My opinion on the words "dialogue" and "dialog".

[Llyranor]

If people think they can enforce their notions of what proper spelling is thru to others, their wrong. If only people was more tolerant of others Can't have proper dialog with such intolerance.

[Darth InSidious]

Amen, Josh. 'Dialogue' it is! What I am less certain about is my use of 'programme'.

Personally, I use 'programme' in place of 'program' throughout. No idea as to whether that's correct, however. I also talk about 'lightsabres', so I may not be entirely reliable... >.>

 

And yes, misuse 'rouge' is annoying; I'm always amused, though, by the innumerable members of Star Wars-related forums who talk about 'rouge Jedi'; the image of Obi-Wan made-up like a cheap Parisian prostitute always brings a smile to my face.

 

And actually, the degeneration of a language is not of necessity a natural thing to be allowed unimpeded; the Egyptians kept a conservative written style that, barring a few anachronisms, remained largely unchanged for over a thousand years; medieval Latin is still in use today by the Catholic Church and in other official documentation in odd corners of the world. (Before anyone brings it up, Fowler seems undecided on starting a sentence with 'and'; it can be traced at least as far back as the works of Shakespeare.)

 

But yes, dialogue. Also connexion, reflexion, inflexion, deflexion, genuflexion if using English English, as well as gaol, artefact and further.

[Amentep]

Another couple that give me pause - rediculous for ridiculous and click or clik for clique.

[Darth InSidious]

Another couple that give me pause - rediculous for ridiculous and click or clik for clique.

Gaaaaaah. I can't stand "rediculous". Awful, awful, abominable misspelling. It implies horrible things about the person's pronunciation. Horrible things! "Click"/"Clik" are pretty bad, too - and, 'though less confusing, more annoying, I find, in spoken use.

 

To say nothing of "assimulate" for 'assimilate', or the swapping around of 'affect' and 'effect'.

[samm]

I know that language is fluid and ever-changing, but it is only ever-changing because people accept the changes that others make.

This kind of change was, even before the invention of more or less mandatory spelling rules, and will probably always be something that is difficult to accept, and people will fight against it, and it will be in vain Fortunately, because that is what makes language an interesting field for us people studying literature and linguistics, for comedians and hobby critics.

 

By the way, I dislike people using 'there' for 'their' or 'they're' and 'armor' for 'armour' - oh wait...

[CoM_Solaufein]

I prefer the French/English spellings of words like armour, colour, flavour. We Americans prefer shorten version of spellings.

[Tigranes]

Besides, you know it's bad when official government documents from a native English country has there/their confusions.

[Trenitay]

Language sucks.

[Dark_Raven]

yeah

[Humodour]

Curses! Now I can't the Ketchup song out of my head

 

Here, let me help: http://au.youtube.com/watch?v=RFzyYYZsxGc

(I promise it's not Las Ketchup's Aserej

[Checkpoint]

Wow, there's like a quasquillion grammar-Nazi points to be handed out in this thread. I love it!

[Gorgon]

I use 'programme' for a government/educational initiative as a forinstance. A computer 'program' is something else.

[Enoch]

Edit: Since I'm in grammar/spelling/usage pedant mode, I should point out that the period at the end of your title should go inside of the quote.

 

False. There are different styles, and from memory putting the full stop inside the quotation is the American style. Sawyer used the British style. More power to him!

 

If we're going to be pedantic, you should have used the word 'quotation', since in this context 'to quote' is a verb, not a noun.

Forgive me for citing the correct form in American writing when addressing an American writer on an American website. Any copy editor for a US publication would have moved the period inside of the quotation; it's not a choice that every writer gets to make for him/herself. (Chicago Manual of Style, 15th ed., sec. 6.8 )

 

And, according to Merriam-Webster, "quote" has been used as a noun to mean "quotation" as far back as 1888.

Edited December 6, 2008 by Enoch

[Morgoth]

Americans, Brits and all her derivates are pretty lax about their own language, especially in written form. The French to some degree too. Like it doesn't matter when you write "nite" instead of "night". If you write something similarly lax in German, you'll be condemned as an imbecile. Maybe that's why our language doesn't degenerate so fast. There gotta be standards, after all!

 

Edit: "Dialog" is by the way the German word for "dialogue". Kindergarten = Kindergarden. I wonder why they just haven't named it "Child's garden" or "Kids garden" or "Llyr's garden" instead.

Edited December 6, 2008 by Morgoth

[CoM_Solaufein]

From my observations of German words, if there is one language that needs a short cut in spelling words, its German.

[Morgoth]

From my observations of German words, if there is one language that needs a short cut in spelling words, its German.

Nonsense. How can you ever express the full meaning of a word if you always chop everything into tiny pieces?

[Checkpoint]

From my observations of German words, if there is one language that needs a short cut in spelling words, its German.

Clearly you are not acquainted with Finnish.

[Walsingham]

donut or dougnut?

 

Neither. It's doughnut.

 

Yeah, Crashgirl. You're spelling's only one step from 'dognut' and that, I assure you, is NOT a tasty treat.

[Trenitay]

Mmmm. Dognut.

[Aristes]

Edit: Since I'm in grammar/spelling/usage pedant mode, I should point out that the period at the end of your title should go inside of the quote.

 

False. There are different styles, and from memory putting the full stop inside the quotation is the American style. Sawyer used the British style. More power to him!

 

If we're going to be pedantic, you should have used the word 'quotation', since in this context 'to quote' is a verb, not a noun.

Forgive me for citing the correct form in American writing when addressing an American writer on an American website. Any copy editor for a US publication would have moved the period inside of the quotation; it's not a choice that every writer gets to make for him/herself. (Chicago Manual of Style, 15th ed., sec. 6.8 )

 

And, according to Merriam-Webster, "quote" has been used as a noun to mean "quotation" as far back as 1888.

 

See, now I'd been thinking of writing something along these lines and you had to beat me to it.

 

The fact is that you can usually find errors in folks' writing. It's just a fact of life. I don't even get bent out of shape by the 'dialogue' vs the 'dialog' sorts of issues. Sure, I think things like "whatup" and "how r u" and "that's ur loot" are kind of lazy, but the important thing is to get the message. I'm not much of a purist in that regard. In more formal settings, however, I am demanding. Informal writing is one thing and formal writing is another. If push came to shove, however, I'd side with the purists. That would suck, because I'm actually pretty lazy when I post stuff. I'd have to write them in word or something and then tidy my grammar. Ugh.

[Aristes]

donut or dougnut?

 

Neither. It's doughnut.

 

Yeah, Crashgirl. You're spelling's only one step from 'dognut' and that, I assure you, is NOT a tasty treat.

 

I certainly hope you don't know from experience.

[Rostere]

Grammatical and orthographical laxity will inevitably become a serious issue for English in a not too distant future. English will eventually diverge into different languages because of the geographical obstacles between the different speakers. It is plain to see that the only solution lies in pedantic teachers enforcing the conservation of the language in its current form. If we're not strict enough, maybe we'll end up speaking incomprehensible gibberish, like the Danes.

 

 

Like we say in Grammar Nazi land, deteriores omnus sumus licentia.

[~Di]

Real Americans don't need no stinking silent letters. Suck it up, buttercup.

 

Edited December 7, 2008 by ~Di

[Wrath of Dagon]

That's right, dialog is proper American spelling, liten up.

[Amentep]

I'm not really sure - in the day and age of national television (even worldwide television) and the internet that its truely possible for English to break up into divergent languages.

 

Could be wrong though. But it seems to me that regional dialectical English have slowly eroded as media presentations of the language became more widespread.