Originally posted by CT:
quote:Brilliant and true.
Originally posted by Jon Boy:
The strange thing is that pedantry and ignorance frequently go hand in hand.
My hat is off to you, sir.
![[Hat]](graemlins/hat.gif)
quote:Is the way I put it grammatically wrong and, if so, how is it wrong?
Originally posted by The Rabbit:
And I believe the preferred English construction of that sentence would be "for $100 or less". [/QB]
quote:There's an extraneous or in the sentence. It should either be:
Originally posted by Sa'eed:
I need to buy a digital camera for or less than $100. Any recommendations?
quote:Yes it is grammatically incorrect. The word "or" is a coordinating conjunction which links "$100" and "less (than $100 dollars)". In English, the coordinating conjunctions "and", "or" and "nor" are always placed between the two items they link. If a list of items are linked, the coordinating conjunction is place between the last two items on the list and the remaining items are usually only separated by a comma.
Originally posted by Sa'eed:
quote:Is the way I put it grammatically wrong and, if so, how is it wrong? [/QB]
Originally posted by The Rabbit:
And I believe the preferred English construction of that sentence would be "for $100 or less".
quote:This one makes no sense to me. Only $100 is off limits? Anything that's more or less than that amount is okay?
Originally posted by Herblay:
I need to buy a digital camera for more or less than $100. Any recommendations?
quote:I think the intent there was the idiom "more or less", meaning "about" or "approximately", but if this was the intent, correct use of the idiom would be "more or less $100" not "more or less than $100". Either way, I agree that using this idiom is confusing. It would be much clearer to say "around $100", or "$100 or so".
Originally posted by Lisa:
quote:This one makes no sense to me. Only $100 is off limits? Anything that's more or less than that amount is okay?
Originally posted by Herblay:
I need to buy a digital camera for more or less than $100. Any recommendations?
quote:It depends. "More or less than" would indicate that you are looking for a quantity that is either more or less than $100. "More or less" would indicate that you are looking for approximately $100.
Originally posted by The Rabbit:
quote:I think the intent there was the idiom "more or less", meaning "about" or "approximately", but if this was the intent, correct use of the idiom would be "more or less $100" not "more or less than $100". Either way, I agree that using this idiom is confusing. It would be much clearer to say "around $100", or "$100 or so".
Originally posted by Lisa:
quote:This one makes no sense to me. Only $100 is off limits? Anything that's more or less than that amount is okay?
Originally posted by Herblay:
I need to buy a digital camera for more or less than $100. Any recommendations?
quote:Gah!
Originally posted by Stephan:
Irregardless
quote:"More or less than $100" is not only awkward, its implication (that you are willing to pay any price except $100) is so improbable that most rational people would conclude there was mistake in language usage rather than this was the author's intent.
It depends. "More or less than" would indicate that you are looking for a quantity that is either more or less than $100. "More or less" would indicate that you are looking for approximately $100.
I agree, however, that "more or less than" is awkward and probably wouldn't be used -- though it is technically correct.
quote:1. It would be far more polite to say "I don't like it when people are pedantic."
Topic: I don't like pedantic people.
quote:
I don't like people.
quote:
Originally posted by Lisa:
quote:Gah!
Originally posted by Stephan:
Irregardless
![[ROFL]](graemlins/rofl.gif)
quote:I am not a prescriptivist in any sense, but as an English teacher (mostly ESL), the plea: "but you understood me," cuts no ice. There is not a prescribed standard, but there is a generally accepted one, and the above did not meet that standard. The language is there to be challenged and teased and worked over, but not to be hacked upon with a machete. Perhaps I have a more keen appreciation of his attitude than you do because I teach equally self-righteous manglers of the language on a daily basis in a high school, but as I tell them very often, there is no right way to say something in English, but there are many wrong ways.
Originally posted by Xavier:
I'm perfectly able to mentally insert the commas, seems a silly thing to correct someone for.
Edit: That rewrite still reads a bit clunky, but the point is that the meaning was clear to me.
quote:Maybe I'm misremembering, Rabbit, but haven't you complained in the past when people have been pedantic about your own writing?
Originally posted by The Rabbit:
quote:1. It would be far more polite to say "I don't like it when people are pedantic."
Topic: I don't like pedantic people.
quote:He obviously just accidentally inserted an extra "or". (At least that seems obvious to me.) Your edit involved a rewrite, not just deletion of the superfluous "or", so I'd assume Sa'eed was asking more about the change from "less than $100" to "$100 or less", which you claimed was the preferred construction, and didn't notice that you'd taken out the "or". And really, you'd never expect that kind of error from a native English speaker? I've seen far more mangled syntax, to the point of nearly complete unintelligibility, from people with PhDs in communications.
