Dave Smith wrote:

> Felice Friese wrote:
> >
> >
> > Perhaps, Peter, people are simply "touchy" about having their
> > grammatical errors corrected in public. If you truly feel they
> > would appreciate your criticism, you could email them or post a
> > grammar hint in a separate thread addressed to the newsgroup as a
> > whole.
> >
> > I am a retired newspaper editor and never once corrected a
> > reporter's grammar within anyone else's hearing. I spoke to them
> > privately or posted a general note (usually light in tone) on the
> > newsroom bulletin board.
> >
> > Examples:
> > "An antiques dealer is one who deals in antiques; an antique
> > dealer is one who is at least 100 years old and is unlikely to be
> > dealing in anything."
> > "The period belongs within the quotation marks. Period. Take it
> > from the women's editor, who knows all about periods."
> >
> > Felice
> > who, perhaps, should have sent this by email
> > :-)
>
> I have seen too many Usenet posts complaining about spelling or
> grammar which are full of errors. We have to remember what they say
> about throwing stones in a glass house.

Additionally, many of the "corrections" aren't even pointing out real
grammar errors. Case in point, this talk about redundancies is silly.
It's not a grammatical error to have a redundant word in a sentence. It
may be an indication of poor writing, but if we're going to get into
that stream of nonsense it would be never-ending. Few usenet posts
couldn't use some improvement on that score.

Ending a sentence in a preposition is not grammatically incorrect.
Typically what happens is that a contraction is used earlier and the
preposition is used to round out the sentence. People usually don't say
or write, "Where are you at." What they do produce is, "Where're you
at." Due to the contraction, the sentence feels chopped off, and the
insidious "at" creeps in to finish it.

Now I'm going to boldly go split some infinitives.




Brian

--
If televison's a babysitter, the Internet is a drunk librarian who
won't shut up.
-- Dorothy Gambrell (http://catandgirl.com)