posted
What are you looking for in a camera? Seriously....it depends on what you want to use it for.
Unless you plan on printing large sized prints, any camera on the market that is at least 7 MP will take nice pics. As a matter of fact, a lot pf people thin higher MP means a better camera, when sometimes the opposite is true.
I have a Kodak that was more than $100, and it is 7.1 MP. It takes wonderful pictures, and I am very happy with it. I also know a lot of people that have bought cannons for about $100 or so, and they love them.
quote:Originally posted by The Rabbit: And I believe the preferred English construction of that sentence would be "for $100 or less".
Is the way I put it grammatically wrong and, if so, how is it wrong? [/QB]
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.
Examples:
I am interested in buying an Olympus camera or a Fuji camera.
Rain, snow, hail, and sleet are all forms of precipitation.
I own neither a dog nor a cat.
Posts: 12591 | Registered: Jan 2000
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quote:Originally posted by Herblay: I need to buy a digital camera for more or less than $100. Any recommendations?
This one makes no sense to me. Only $100 is off limits? Anything that's more or less than that amount is okay?
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quote:Originally posted by Herblay: I need to buy a digital camera for more or less than $100. Any recommendations?
This one makes no sense to me. Only $100 is off limits? Anything that's more or less than that amount is okay?
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".
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quote:Originally posted by Herblay: I need to buy a digital camera for more or less than $100. Any recommendations?
This one makes no sense to me. Only $100 is off limits? Anything that's more or less than that amount is okay?
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".
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.
Posts: 688 | Registered: Nov 2008
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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.
I agree, however, that "more or less than" is awkward and probably wouldn't be used -- though it is technically correct.
"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.
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posted
irregardless 425 up, 92 down buy irregardless mugs, tshirts and magnetsA word used by uneducated people intending to sound intelligent. Often, the defendant will use this word in court in an attempt to impress the judge and jury. Educated people notice and those who use this word instantly identify themselves to educated people as being uneducated. Educated people rarely correct them because it helps educated people more easily identify them if they are well groomed. Uh... yes your Honor.... Irregardless of the the evidence, I was not the young man in the security video.
Source: The Urban Dictionary
Posts: 3134 | Registered: Mar 2005
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posted
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.
And yes, my goal for the day was to use the word monarchicalization three times in a paragraph. I win.
Posts: 2827 | Registered: Jul 2005
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1. It would be far more polite to say "I don't like it when people are pedantic."
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.
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posted
To answer the OP, you should be able to find at least a 5 MP camera for under $100, which for most touristy and casual purposes is good enough. My dad is still happy with his 1 MP camera, though now my phone is double that. Another factor is zoom. Optical zoom won't result in a decrease in quality while digital zoom will, so a camera with higher optical zoom will cost more. Also, if you're really strict on your budget, be aware that a memory card isn't always included so that might tack on another $15 to $30, depending on how big of one you want. And finally, be aware of whether or not the camera you buy makes it easy or difficult to import photos. For that, I would recommend narrowing your wish list down to 5 or so then googling them for reviews.
So it really depends on what you need. As far as specific cameras, I have a Nikon S220 which I just googled and it looks like its available for $100 exactly. Dang. I spent more than I should have on that. Oh well. Nikon S220 Scratch what I said about 5 MP. Go for 10.
Posts: 2827 | Registered: Jul 2005
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quote: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.
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.
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1. It would be far more polite to say "I don't like it when people are pedantic."
Maybe I'm misremembering, Rabbit, but haven't you complained in the past when people have been pedantic about your own writing?
quote: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.
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.
quote: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.
To be fair, you were pedantic first, and then he asked about it.
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quote: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.
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".
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posted
What if I said: "sentences beginning with 'I' meet my approval, while sentences beginning with 'he' don't."
AHAH!
quote: He obviously just accidentally inserted an extra "or".
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."
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 $100."
