"I'll try not to be a pain in the ass but I've been called a grammar Nazi for calling out your for you're, which in my mind is subliterate."
Haha, you'll find nothing but solidarity from me on this one. I feel a twinge of pain if autocorrect confuses "your" with "you're" in a text or some such. And yes, "media is..." wrong, but "social me…
"I'll try not to be a pain in the ass but I've been called a grammar Nazi for calling out your for you're, which in my mind is subliterate."
Haha, you'll find nothing but solidarity from me on this one. I feel a twinge of pain if autocorrect confuses "your" with "you're" in a text or some such. And yes, "media is..." wrong, but "social media is..." is correct. Sadly, English is hardly a model of consistency.
"And yes, "media is..." wrong, but "social media is..." is correct."
That makes zero sense. That's like saying "people" is plural but "crazy people" is singular.
And that definition is wrong. Social media are not uncountable, like water; "less people" drives me nuts, coming from people who would never say "fewer water." Partitivity is very important in Russian grammar. Social media are Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, etc. One, two, three.
Look, I'm not saying that we should take a snapshot of English and never allow any changes. There have been changes in my lifetime that I don't object to, like the unsilencing of the first c is Arctic. I've grown up thinking that the participle of "get" is "gotten" but it turns out that it's actually "got" as it still is in the Commonwealth, but too many people did a palin with "forget" and now "have gotten" has become standard. The Commonwealth spelling of gray no longer evokes a red squiggle in an American spellchecker. I can deal.
But putting an adjective in front of media doesn't change the word, it's just that most Americans are morons with language (and with chat conventions this is going to get a lot worse), they *never* think before speaking, they paint themselves into corners and then get out with awful grammar.
"If someone who wants to do better in school, uh, they should study harder"
a millisecond of forethought
"People who want to do better in school should study harder."
Maybe it's my aforementioned preoccupation with clean grammar, maybe it's learning Russian at 13 and four years of German in high school, maybe it's trying to avoid words likely to make me stutter. but I've been thinking before speaking all my life and if I have ever used the singular they it had to have been when my age was single digits.
And I absolutely do not subscribe to the idea that a majority making a mistake means it is no longer a mistake. I don't care if I end up as the last person on earth using "you're." I don't care if the Oxford dictionary says "they" is a gender neutral singular (I see no point in gender neutrality anyway); dictionaries are lists of definitions, not usage guides, and only the best of them mention that "ain't" is deprecated.
Yes, I know I am going to be annoyed the rest of my life.
"That makes zero sense. That's like saying "people" is plural but "crazy people" is singular."
No, it's like saying that "sheep" is singular and "sheep" is plural. Or that the plural of "opus" is "opera." As you say, expecting English grammar to make perfect sense is a recipe for a lifetime of annoyance.
And no, Facebook, Twitter and Instagram are social media *companies*. Social media, as a concept, is uncountable. It's really an umbrella term for the various forms of electronic communication that have sprung up in the past 20 years or so.
Anyway, I'm not trying to convince you not to say "social media are..." just to not have an aneurism when somebody uses the perfectly fine "social media is...".
I don't see how the phrase under discussion could possibly be singular but going in circles isn't my thing."Social media usage" is uncountable, but I think we've worn this out.
When I see "opus" it's always as "op." Sheet music is part of my daily life.
English grammar is regular as Vietnamese (all SVO, even questions) compared to some others; in Spanish and Russian "like" is intransitive, "pizza is liked by/to me," and in Russian plural begins with five, not two. In Russian there are about six ducks that have to be set in their rows; in English there is only singular vs. plural and still most people can't handle it. I'd bet money that singularity of SM was a convention born of exasperation.
I'll try not to have an aneurism. Really.
In the past week I've seen "gratefulness" and "ferociousness" on Facebook and when I responded with "gratitude" and "ferocity" I got ferociousnessally yelled at.
"I'll try not to be a pain in the ass but I've been called a grammar Nazi for calling out your for you're, which in my mind is subliterate."
Haha, you'll find nothing but solidarity from me on this one. I feel a twinge of pain if autocorrect confuses "your" with "you're" in a text or some such. And yes, "media is..." wrong, but "social media is..." is correct. Sadly, English is hardly a model of consistency.
"And yes, "media is..." wrong, but "social media is..." is correct."
That makes zero sense. That's like saying "people" is plural but "crazy people" is singular.
And that definition is wrong. Social media are not uncountable, like water; "less people" drives me nuts, coming from people who would never say "fewer water." Partitivity is very important in Russian grammar. Social media are Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, etc. One, two, three.
Look, I'm not saying that we should take a snapshot of English and never allow any changes. There have been changes in my lifetime that I don't object to, like the unsilencing of the first c is Arctic. I've grown up thinking that the participle of "get" is "gotten" but it turns out that it's actually "got" as it still is in the Commonwealth, but too many people did a palin with "forget" and now "have gotten" has become standard. The Commonwealth spelling of gray no longer evokes a red squiggle in an American spellchecker. I can deal.
But putting an adjective in front of media doesn't change the word, it's just that most Americans are morons with language (and with chat conventions this is going to get a lot worse), they *never* think before speaking, they paint themselves into corners and then get out with awful grammar.
"If someone who wants to do better in school, uh, they should study harder"
a millisecond of forethought
"People who want to do better in school should study harder."
Maybe it's my aforementioned preoccupation with clean grammar, maybe it's learning Russian at 13 and four years of German in high school, maybe it's trying to avoid words likely to make me stutter. but I've been thinking before speaking all my life and if I have ever used the singular they it had to have been when my age was single digits.
And I absolutely do not subscribe to the idea that a majority making a mistake means it is no longer a mistake. I don't care if I end up as the last person on earth using "you're." I don't care if the Oxford dictionary says "they" is a gender neutral singular (I see no point in gender neutrality anyway); dictionaries are lists of definitions, not usage guides, and only the best of them mention that "ain't" is deprecated.
Yes, I know I am going to be annoyed the rest of my life.
"That makes zero sense. That's like saying "people" is plural but "crazy people" is singular."
No, it's like saying that "sheep" is singular and "sheep" is plural. Or that the plural of "opus" is "opera." As you say, expecting English grammar to make perfect sense is a recipe for a lifetime of annoyance.
And no, Facebook, Twitter and Instagram are social media *companies*. Social media, as a concept, is uncountable. It's really an umbrella term for the various forms of electronic communication that have sprung up in the past 20 years or so.
Anyway, I'm not trying to convince you not to say "social media are..." just to not have an aneurism when somebody uses the perfectly fine "social media is...".
I don't see how the phrase under discussion could possibly be singular but going in circles isn't my thing."Social media usage" is uncountable, but I think we've worn this out.
When I see "opus" it's always as "op." Sheet music is part of my daily life.
English grammar is regular as Vietnamese (all SVO, even questions) compared to some others; in Spanish and Russian "like" is intransitive, "pizza is liked by/to me," and in Russian plural begins with five, not two. In Russian there are about six ducks that have to be set in their rows; in English there is only singular vs. plural and still most people can't handle it. I'd bet money that singularity of SM was a convention born of exasperation.
I'll try not to have an aneurism. Really.
In the past week I've seen "gratefulness" and "ferociousness" on Facebook and when I responded with "gratitude" and "ferocity" I got ferociousnessally yelled at.
Doubleplusgood, eh?
;0)