The Oxford Comma

you did note my comment about a language commission had an emoji after it…it was humo(u)r

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Yup :slight_smile: still couldn’t resist the chance to criticise CanCon (but I do love Degrassi, that show helped me so much as a kid… so I’m conflicted).

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I don’t think it’s Oxford spelling. I think I prefer it because of how I pronounce cosy, which has a “zee” sound in my head. Though then you could start a debate about whether you end the alphabet song with a zee or a zed.

With this whole debate about prescriptivist/ descriptivist approaches to things I think it’s not really good to say “this is the only way and the right way to do things and things were better before all the bloody (insert social group here) started mucking up our pure language”. If a language doesn’t evolve, it’s a dead language.

I am pretty prescriptivist about the English language because non-native speakers tend to be taught that way (though it is my first language) but you realise that native speakers play around with it a lot- they don’t have the same hang ups about grammar, correctness, they have regional dialects and slang- they might not be able to explain why a sentence should be phrased in one way but not the other since its so natural to them. It was something my linguistics lecturer joked about in class (“Oh look at all these foreigners, coming over, trying to tell us how to speak our own language”).

I’m still very much part of the institution of education so I still buy into a set way of doing things- I like knowing that I’m following a “correct” form because it allows me to be understood. But with social interactions you quickly learn that no one cares for neurotic discussions over what is right. I’m a huge proponent of the Oxford comma but I’m not reaaaally going to make someone go “hmm I’ve been wrong let me change now”. It’s easy to attack someone’s grammar to try and tear down their POV and prove their unreliability but correcting someone’s your for you’re (pet peeve) doesn’t earn you extra karma points and you don’t “win” anything.

That being said, I happily welcome more debates about language on here, because I don’t understand much about tech and just scroll past them.

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If people use color or colour, colourise or colourize, it is just an alternative spelling, but “your” (belonging to you) when it should be “you’re” (you are, abbreviated) is just downright wrong. However badly citizens may speak or write, I would always expect a firm (e.g. Monzo) to endeavour to use correct words and grammar even if the odd Zed replaces an S…but try not to drop too many U’s :wink:

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Or look at it the other way- since they’re already established themselves in the UK, they have to endear themselves to Americans- what better way to do so than by speaking their language :sweat_smile::ok_hand:t3: jokes aside, as long as Monzo can make themselves understood by an international community and their product is strong I don’t really give a toss about whether they occasionally drop a ‘u’ tbh. Unless they mixed up your and you’re :joy:

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Or let’s drop Oxford spellings for Kodak spellings and replace C’s with K’s … Hot Koral Kolour card anyone?

When I wrote American spelling, I meant the way in which many, but not necessarily all, Americans spell. :+1:

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