The NotABlog

(photo by antmagic1)

Look at those eyebrows!

That just encourages it...

Punctuation Matters by The Visual Communication Guy

These are great. Saving for Fall teaching.

via

I swear to God, I’m gonna kick the ass of the person who started #ExpoGate.

Not that I’m against the message, the Honey Badgers pretty much got robbed at the end of the day when you think about it; its just I’m really fucking tired of people putting -gate at the end of every controversy.

MetalGate DeflateGate ShirtGate EVEN FUCKING PIZZAGATE AND THAT WASN’T EVEN A CONTROVERSY!

I’m a GamerGater, and even I’m against putting -gate at every controversy. I really don’t like that above all else, THIS is what our legacy is gonna be.

Thanks, GamerGate…

At least the -gate suffix is serving as an easy shorthand for controversies.

Hearing a new keyword that’s floating around in the news is a bit confusing, since otherwise you wouldn’t be able to automatically know what the newsthread or event is about.

It has a valid linguistic purpose. The only limitation I’m seeing is the apparent necessity of needing a single word to prefix the -gate with.

Dammit, people, if you’re going to write a Canadian character, you can’t just throw “eh” in wherever. It’s not a verbal tic - it has a very specific semantic role.

In brief, “eh” does one of two things:

In the latter case, there are several situations where it’s commonly used:

When used in this way, “eh” is roughly equivalent to appending “isn’t it?” (“doesn’t it?”, “didn’t you?”, etc.) to the end of a sentence; interestingly, it also functions very much like the Japanese “ne”, which has a nearly identical effect when appended to a statement.

Now you know.

this is a necessity for me

dude the oxford comma is the shit i am all up on that bitch like woo woo

all right, you’ve convinced me. 

this is a necessity for me

dude the oxford comma is the shit i am all up on that bitch like woo woo

I’m sorry, but if you smoke (or drink) while you’re pregnant and you know that you’re pregnant, I’m just not going to think of you as a worthwhile human being.

(This opinion is based from when I was walking out of work one evening and heard a couple talking. The guy asked the woman, who was smoking, ‘Aren’t you pregnant?’ and her response was ‘Only a couple of months’)

BODILY AUTONOMY! BODILY AUTONOMY! BODILY AUTONOMY!

If you use “bodily autonomy” as a defense of abortion, then you should have no problem with someone drinking and smoking while pregnant.

NO. That is completely different. There is a difference between not having a child, and having a child that will be disabled because of recklessness during a pregnancy.

What’s the difference between aborting a child (killing it), or injuring a child?

A fetus is not a child, it’s a fetus.

Two problems with that response:

1) You said earlier, and I quote, “There is a difference between not having a CHILD, and having a child that will be disabled…”. You called it a child earlier, and now you’re saying it’s not a child, it’s a fetus? You misspoke? How convenient.

2) According the dictionary, it is both child and fetus. But more importantly, what kind of fetus do you think it is? A lion fetus? A dog fetus? Tough question, I know.

Now you may have never heard the bodily autonomy argument before. But kept to its logical outcome, it is unreasonable for you to tell someone else what they can and can’t do with their own body, right? So please explain to me the logical pathway between telling a pregnant woman she shouldn’t drink alcohol, and telling a pregnant woman it’s okay to kill her baby? Why is one okay to advocate for and one isn’t? Where is the consistency? Or do you just refuse to change your mind on the whole “bodily autonomy” argument out of stubbornness and ideology?

The earlier post was not referring to the fetus as a child, it was referring to the outcomes of having an abortion and smoking, respectively.

His/her words were “There is a difference between not having a child, and having a child that will be disabled”. It was called a CHILD. That was no accident. “Not having a child”, aka abortion, by saying that, he admitted it was a child. Even if it was on accident, it was still convenient and mildly amusing.

Yes it did. He directly referred to the fetus. Seriously? It’s right there above this part of the conversation. You can read it plain as day. It’s not that I just don’t believe you, it’s that you’re just blatantly wrong.

The fetus is a child. It is a human fetus. And by definition, a child both actually and metaphorically.

[1] “There is a difference between not having a child, and having a child that will be disabled”

The operative words here are "having a child". This refers to an event. An outcome. A potential thing-that-can-happen.

A child (indefinite article), not the child (definite article). The child is a part of the event in question, not the central part of the subject. The "child" in this sentence is only being referred to indirectly. It is not an actual part of what is being discussed.

[1.1] Lets do this again and swap a couple words around. Remember, I'm arguing grammar here.

"There is a difference between not eating a hamburger, and eating a hamburger that will be soggy"

The operative words here are "eating a hamburger". A verb and a noun. This mimics the exact grammatical structure of the sentence in question. This is an event. A thing that can happen.

In this example, we're not talking about hamburgers or food. We'd be talking about how the food would be treated, talking about the actions that would be done to the food. In this case, the discussion would probably be about someone either not eating hamburgers, or using way too many condiments on one, thus ruining part of the experience of eating a hamburger.

[2] Your exact words were: "What’s the difference between aborting a child (killing it), or injuring a child?"

The operative words are verbs. The verbs clearly interact with the subject in a way that the previous sentence did not.

The thing being described is an act that is performed on the child.

[2.1] Quick example time.

"What's the difference between throwing away a hamburger (ruining it), or burning a hamburger?"

Again, in this grammatical model, the operative words are specific actions that are being done to the hamburgers. The actions themselves are what is being described.

[3] The first grammatical model discusses the outcomes of choices. The second grammatical model discusses actions being performed on a subject, with only a brief aside in parentheses that describes one of the outcomes.

Edit: Damn it. Tumblr messed up my formatting. Hope it works out this time.

Replace random capitalization with randomly capitalizing the first letter of a word sometimes, sometimes capitalizing whole words, and throw in plenty of horrid grammar, and you've got the "personal style" of someone I know.

I've told him (gently) that it makes him look like he's illiterate, but he just thinks it's distinctive. I try to avoid reading anything he writes.

Sexism 101 with Gillian Anderson: the grammar of misogyny.

(The Fall ep. 3, “Insolence & Wine,” 2013.)

Okay, which one is she saying is more uncomfortable: the woman as the object of the sentence or the man as the object of the sentence?

How are either of these uncomfortable? It’s fucking verb order. It doesn’t matter that much, and subject and object are simply terms to describe how words relate.

Exactly. It’s basic English grammar. A sentence with a transitive verb will always have a subject and an object. It doesn’t mean a person in said sentence IS a literal object. 

Omg they try SOOOO HARD.

For fuck’s sake

THOU = “YOU” WHEN YOU’RE FUCKING DOING SOMETHING.

THEE = “YOU” WHEN YOU’RE HAVING SOMETHING FUCKING DONE TO YOU.

THY = “YOUR” AND “YOURS” WHEN THE THING YOU OWN BEGINS WITH A FUCKING VOWEL.

THINE = “YOUR” AND “YOURS” WHEN THE THING YOU OWN BEGINS WITH A FUCKING CONSONANT.

IF YOU’RE GOING TO MAKE SHITTY OLD ENGLISH TEXT POSTS, DO IT RIGHT.

Holy shit I’ve never known the actual rules before. Thank you, OP.