2. Writing "for or less than $100" is not a trivial, nit picky grammar error. It's not an error I'd ever expect to see from a native English speaker, even a child that had never studied grammar and didn't know what a conjunction was. The fact that you asked whether or not the way you put it was grammatically incorrect, strongly suggested it wasn't just an editing error.
quote:To be fair, you were pedantic first, and then he asked about it.
3. You asked. It's more than a little rude to complain about people being pedantic when they are responding to a grammar question YOU posted.
quote:Sure, it's a word, and it would be even if it weren't found in dictionaries. But being in a dictionary says nothing about the acceptability of the word. Using a word like irregardless will send negative messages about you, much like saying "ain't" or "he don't".
Originally posted by Dr Strangelove:
From what I remember of doing research on "irregardless" a while back, it is, at least in some dictionaries, actually a word. A redundant word, but not as bad (IMO) as when smart academic educated people make up words like "monarchicalization." Though, to be far, monarchicalization actually can make sense in context, whereas irregardless should pretty much always be "regardless." There are worse examples than monarchicalization though. Most art history articles have at least two or three.
quote:Not so obviously actually. When I first looked at the sentence I took the meaning to be: "for $100 or less," meaning that the mistake would be incorrectly believing that the indirect object ($100) could be referenced after the direct object, a digital camera, using the preposition "for."
He obviously just accidentally inserted an extra "or".
quote:I wouldn't argue with any of that if you were critiquing an English paper. Instead, you have a guy asking about cameras on a web forum.
I am not a prescriptivist in any sense, but as an English teacher (mostly ESL), the plea: "but you understood me," cuts no ice. There is not a prescribed standard, but there is a generally accepted one, and the above did not meet that standard. The language is there to be challenged and teased and worked over, but not to be hacked upon with a machete. Perhaps I have a more keen appreciation of his attitude than you do because I teach equally self-righteous manglers of the language on a daily basis in a high school, but as I tell them very often, there is no right way to say something in English, but there are many wrong ways.
quote:But he don't!
Originally posted by Jon Boy:
Sure, it's a word, and it would be even if it weren't found in dictionaries. But being in a dictionary says nothing about the acceptability of the word. Using a word like irregardless will send negative messages about you, much like saying "ain't" or "he don't".
quote:And anyway, it isn't that he doesn't like pedantic people. He just doesn't like it when they correct him.
Originally posted by The Rabbit:
quote:1. It would be far more polite to say "I don't like it when people are pedantic."
Topic: I don't like pedantic people.
2. Writing "for or less than $100" is not a trivial, nit picky grammar error. It's not an error I'd ever expect to see from a native English speaker, even a child that had never studied grammar and didn't know what a conjunction was. The fact that you asked whether or not the way you put it was grammatically incorrect, strongly suggested it wasn't just an editing error.
3. You asked. It's more than a little rude to complain about people being pedantic when they are responding to a grammar question YOU posted.
quote:Yes I have. Generally, when some one has made an obvious effort to write a substantive post, I think its petty and condescending to nit pick about minor grammar, spelling and punctuation errors. The offense is in my mind far less egregious when someone posts a one line question. My initial post was unarguably quite flippant, but the following ones were no intended to be such. I thought Sa'eed had an honest question about why "for or" was incorrect grammatically.
Maybe I'm misremembering, Rabbit, but haven't you complained in the past when people have been pedantic about your own writing?
quote:Sorry, but the commas make it grammatically much worse. "than $100" is a prepositional phrase and it's simply wrong to put a comma between a preposition and its object. The underlying problem is that "or" should only be used to join two syntactically equal things (i.e. two nouns, two verbs, two independent clauses, etc.). In this case "or" is joining a preposition "for" to a noun "less". This turns out to be more problematic than most nonparallel constructions because "$100" ends up being the object of two separate prepositions (for and than) one of which is joining the phrase "for $100" to "less" and the other of which modifies "less". Try diagramming it and you get a tangled mess.
"I need to buy a digital camera for, or less than, $100. Any recommendations?"
quote:Hmmm, why do you suppose that nitpicking is written as one word, but cherry picking is still two? Both have both a literal and a figurative meaning. Do you suppose it has something to do with the age of the expression, the fact that nits are no longer commonly picked from peoples hair but cherries are still routinely picked from trees, animals verses plants, one verse two syllables . . .
Originally posted by Samprimary:
Nitpicking, when not one word, should be hyphenated.
quote:That's too bad, I majored in pedantics.
I don't like pedantic people
![[Smile]](smile.gif)
quote:Brilliant and true.
