Prescribing T-Shirt Punctuation

 

As cute as the idea behind this shirt is, I paused before I read the second line because I am not accustomed seeing the singular form of the first person pronoun in its uncapitalized state.

Yes, I know that I should be in this day and age with the newly created spelling, punctuation and grammar rules of texting.

And I'm sure the same can be said about the fact that a t-shirt about punctuation is lacking punctuation.

Photo via facebook

Favoring Language Change - Idioms

This topic seems to be more controversial than a simple dictionary definition would lead one to believe.

At issue: If a man is favoring his right leg because of an injury, which leg was injured, his right leg or his left?

Idiomatically speaking, dictionaries seem to favor the interpretation that the the right leg is the injured one.

Here are the pertinent entries from merriam-webster.com and dictionary.com respectively:

favor verb

1. a : to regard or treat with favor
b (1) : to do a kindness for : oblige (2) : endow
c : to treat gently or carefully <favored her injured leg>

and

14. to deal with, treat, or use gently: to favor a lame leg.

However, consider these responses from a similar question posed on Yahoo:

"When you favor a leg, you give it more work. example: if you injured your left leg, you would favor your right leg so you didn't have to use your left as much." - Lackadaisical.One

"Essentially the same thing here. If you favour your right leg, that means it is your favourite leg to use, i.e. you prefer using it to your left leg. That means you put MORE weight on it." - Amanda

And my favorite:

"my advice would be to ask a question that makes sense next time" - bluffenw/maimuffin

The analogy I have always used when told that I have it all wrong is this -

A teacher's pet is a favorite; therefore, the teacher favors that student by calling on said student more frequently than other students.

For this reason, I call on my right leg more frequently when my left leg is injured.

Either way you look at it, I believe that the examples of language in use coupled with the way language is constantly changing allow for both versions to be favorable.

WTF ROTFL LOL - JK

WTF does ROTFL mean? I am truly not a prescriptivist, but I am still not LOL.


This past December, Language - The Journal of the Linguistic Society of America published a review of The gr8 db8 by David Crystal. I have not read the book but I have been meaning to mention my initial thoughts about the frequency of initialisms in texting.

The thing that annoys me most about the initialisms associated with texting is that the majority of the most common initialisms are not abbreviations for phrases that anyone I know actually used before the invention of instant messaging.

On the other hand, when I was coming of age and we sent messages that were not so instant ("Hey, please pass this note to so and so.") the only abbreviation/initialism that I recall using with any frequency was "JK" and we used the phrase "just kidding" in normal conversation on a regular basis.

Just sayin. (See, I am really not a prescriptivist)