(no subject)

[rm]

Apparently LJ has decided not to communicae with LJ users because that would reward bad behavior.

I think that's the "no, really, fuck off and stop using our site" message we were waiting for.

http://news.livejournal.com/106909.html?thread=70316701#t70316701

Aside from outraged, I'm really quite unutterably sad.

Comments

[rm.livejournal.com]

et cetera is "and the rest" more or less. Used to list things in the same class as the initial item(s).

[ithinkitisayit.livejournal.com]

How did you ever learn these things? Are these things that got cut from the curriculum by the time I went to school, or did you major in writing? Or are you just another word-o-phile type who collects different words and their meanings?

[rm.livejournal.com]

Latin was a required course at Miss Hewitt's, although I probably learned them in English or Rhetoric a few years before I started Latin (6th grade).

By and large though, yes, these are things I generally find that Americans under 30 don't know except from context unless they went to a private school or a Catholic school (where Latin iand English sentence diagraming is often still in the curriculum).

[ithinkitisayit.livejournal.com]

I was taught in 8th grade how to "draw" a sentence (is that what you mean by digram?). I don't know how to anymore, due to lack of use.

I'm currently interested in improving my grammar and spelling, since I feel they're a rather vital part of our culture that's currently being lost. I'm also rather OCD about other people using the wrong homonym in their fanfiction (would it kill them to take 2 minutes to look up the word in a dictionary, to figure out if they have the right meaning?!). I rant about it a lot to myself, but logically, I know it's mostly people who weren't taught that:
1) homonyms exist
2) Spell Check doesn't catch words that are spelled correctly, even if said word is used incorrectly
3) look up a word in a dictionary if you are not sure of its meaning

Now that Spell Check is around, reading over what you've written is happening less and less. So all the incorrect homonym usages aren't being caught. Instead, they go through the writing, and so other people assume that the writer is using the correct word, when often, the writer isn't.

I admit, I don't look over my work after I'm done writing. That's another reason I want to improve on my spelling/grammar usage (and I probably need a lesson on punctuation, too, but that might fall under grammar). The better I am at spelling and grammar, the less I'll have to look over what I've written. Of course, this illogical logic comes from being a good writer (or good enough writer. I'm not sure which). I've gotten A's and B's on paper's I've written for college courses, but haven't bothered to look over to catch any grammar mistakes (which are what most of my mistakes are).

Of course, college is far different from the real world (said real world rates readability on how many syllables a word has, as opposed to how complex the ideas in a text are).

[sethg]

Quiquid latine dictum, altum videtur. Or something like that.

[marcmagus]

Interesting. I was taught a different distinction between et al. and et cetera: namely, that both translate to "and others", but et al. is for describing people, and et cetera for non-people.

[rm.livejournal.com]

et al is definitely people only.
et cetera may be people only in English useage, but there's nothing in its Latin meaning that requires it to be so