their advice Temperature & kelvins Acronyms/abbreviations - precede with 'a' or 'an' ? e.g., 'a NSF' vs 'an NSF' |
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the ![]() ![]() "The Language Cops" -Another essay on priggery and language conservatism vs liberalism: ![]() "Language is a set of conventions that evolve by anarchy. True lovers of language respect both its conventions and the anarchy from which those conventions emerge." ![]() Tom Tadfor Little |
![]() ![]() Here are examples of the current debates on priggery, held among copy editors. There are strong opposing opinionsconsiderably insightfulput to votes. These efforts face much the same issues as priggery. Are they esoteric? What of those not privy to the forum, or even the notion that such debates are occurring? If a publication adopts progressive practices, will its priggish readers cry "ignorant"? Some debated issues are not trivial nit-picking, as one might suspect. Prigs may insist on conservative conventions: "Why complicate a functional rule?" The problem is the universality of what is held to be a convention. Consider the issue of whether to place commas and periods inside or outside quotation marks? US English says inside, British says outside. Not to mention, "color" or "colour," "organize" or "organise"? It has never been an English convention that sentences cannot end in prepositions or that infinitives cannot be split. "What's the big dealcommunication is the point, right?" As English is approaching the universal status of Roman-era Latin, peoples for whom it is a second language are continually confounded. What should primary English teachers, who seek simplified elements to teach, do? Conservatism may be prudent in these matters. While priggery ought to allow progress, progressive zeal serves little other than itself. Even in the information age when movements progress rapidly among the informed, conservative standards may be less risky than desires not to appear standoffish. Nevertheless, creative writers are refreshing and should be encouraged to experiment at their own risk, recognizingto whatever extent desirablethat prigs are present. Prigs may not be the primary concern, however. |
Before acronyms: "a" or "an"
Last item in a series: Comma?
Genderless "he": Sexist?
As, like, such as, as though...
That vs Which
Split infinitives
Ending a sentence with a preposition |
Share your thoughts?
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©1996 Neil A Durso, III |
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