Originally posted by Jon Boy:
The strange thing is that pedantry and ignorance frequently go hand in hand.
quote:That's my call.
or am I simply looking for patterns where I shouldn't expect to find any.
quote:I've read over this several times, and I still can't make heads or tails of it. For starters, there's no indirect object in the original sentence. But I have no idea what you mean about referencing the object of the preposition "for" after the direct object, nor do I see why you think it's a problem.
Originally posted by Orincoro:
quote:Not so obviously actually. When I first looked at the sentence I took the meaning to be: "for $100 or less," meaning that the mistake would be incorrectly believing that the indirect object ($100) could be referenced after the direct object, a digital camera, using the preposition "for."
He obviously just accidentally inserted an extra "or".
quote:Your analysis here is wrong. There aren't two separate prepositional phrases, and "for less than" is not even a prepositional phrase by itself because it's not a grammatical constituent.
While such a construction makes sense in other contexts, e.g. "I need to buy a ticket at or near the venue," the problem here was that "for" was acting as part of the prepositional phrase: "for less than," and so could not be used in a seperate prepositional phrase, "for $100."
quote:Your analysis is wrong here too. Being able to say "at or about" has nothing to do with the preposition "about" or the phrase "at about", which is a completely unrelated issue.
There are cases where splitting a prepositional phrase in the same way is possible in certain contexts, e.g: "Let's meet at or about 5," but this is because the preposition "about: is often spoken (less often written) without "at" as in "at about," as a function of convenience. The same is not true for "for or less than," in this context, because "for" appears to be forming both part of a prepositional phrase and a noun phrase, eg: "for Joe," giving the appearance of missing information. This is why "for or" does not typically appear in English with the exception of the construction: "for or against," which takes a different specific meaning of "for."
quote:"Than $100" is not a prepositional phrase. It's actually a conjunction and a noun phrase. Furthermore, there's nothing necessarily wrong with putting commas between a preposition and its object (though it certainly can be wrong).
Sorry, but the commas make it grammatically much worse. "than $100" is a prepositional phrase and it's simply wrong to put a comma between a preposition and its object. The underlying problem is that "or" should only be used to join two syntactically equal things (i.e. two nouns, two verbs, two independent clauses, etc.). In this case "or" is joining a preposition "for" to a noun "less". This turns out to be more problematic than most nonparallel constructions because "$100" ends up being the object of two separate prepositions (for and than) one of which is joining the phrase "for $100" to "less" and the other of which modifies "less".
quote:*reads CT's post in a surly tone*
Originally posted by CT:
quote:Brilliant and true.
Originally posted by Jon Boy:
The strange thing is that pedantry and ignorance frequently go hand in hand.
My hat is off to you, sir.
quote:Odd. All my grammar references list "than" as a preposition when it's used to compare two nouns. It's certainly much more natural to say "He is bigger than her", than "He is bigger than she (which would be correct usage as if than were commonly treated as a conjucation). Is this something controversial, perhaps traditional versus more modern assessment.
"Than $100" is not a prepositional phrase. It's actually a conjunction and a noun phrase. Furthermore, there's nothing necessarily wrong with putting commas between a preposition and its object (though it certainly can be wrong).
The part about "or" is right on, though. Coordinating conjunctions join equal constituents, and here there's one missing. But "$100" doesn't end up as the object of two prepositions, because "than" isn't even a preposition.
quote:You are still presuming that the or is simply an accidental incertion and that he meant "for less than $100" rather than "for $100 or less". The two are slightly different in meaning (which is probably irrelevant in this instance but would not be in technical writing). My understanding was that the or was not accidental, he was attempting a construction like "for or below $100" which is identical in meaning to ("for $100 or less").
As I said above, the "or" is a problem simply because it doesn't coordinate the "for" with anything, not because it coordinates "for" with "less than" or because of some other convoluted and mistaken analysis of the syntax.
quote:I find it rather surprising that your grammar references all list than only as a preposition and not also as a conjunction in comparatives. Traditionally, than is considered a conjunction. A more modern assessment would say that it can be a preposition too, but I don't think it is here. Or rather, I don't think it actually matters here.
Originally posted by The Rabbit:
Odd. All my grammar references list "than" as a preposition when it's used to compare two nouns. It's certainly much more natural to say "He is bigger than her", than "He is bigger than she (which would be correct usage as if than were commonly treated as a conjucation). Is this something controversial, perhaps traditional versus more modern assessment.
quote:Your "understanding" is just as much a presumption as mine. And I happen to think mine is much more justifiable and likely to be true, since I find it highly unlikely that a competent English speaker would intend to create such a bizarre non-parallelism, as you claim, and infinitely more likely that he made a typo and was distracted from the actual problem by your unnecessary rewording and erroneous grammatical explanation.
