Sometimes, when I am reading an article, I come upon some really atrocious grammar - for example, misplacing adverbs, especially "only," or mismatched pronouns.
We need a committee to check the grammar in Wikipedia articles and make corrections! We need some really picky people on this committee too - and I will be glad to help.
- Fearless Freya of Arty Atlanta
Meet people who share your interests!
There already is a WikiProject Grammar by the way, listed at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:List_of_WikiProjects
SV
--- Freya cybercat@redjellyfish.net wrote:
Sometimes, when I am reading an article, I come upon some really atrocious grammar - for example, misplacing adverbs, especially "only," or mismatched pronouns.
We need a committee to check the grammar in Wikipedia articles and make corrections! We need some really picky people on this committee too - and I will be glad to help.
- Fearless Freya of Arty Atlanta
Meet people who share your interests!
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On 11/10/05, Freya cybercat@redjellyfish.net wrote:
We need a committee to check the grammar in Wikipedia articles and make corrections! We need some really picky people on this committee too - and I will be glad to help.
English grammar is very flexible, so if you find something that doesn't look right to you it's probably better to fix it yourself--if it's really that important to you--than to hope for some committee to come up with the One True Wikipedia Grammar (which is feasible) and impose it on all of Wikipedia (which is a bit pie-in-the-sky).
The other day someone came on IRC moaning about the use of "which" in nonrestrictive clauses, which is apparently a heinous crime in American English but perfectly acceptable (and even sometimes prefered) in most other forms. My take on this--as with most style questions--is that we have thousands, of regular editors, and while it's nice to have stuff like our Manual of style, and Strunk and White, Fowler, etc as guides, we will probably have to permit our normal editing processes to take care of the question of grammar. We have enough silly edit wars about whether or not to use emdashes and whatnot. A crusade on the nonrestrictive clause would not be of much use to Wikipedia if it drove away good people, as such battles invariably do.
Tony Sidaway wrote:
On 11/10/05, Freya cybercat@redjellyfish.net wrote:
We need a committee to check the grammar in Wikipedia articles and make corrections! We need some really picky people on this committee too - and I will be glad to help.
English grammar is very flexible, so if you find something that doesn't look right to you it's probably better to fix it yourself--if it's really that important to you--than to hope for some committee to come up with the One True Wikipedia Grammar (which is feasible) and impose it on all of Wikipedia (which is a bit pie-in-the-sky).
The other day someone came on IRC moaning about the use of "which" in nonrestrictive clauses, which is apparently a heinous crime in American English but perfectly acceptable (and even sometimes prefered) in most other forms. My take on this--as with most style questions--is that we have thousands, of regular editors, and while it's nice to have stuff like our Manual of style, and Strunk and White, Fowler, etc as guides, we will probably have to permit our normal editing processes to take care of the question of grammar. We have enough silly edit wars about whether or not to use emdashes and whatnot. A crusade on the nonrestrictive clause would not be of much use to Wikipedia if it drove away good people, as such battles invariably do.
I don't completely disagree with the idea of having grammar specialists. They do need the ability to pay attention to detail, but also need the flexibility to understand that there is more than one way of doing things. We have long recognized that British and American English will vary according to vocabulary and spelling, but it is also important to remember that this also applies to the less well understood domain of grammar.
In the article on "that" the New Fowler goes on to say, "Some there are who follow this principle now, but it would be idle to pretend that it is the practice either of most or of the best writers."
Ec
Ray Saintonge wrote: <snip>
I don't completely disagree with the idea of having grammar specialists. They do need the ability to pay attention to detail, but also need the flexibility to understand that there is more than one way of doing things. We have long recognized that British and American English will vary according to vocabulary and spelling, but it is also important to remember that this also applies to the less well understood domain of grammar.
In the article on "that" the New Fowler goes on to say, "Some there are who follow this principle now, but it would be idle to pretend that it is the practice either of most or of the best writers."
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