There are cases where splitting a prepositional phrase in the same way is possible in certain contexts, e.g: "Let's meet at or about 5," but this is because the preposition "about: is often spoken (less often written) without "at" as in "at about," as a function of convenience. The same is not true for "for or less than," in this context, because "for" appears to be forming both part of a prepositional phrase and a noun phrase, eg: "for Joe," giving the appearance of missing information. This is why "for or" does not typically appear in English with the exception of the construction: "for or against," which takes a different specific meaning of "for."
quote:I am not a prescriptivist in any sense, but as an English teacher (mostly ESL), the plea: "but you understood me," cuts no ice. There is not a prescribed standard, but there is a generally accepted one, and the above did not meet that standard. The language is there to be challenged and teased and worked over, but not to be hacked upon with a machete. Perhaps I have a more keen appreciation of his attitude than you do because I teach equally self-righteous manglers of the language on a daily basis in a high school, but as I tell them very often, there is no right way to say something in English, but there are many wrong ways.
I wouldn't argue with any of that if you were critiquing an English paper. Instead, you have a guy asking about cameras on a web forum.
Example of something worth correcting in this context: "I gotsta have me a camera, yo. Bout 100$ prally. Kthxbye."
Its hard to tell where to draw the line between being helpful and being obnoxious, of course. I think it clear xtownaga was trying to be helpful, but a full thread derail over it seems too far.
Posts: 5656 | Registered: Oct 1999
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posted
Not really, you have to take into account that the poster is a reviled pariah whose contributions are not valued by many people. So when he asks something of the people here, and doesn't even have the common decency to form a coherent sentence while doing so, criticism seems to me to be a valid coping mechanism. I'm all for it.
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quote: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".
1. It would be far more polite to say "I don't like it when people are pedantic."
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.
And anyway, it isn't that he doesn't like pedantic people. He just doesn't like it when they correct him.
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quote:Maybe I'm misremembering, Rabbit, but haven't you complained in the past when people have been pedantic about your own writing?
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.
Perhaps it is because I have just returned from a meeting in Asia and was surrounded by non-native English speakers, but it honestly didn't occur to me that the misplace "or" might just be a typo. Sa'eed's response seem to confirm that he thought the "for or" construction was acceptable English. If I was incorrect in that assessment, then I am sorry for nit picking.
Posts: 12591 | Registered: Jan 2000
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quote:"I need to buy a digital camera for, or less than, $100. Any recommendations?"
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.
The phrase "at or below $100" works because "at" and "near" are syntactically equal (i.e they are both prepositions with the object "$100". "Let's meet at or about 5" is fine because "at" and "about" are both prepositions modifying the same object. The phrase "for or less" doesn't work because "for" is a preposition and "less" is a noun.
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quote:Originally posted by Samprimary: Nitpicking, when not one word, should be hyphenated.
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 . . .
or am I simply looking for patterns where I shouldn't expect to find any.
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quote:Originally posted by Jon Boy: The strange thing is that pedantry and ignorance frequently go hand in hand.
Brilliant and true.
My hat is off to you, sir.
--- Edited to add quotation and the note that I'm not being sarcastic. (I am reading everything in a surly tone of voice, and just made myself realize the potential implications. Didn't mean that, just an acknowledgment of accuracy.)
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quote: He obviously just accidentally inserted an extra "or".
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."
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.
quote: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."
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.
quote: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."
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.
And I really have no idea what you mean about "for" being part of a prepositional phrase and part of a noun phrase too. "For Joe" is a prepositional phrase. Prepositions can form complements to noun phrases, but they themselves do not form noun phrases.
But as for the conclusion, yeah, I already agreed. The "or" doesn't belong there, because conjunctions link two syntactically equal things, as Rabbit said, and there isn't another preposition in there for "for" to be linked with.
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".
"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, and at any rate that's not necessarily a problem, as the example "at or about" shows—two prepositions with the same object.
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.
Posts: 9945 | Registered: Sep 2002
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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).
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.
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: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.
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").
Posts: 12591 | Registered: Jan 2000
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quote: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.
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.
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. 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). And the sentence is ungrammatical or at least rather odd if you take out the "for", which you should be able to do if it's actually coordinated.
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").
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.
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