(no subject)

[msmemory_archive]

"Bank of America has always strived for higher standards" but apparently has not striven for better grammar.

Comments

[dagonell.livejournal.com]

There was a recent car commercial that made me cringe.
"... and better mileage means less trips to the gas pump!"
My wife actually yelled "FEWER" at the TV.
-- Dagonell

[tashabear.livejournal.com]

My husband gripes about the signs at the express lanes in the grocery store, too. "Ten items or FEWER," he says. "Ten items or FEWER!"

[kimbari.livejournal.com]

BWAH! Maybe they wuz dumbing down. (I kinda doubt it, though. These are the kinds of mistakes people with advanced degrees make. >:)

[jenwrites.livejournal.com]

What do you expect from the bank whose ATMs exhort you to park "closed" to them?

[new-man.livejournal.com]

That's "ATM Machine" to you, Miss.

[fitzw.livejournal.com]

"ATM Machine"

Isn't that, like, redundant? "Automated Teller Machine Machine"?

[new-man.livejournal.com]

Um... yes. That was the point. Another anguished English.

[be-well-lowell.livejournal.com]

It would be fine in British English, as I recall, but that hardly seems like a good excuse for the Bank of America.

[baron-steffan.livejournal.com]

Okay, if I remember correctly, you were a linguistics
major, right? So what's *your* take on the apparent One True
Religion that language may only be *described*, and that there
are no "rules", making such things as "have strived" just "a
dialectal usage".

Linguistics has long been something of hobby for me, and recently
I've seriously increased my study. When, for example, I've presumed
to use the word "wrong" in such fora as sci.lang, I've gotten slapped
by the pros.

I'm like "eew" when people conversate bad, y'know?

--- Steve

[jducoeur]

Well, bear in mind that she's not just a linguistics major, but a semi-professional proofreader. That's a job that requires a prescriptivist view.

I am, of course, a hardcore descriptivist, precisely *because* of my lesser but still non-trivial linguistics background: I see modern language's prescriptivist approach to be a weird anomoly that has nothing to do with how human language actually works. If you want a good course that illustrates why I feel that way, borrow The Story of Human Language from me sometime -- it's a really delightful course on how language actually works in practice, with lovely illustrative examples. (Such as the fact that some of English's greatest weirdnesses are precisely due to mistaken prescriptivist notions in the 17th century, which mucked up the language via false analyses...)

*gasp*

[disneybaroness.livejournal.com]

Unca Steffan!?!

How'd you sneak in here?!

Re: *gasp*

[baron-steffan.livejournal.com]

Well, yeah. Folks (where "folks" primarily = Deanna)
have been encouraging me to sign up, so I finally
succumbed. I still have my reservations, and there's
nothing at my own journal so far, but at least I can
read and comment.

Re: *gasp*

[disneybaroness.livejournal.com]

Well I'm happy you're here none-the-less. :)