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Re: Syntactical Meanderings
Posted By: codeman38, on host 152.163.204.201
Date: Monday, April 17, 2000, at 09:44:24
In Reply To: Re: Syntactical Meanderings posted by eric sleator on Sunday, April 16, 2000, at 18:57:22:

> (in Arial, a lowercase "i" looks rather like that Spanish inverted exclamation point, incidentally)
>
> That's why I use Comic Sans MS. Also you can tell the difference between l and I.

The i and inverted-exclamation are still not any more distinguishable in Comic Sans than in Arial, in my opinion. However, I do use Verdana as my default browser font, for the reason you mention regarding the lowercase l and capital I...

> > I think the -t past tense ending is much nicer than -ed; it reminds me of all those fantasy stories, and a favorite song (I dreamt I dwelt in marble halls...).
>
> Oh dear. That's bad grammar. You would say "I dreamed" or "I have dreamt", but not "I dreamt" or "I have dreamed" (well, the last one is kind of iffy these days, but still wrong).

Bah...according to my dictionaries, either form works just as well in the past tense as it does in the past perfect.

> >Am still ambivalent regarding the British/American -our/-or endings, but prefer "z" to "s" in words such as "realize".
>
> I prefer American spellings of words. I'm an American. Sometimes I will use British words, though. Americans who use American spellings except for -re need to be smacked. I get irritated when I'm walking around here (norhtern San Diego County) and I see someone has put up a sign advertising their theatre. It's theater. Schmucks.

Ah well. I personally like the "theatre" spelling, and I've seen Fob use it regularly as well...

> > I am also a compulsive proofreader; I've a good article on that by Anne Fadiman, which I shall HTMLize (such coinages are fine by me) shortly and then link to, if anyone is interested. Or even if no one is. For as you can probably see, I have way too much time on my hands...
>
> I am also a compulsive proofreader. I like to write, and so do my two closest friends, and often when we write stuff we give it to each other to read, and I always feel like taking a big red pen to their work, because, although they are great writers, they make many small spelling and grammar mistakes.

Heh heh. I can't say much more about that topic, besides the fact that it just hits so close to home.

-- codeman"obsessive, just not as much"38