The Lemon Fool

bungeejumper wrote:An excellent scene on the scaffold, sir. All agreed that the condemned man was well hung.

BJ

Ah! Is that why we use hanged for a person being thus executed?

Lootman wrote:For instance in my time working in the US I don't think I ever had anyone try and pull me up with: "Actually old bean, the pluperfect tense of that verb is . . .".

Actually old bean, I think you mean " try to", not "try and".

More seriously, what does matter is that the meaning is correct. If you have £300 and your friend has three times less, your friend is £600 in debt.


Julian F. G. W.

servodude wrote:

bungeejumper wrote:An excellent scene on the scaffold, sir. All agreed that the condemned man was well hung.

Ah! Is that why we use hanged for a person being thus executed?

LOL, I suspect that it's the hung that's the neologism. But I'll be danged if I know. Or should that be dung?

BJ

AleisterCrowley wrote:bungeejumper having written
Needs a comma in there somewhere
Not sure where. Right at the front, so people spot it?

I don't know. "Caesar having entered the forum, Brutus stabbed him".

An extra comma doesn't make sense.

"Caesar, having entered the room, took off his cloak" does need a comma, because Caesar is the subject of the following clause.

TJH

Bungeejumper, having written x, did y

AleisterCrowley wrote:Bungeejumper, having written x, did y

Bungeejumper having written x, AleisterCrowley commented y.

commas schmommas...

De minimis non curat lex

tjh290633 wrote:

AleisterCrowley wrote:bungeejumper having written
Needs a comma in there somewhere
Not sure where. Right at the front, so people spot it?

I don't know. "Caesar having entered the forum, Brutus stabbed him".

An extra comma doesn't make sense.

"Caesar, having entered the room, took off his cloak" does need a comma, because Caesar is the subject of the following clause.

No, it doesn't actually need a comma, because it's a case of a pair of commas being used to delimit a parenthetical remark, and a matched pair of parentheses could be used instead: "Caesar (having entered the room) took off his cloak".

To be clear, I'm not saying that the matched pair of parentheses is better than the pair of commas, just that it's an alternative to them, and that it can be worth bearing such alternatives in mind. For example, using parentheses judiciously can help avoid long sentences containing many commas with different functions - e.g. "Caesar (having entered the bedroom) took off his cloak, washed himself, cleaned his teeth, removed his sandals (a gift from his father) and went to bed." is rather more readable than "Caesar, having entered the bedroom, took off his cloak, washed himself, cleaned his teeth, removed his sandals, a gift from his father, and went to bed." Similarly, commas might be preferable to parentheses for delimiting some of the parenthetical remarks in cases where only using parentheses would make it harder to see which closing parenthesis matches each opening parenthesis.

Gengulphus

Lootman wrote:Guilty of that myself as I am rather fond of a priori, a posteriori and a fortiori.

There still countries where, if they construe the first as a cleric and the third as a bit of rough stuff, they will send you to the slammer (or worse) for the second.

Midsmartin wrote:I follow the less/fewer rule. But if you investigate, it's been a fuzzy rule at best, widely ignored, and perhaps one that was only invented in 1770:

https://www.grammarphobia.com/blog/2010 ... fewer.html

"... people happily used “less” to mean “fewer” for some 900 years before anybody minded."

A: We observe the distinction too, but we may be in the minority.

We’ve written before on our blog about the decline of “fewer,” a word that seems to be occurring fewer and fewer times.

Or, "...less and less often."?

XFool wrote:

We’ve written before on our blog about the decline of “fewer,” a word that seems to be occurring fewer and fewer times.

Or, "...less and less often."?

Like other infectious diseases, fewer has had less opportunity to propagate under lockdown and social distancing.