You are still presuming that the or is simply an accidental incertion and that he meant "for less than $100" rather than "for $100 or less". The two are slightly different in meaning (which is probably irrelevant in this instance but would not be in technical writing). My understanding was that the or was not accidental, he was attempting a construction like "for or below $100" which is identical in meaning to ("for $100 or less").
quote:It makes me wonder if you even finished reading the sentence which goes on to explain that the two prepositions in question are not coordinated.
You said that the "or" is wrong because it would make "$100" the object of two prepositions, but that's incorrect, because there's no reason why a noun can't be the object of two coordinated preposition.
quote:Which is a simple repetition of my analysis except your claim that "less" is and adjective. According to the OED "less" can be either an adjective or a noun. In the phrase "for less than $100", is it not acting as a noun and the object of the preposition?
But the "or", if you're assuming it's deliberate, does not coordinate "for" and "than"—it coordinates "for" and "less", a preposition and an adjective (not a noun, as you said earlier).
quote:I don't understand your hostility Jon Boy. I've agreed that your interpretation is legitimate possibility. Why can't you admit that mine is as well even though several other posters came to the same conclusion.
Your "understanding" is just as much a presumption as mine. And I happen to think mine is much more justifiable and likely to be true, since I find it highly unlikely that a competent English speaker would intend to create such a bizarre non-parallelism, as you claim, and infinitely more likely that he made a typo and was distracted from the actual problem by your unnecessary rewording and erroneous grammatical explanation..
quote:I went back and read your original post, and to be honest, it only made me more confused. You were talking about why someone's suggestion of inserting commas was wrong, but the commas don't actually do anything syntactically. But what I was responding to was your claim that the problem was that "$100" ended up as the object of two prepositions (assuming that than is one), but that's not a problem, because a noun can be the object of two prepositions.
Originally posted by The Rabbit:
Jon Boy, I really don't want to argue grammar with you but it seems like you aren't even trying to understand what I say.
For example, you say
quote:It makes me wonder if you even finished reading the sentence which goes on to explain that the two prepositions in question are not coordinated.
You said that the "or" is wrong because it would make "$100" the object of two prepositions, but that's incorrect, because there's no reason why a noun can't be the object of two coordinated preposition.
quote:The OED doesn't say it can be a noun. It says that it can be an absolutive adjective, which it also calls a quasi-noun, but I’ve never seen any textbook use that term. An absolutive adjective basically stands in for a full noun phrase without the actually noun.
Then you say
quote:Which is a simple repetition of my analysis except your claim that "less" is and adjective. According to the OED "less" can be either an adjective or a noun. In the phrase "for less than $100", is it not acting as a noun and the object of the preposition?
But the "or", if you're assuming it's deliberate, does not coordinate "for" and "than"—it coordinates "for" and "less", a preposition and an adjective (not a noun, as you said earlier).
quote:I’m sorry for the hostility. It’s probably just my frustration at the whole thread coming out. I’m frustrated that you, who have complained repeatedly about people nitpicking your typos or grammatical errors in the past, were the first to pounce when someone generally disliked had an error in a post. And then I was frustrated with all the bungled and tortured grammatical explications. I’m sorry I don’t find your interpretation likely. It’s just not the sort of thing a competent writer would do on purpose, while accidentally inserted words happen all the time.
quote:I don't understand your hostility Jon Boy. I've agreed that your interpretation is legitimate possibility. Why can't you admit that mine is as well even though several other posters came to the same conclusion.
Your "understanding" is just as much a presumption as mine. And I happen to think mine is much more justifiable and likely to be true, since I find it highly unlikely that a competent English speaker would intend to create such a bizarre non-parallelism, as you claim, and infinitely more likely that he made a typo and was distracted from the actual problem by your unnecessary rewording and erroneous grammatical explanation..
quote:I’m not sure how you think I’m reversing causality. I didn’t say that his question arose because of your explanation. I said that I thought he was distracted from the fact that there was a superfluous “or” by your rewrite and the ensuing grammatical explanations. I did, however, say that you were pedantic first, then he asked about the grammar, and then later he called you pedantic and you complained about him being rude, even though you started off being rude in the very first reply.
And by the way, Sa'eed's question to me about whether his construction was grammatically incorrect and why, came before I offered any grammatical explanation so unless you are claiming reverse causality, his question could not have arisen because of my "erroneous grammatical explanation".
quote:And I’m going to have to respectfully disagree. Your terminology and analysis has been confused and confusing, even when your conclusions might have been right.
Jon Boy, I genuinely respect your expertise in this area, but I do know enough grammar myself to think your criticisms of my explanation off base.