English 101 with Trihan sometimes!

[TerranRich]

Hmm, I got a little mixed up there, Calin, which brings up the fact that apparently it's a hotly debated topic: http://grammar.quickanddirtytips.com/than-I-versus-than-me.aspx

[Mr Flibble]

I personally use I as a subject and me as an object, consistently.

So, Jonny and I went to the zoo, where the lions ate Jonny and me.

So I'd consider such things as "Jonny and me went to the zoo, where the lions ate Jonny and I" to be incorrect, since if you remove the "Jonny and" from either clause, it stops making sense on its own.

[Snarky]

This is an age-old controversy. Traditionally, puritans have claimed that it's "Johnny and I" because, as you said, "me" is reserved for the object position he shot me.

I think most modern grammarians will accept that people use both forms (just as the entire society of grammarians tend to move towards a descriptive view on language instead of a prescriptive one.)

This issue affects other areas too: It has always been a pet peeve amongst puritans that people use the object form in comparisons "Johnny is bigger than me", and the language law enforcers have advocated the usage of "Johnny is bigger than I", although I think this controversy is slowly waning, as people find it completely silly to say things like "I'm bigger than she".

I agree that linguists and grammarians today are generally descriptivists, but surely part of being a descriptivist is to note that certain usages are considered incorrect by many people (even if regularly used by others, or even those same people)?

Incidentally, I highly doubt that this rule has anything to do with Latin influence on grammar. Certainly in the Germanic languages I know, you'd say something equivalent to "Johnny and I made an adventure game" (not "Johnny and me"). My instinct would be to say, in Norwegian, "He's taller than me", but I'm not confident that more conservative purists would agree. TerranRich's link explains that the original Old English (i.e. Germanic) form was "taller than I", so this almost certainly isn't a Latinate/Romance form either.



Another question of preference: "Data"; plural or singular (uncountable/mass noun)?

[Calin Leafshade]

Data is plural,

Datum is singular

[Intense Degree]

Data is plural,

Datum is singular

That is correct of course, but I would say most people nowadays would say in conversation "That data is interesting" rather than "These data are interesting" (except in scientific papers etc.). I probably would myself even though it is technically wrong 

[abstauber]

If you steal some military equipment from the british empire, what would a soldier/guard tell you via radio?
(except the obvious puns

Attention, you're hijacking a military unit from
the british crown
the United Kingdom
the royal crown of her majesty??

I'm pretty lost here

[Gilbert]

That is correct of course, but I would say most people nowadays would say in conversation "That data is interesting" rather than "These data are interesting" (except in scientific papers etc.). I probably would myself even though it is technically wrong  

Well, that depends on whether you treat data as countable or uncountable. As far as I know sometimes you treat it as an uncountable collective term like with the word 'information'. In that case you may use 'that data' as mentioned, in some circumstances you may use 'a piece of data' as well (as with 'a piece of information').

When in the countable department, it seems that there is an increasing trend to use the word 'data' even for singular nouns (some people do not even know the word 'datum' nowadays) and it's arguable whether this is straightly wrong now. This is similar to the case of whether we use 'die' or 'dice' for the singular form of a certain 'gambling tool'. Even though historically 'die' was correct MANY people prefer to use 'dice' now (even more-so than the case of 'data', maybe for obvious reasons). I think the singular form is still definitely 'die' for those internal circuit... err.. "stuff" though.

When we wrote our books there was some debate over such uses of words. The conclusion was that we use 'datum' for the singular form of 'data' (and in some scenario, if required, we use 'a piece of data' as well) but in the case of 'die' and 'dice', we eventually surrendered and use 'dice' as the singular form, seeing that even most major textbooks published in UK use 'dice' also (those that we had purchased for reference at least, as we prefer using British English to American English whenever possible). Note that this is just a matter of consistency for a series of mathematics textbooks, rather than being right or wrong.

[Crimson Wizard]

Hey, I got an interesting question for you, english-language professors.
Can the word "precision" be used to describe a person's skill (like 'accuracy' or 'strength'), or is it used only to quialify some action?

[Calin Leafshade]

Sounds fine to me. Accuracy and precision are more or less inter-changeable i think.

[Babar]

Not according to all those police shows and stuff

Accuracy is the skill of hitting the right place
Precision is the skill of hitting near the same place everytime.

So.....precision is having a lower standard deviation?

[Andail]

Babar, I would definitely say that your destinction belongs to a very narrow technical field, and the general definitions of those adjectives are synonymous

[Scarab]

Barbar's definition is exactly what I would say, these terms span through the field of science as well (when collecting data).

As my chemistry teacher once explained to us...

"If you're dating some girls who are good looking, and some who are ugly, then you are accurate, just not precise.
If you are consistently dating ugly girls, then you are precise, but not accurate."

The reason I think people sometimes use them synonymously is because they would generally be referring to both, as one is not a whole lot of use without the other.

To answer CW's question, yes, just as someone who is 'accurate' has great accuracy, someone who is 'precise' has great precision.

[Stupot]

Just found out that 'sensical' isn't a word...
What the hell is the opposite of Nonsensical then?

[Calin Leafshade]

its called a lost positive.

You also cant say something is 'maculate' (which would be latin for 'spotty' since immaculate means 'without spots' or 'spotless')

also there's no couth from uncouth plus lots more.

[SSH]

Err, actually, sensical and maculate are both words and feature in some dictionaries (not all, perhaps)

[monkey0506]

I just referenced the top three (that I know of) online dictionaries: Dictionary.com, Merriam-Webster, and Wiktionary.

All three of them had entries for "maculate". Only Wiktionary had an entry for "sensical" and that entry listed it as "nonstandard". :

[Andail]

It's interesting though, that even if some of these alleged "lost positives" theoretically exist, it's more common to use the negative form and then negate that.

"Evitable" exists, but you would probably rather say "it's not inevitable" than "it's evitable".

[Stupot]

Ahh, well Word gave me the red scrigglies when I typed 'sensical' so I assumed it was not acceptable...

But to be honest I find this whole topic rather portant.

[Wonkyth]

Tripod wrote a nice song about prefixes, it's called Kempt or something.

[Lufia]

Isn't "sensible" equivalent to "sensical"?