corra wrote:Charles_F_Bell wrote:Going down the slippery slope to youre from you're goes on down to ur with no trace of proper English and the beginnings of an argument of why have proper English anyway.
There is no such thing as "proper English." There is standard written English, there is stuffy academic English, there is "no one can even focus on what you're saying because your placement of prepositions is so distracting" English, & there are a great many spoken variants upon standard written English which communicate quite beautifully to their listeners. All of which can be captured artistically with a clever finagling of letters and punctuation, and all of which are "proper."
You mention the rule about not ending a sentence with a preposition somewhere above. That, sir, is archaic. Rules change as language matures. In standard written English? Yes, the preposition thing is still discouraged in academic circles -- but in many dialects within spoken English, to tuck the preposition deep within the sentence sounds silly and pompous. I think it's on its way out of standard written English, too.
I have a comment about "proper English". Of course, labelling the language as "proper" immediately creates the image of the "improper English", or the one you must avoid because it's not correct. While this is clear in some cases ("I didn't come" vs "I didn't came") it is not so clear in some others because of spoken variants. However, I would adventure saying that the proper English is the one everybody understands. Among so many local variations (from Brit to American, to Australian, not to mention all the variations on the islands), one of the objectives of having grammar rules is to make sure everybody understands the language. Without them, it would be impossible to understand ourselves.
Punctuation obeys the same purpose. Commas, for example. When you speak, you make pauses that emphasise your message. These pauses are graphically represented by commas in the written language. Long ago, somebody issued rules about commas. In the end, these rules are the way in which the spoken language inflections are translated to written language, which otherwise would be cold and convey every message the wrong way ("Let's eat grandma" vs "Let's eat, grandma").
From my standpoint, proper English exists. It's the written language following a set of common sense rules that allow all of us understand it.
Kiss
Gacela
