huju

a. Milhouse agrees with me – well, stranger things have happened. Maybe I have mentioned this before (not on this thread), but the only 2 US Supreme Court justices to socialize outside of the court were Ruth Ginsburg and Antonin Scala – two middle-class kids from New York City who grew up loving the opera they could not afford to attend (except, maybe, when the Met sold standing room tickets for a quarter). They and their spouses occasionally attended opera together.

b. If you use Noon and Midnight, you will spare some of your readers a trip to the dictionary, even if the dictionary says 12 a.m. is universally (not including me) understood to mean Midnight.

c. Joseph: I am not interested in spoken or conversational English. If you invite someone to your house face-to-face, he/she can ask you for clarification.

OK, this is not really and English issue, but here goes: 12 am and 12 pm make no sense and are ambiguous. They are used to refer to Noon and Midnight (is 12 am Noon, or is it Midnight?). If you mean Noon, say Noon, or 12 Noon. And if you mean Midnight, say Midnight or 12 Midnight.

am, or a.m., stands for ante-meridian, i.e., before the meridian. Likewise, pm, or p.m., means post-meridian, or after the meridian. But Noon and Midnight are the meridians, neither before nor after. So 12 pm or 12 am is senseless.

And what day is it when it is one minute after Tuesday Midnight? Is it Tuesday, or Wednesday. Is Midnight the end of the day, or the beginning?

Take a look at your insurance policies. I’ll bet that they expire at 11:59 pm to avoid ambiguity. I think I have auto policies that expire at Noon.

Re Millhop: The use of “boy” and “girl” for adult servants is thoroughly obnoxious and inappropriate. That is not an English rule, it is a humanitarian rule, and probably a Torah rule.

Let me emphasize that I am limiting my discussion to written English, not spoken English.

Let’s be clear about “rules” of grammar and usage. No one goes to jail for breaking them. But (oops) if you want to make yourself clear to readers, following the rules helps a lot. (And, according to a beloved English teacher, “a lot” is a parcel of real estate, not an expression of high quantity. Shame on me.)

One other point: some snobs (not me, though I am a snob) follow the rules of grammar to show off their class status, just to let readers know they been tuh college or their Dad’s a bank president or Wall Street gonif. William F. Buckley followed all the rules he learned at, and before he attended, Yale, but he used so many little-known big words that his meaning was usually lost on everyone. But (oops again) he loved showing off.

Today’s rule: Remember to never split infinitives. This rule has eroded, and even the language maven William Safire agreed with the abandonment. But if an infinitive is split too wide, i.e., there are lots of words or ideas between the “to” and the verb, it can be confusing or burdensome to the reader.

Yes, I used “ain’t” as a provocation. I rarely use it, and when I do, it’s to startle the reader, or to deliberately sound crude or vulgar. Ira Gershwin used “ain’t” to very good effect.

To DovidBT: Right you are. I could lie and say I planted those errors, but that would be too Trump-like.

Akuperma is right that Skype and other computer/internet face-to-face communication have contributed to slovenly writing. One important thing to remember, though, is that when writing, there is no opportunity for the writer to see the face of his readers and know that they have not understood him. Therefore, writing requires more clarity. Texting does not require quick responses. It requires coherent responses, and clear English adds coherence. (Some texters require quick responses. Make them cool their heels.)

Today’s tip: Learn when to use – and when not to use – an apostrophe. There is a headline in today’s YWN news that “Husband Murder’s Wife”. The apostrophe should not be used.

A few apostrophe rules:

Use it to make possessives. Don’t use it to make plurals, or third person singulars (I murder, you murder, he/she/it murders).

Things (not people) generally should not be put in the possessive. E.g., the bus’es wheels don’t go round and round, but the wheels on the bus go round and round. There are lots of exceptions to this rule, e.g., the day’s news, tonight’s dinner, but we should avoid them anyway.

And the phrases “should of” or “would of” are wrong. They are misunderstandings of the contractions for “should have” and “would have”, which should be written as “should’ve” and “would’ve”.

And speaking of contractions, they require an apostrophe: Don’t, not dont; can’t, not cant, ain’t, not aint.