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Double Bass Puh-lease!

#22
My pet peeve is the obliteration "that" and "which" distinction, favoring the use of "which" for introducing both essential and non-essential clauses.

Burns my butt. (That, and the misspelling of the word "callous.")


What really gets me, though, is when you make an effort to use good grammar, sentence structure, etc., and are chastised for being snobbish. I wrote and edited an employee newsletter at a previous job, and the HR director actually told me that I should "dumb down" my prose so that the factory workers could relate to it better.



I didn't, of course.
 
#23
Mike Goodbar said:
My pet peeve is the obliteration "that" and "which" distinction, favoring the use of "which" for introducing both essential and non-essential clauses.
Burns my butt. (That, and the misspelling of the word "callous.")
What really gets me, though, is when you make an effort to use good grammar, sentence structure, etc., and are chastised for being snobbish. I wrote and edited an employee newsletter at a previous job, and the HR director actually told me that I should "dumb down" my prose so that the factory workers could relate to it better.
I didn't, of course.
Click to expand...

Right on, Mike. I guess i'm pretty anal....I looked callous up to make sure.
There's a Wordsmith guy who's got some books out. I can't remember his name, but he does some guest shots on a radio station here in Denver, and he's alot of fun. Alot of knowledge and some of his pet peeves are also some of mine and i'll bet some of yours and Ray's.
 
#24
The ability to communicate clearly and accurately is a skill. You need to be taught it, you need to learn it, and you need to practice it. You need to keep working at it even when you think you're good, 'cause you ain't as good as you think. There is not a soul who ever wrote who could not have benefited from good editing.

Because it takes work and motivation, and because good communication skills are not highly prized socially or monetarily (not likely to get you laid or rich), we see what we see: vast quantities of communication underachievement.

Excellent communication skills are even more rare, of course.

Because I'm a good communicator -- I don't mind seeming arrogant, it's true -- I see evidence of this underachievement everywhere. So do all the other double bass players who are good readers and writers (a coincidence? I think not) who have contributed to this thread.

When I get good and disgusted, though, I find a historical perspective helps. Those "good old days" we all look back on -- when men were men and grammar was something you endured like hard labour and cod liver oil because it was good for you -- were days in which a very small chunk of humanity were well-educated communicators and the rest were lucky to be able to read and write. A lot of the world is still in this state of affairs.

We have today more people on this planet who can read and write than we ever have had before in history. Things are looking up, believe it or not.

As for those arguments that talk about rot and decline of western civilization and so forth: I have a great deal of sympathy. In the long run, the smartest people who work the hardest do very well. Being purposefully stupid about language is one of those things that will take you down sooner or later. Societies as well as individuals.

As for practical steps a person can take: The Elements of Style by Strunk and White is a slim little volume out of which any half-way intelligent person with motivation can take away a few gems of knowledge guaranteed to improve their communication. This stuff isn't rocket science, you just need to pay attention to the music coming out of your horn -- oops, I mean the words coming out of your mouth. Most people communicate via playing licks. Crappy, cliche licks at that.
 
#31
Ray Parker said:
I got busted the other day with a pretty thick Midwesternism when I said something akin to, "Damn, that sucker needs adjusted..."

It's not anything that I'd write, but, in the end, you can take the boy out of Ohio, but...
Click to expand...



I love that one, especially in the sentence, "Damn, the yard needs mowed". :)

And I actually heard the dean of our music school recently say something along the lines of, "alls we gotta do is...."
 
#34
XavierG said:
Me thunks you guys are puting to much emphasis on spelling (or mis-spelling, as the case may be). Improper usage of words doesn't bother me, as long as the general idea is there. Things could be much worser down here. Case in point.....
http://www.talkbass.com/forum/showthread.php?t=163996
Click to expand...

That's different. We REALBASSISTS are supposed to be a lot more edumacated down here, dig? Groovy, man. Far OUT.
 
#39
Anyways, here hear pear pair pare peer pier. The spelings jus dont make sens. Words that are spelled alike don't rhyme as one would expect, and words that are not spelled similarly DO rhyme. How did this happen? Did smart people decide how these words should be spelled? Or to use the same sound to mean 3 different things? I don't know, but I guess we just have to make the best of it.

Some of my pet peeves:
A person may have two pairs of socks. Who decided that the plural of pair is pair????

Stupid intentional misspellings of words to catch your eye for commercial purposes or product recognition, i.e. "Kandy Korn", and "Tastee Freeze"

And a question:
The express line at the grocery store is for people with 10 items OR FEWER, or 10 items OR LESS?

Ve hav vayz of meking yu lern gramer...
 

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