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Pedantry

Started by Cain, April 13, 2010, 03:40:05 PM

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Cain

Pedants, who have the least knowledge to be proud of, are impelled most by vanity.
- Wilkie Collins

Your pedantry is boring the shit out of me.

Yes, you.

You know who you are, as do most people reading this thread, I suspect.  If they are not sure, I'm talking about the people that, when you see them post, your heart immediately sinks, because you know they'll have bought up some minor, relatively unimportant (or even acknowledged) point, simply so they can pontificate endlessly on how it is incorrect.

Listen.  No-one cares.  Your condescending and smug attitude doesn't make you look like a brilliant and precise thinker, it makes you look petty and arrogant.  And like a tosser, I guess.

If you and your friends were having a conversation in real life, and someone who joined in just kept on interrupting them constantly, not adding anything but only criticizing the use of certain words or details, you'd never want to get involved with another conversation with them again, right?  I realise some of you don't actually have any friends in real life, and humbly suggest this might be the reason why.  Anyway, for those of us not completely blind to social conventions, that comes across as pointlessly rude.  No doubt someone here will try to object to the tyranny of social conventions, to which I have a simple reply: social conventions are what stop us from beating people like you over the head with a lead pipe, so be quiet and stop being so ungrateful.

There are, of course, times when a more correct definition can be useful, and aid understanding.  However, most of you are never actually pedantic when that situation arises.  Instead, you seem content to use your dreary methods as a weapon, smashing apart otherwise quite happy and pleasant conversations, because Accuracy Demands You Speak Up!  Or you use it purposefully, to derail threads and conversations of people you do not like, acting as a spiteful child who hasn't the courage or the self-discipline to simply let others be.

If that were not enough, pedantry is also highly hypocritical.  If the standards of the pedant were applied to all their utterances and off-the-cuff remarks, it would soon be obvious how incorrect they are, much of the time.  That we don't do this to them in return for their distasteful ways is probably a mark of good character, or recognition that the pedant will always find excuses for their own slip-ups, while never acknowledging reasons given by others.

Pedantry though, really is a problem, and it is one I am seeing in more and more threads around the site.  It's not clever, it is not amusing and all it does is make people less inclined to bother with posting - because if all you are going to get for your attempts to contribute is irrelevant and spurious nitpicking from condescending halfwits, why should you bother putting in the effort to write in the first place?

Loosen up.  Allow people the right to get things wrong, if it is not a big issue.  Don't get stuck on petty linguistic formalism - it's the most boring and uninteresting of all styles one could adopt.  Or else, there is going to be nothing worth coming to this site to get pedantic about.

LMNO


Cramulus

Hi there, person in the future. Somebody just linked you to this thread because you were being pedantic.


IN YOUR FACE YOU PEDANTIC FUCKWAD!



Kai

Fuck. Yeah.

Also,

[pedant] But that's not what pedant really means. A pedant is someone who is precise with words, and it's only recently that the word has come to mean something negative.[/pedant]

You know, just to be pedantic in the pedantic thread.
If there is magic on this planet, it is contained in water. --Loren Eisley, The Immense Journey

Her Royal Majesty's Chief of Insect Genitalia Dissection
Grand Visser of the Six Legged Class
Chanticleer of the Holometabola Clade Church, Diptera Parish

LMNO


Kai

If there is magic on this planet, it is contained in water. --Loren Eisley, The Immense Journey

Her Royal Majesty's Chief of Insect Genitalia Dissection
Grand Visser of the Six Legged Class
Chanticleer of the Holometabola Clade Church, Diptera Parish

LMNO

Ok, because I think Cain hates it when we comment like that (please correct me if I'm wrong), let me take the time to say that I agree with him, especially when he points out that sometimes, a specific clarification of terms is what's needed to settle an argument, but that most people guilty of this only do it to pick on an insignificant portion of the other side.

For example, someone gives a stunning critique, and ends with a preposition; then the thread derails into grammar instead of subject matter.

Or people decide to mock a poster's spelling rather than what they're trying to explain.

If you're not trying to troll, and are in the midst of a good conversation, let it roll, and only focus on the important stuff.

Kai

Quote from: LMNO on April 13, 2010, 06:18:17 PM
Ok, because I think Cain hates it when we comment like that (please correct me if I'm wrong), let me take the time to say that I agree with him, especially when he points out that sometimes, a specific clarification of terms is what's needed to settle an argument, but that most people guilty of this only do it to pick on an insignificant portion of the other side.

For example, someone gives a stunning critique, and ends with a preposition; then the thread derails into grammar instead of subject matter.

Or people decide to mock a poster's spelling rather than what they're trying to explain.

If you're not trying to troll, and are in the midst of a good conversation, let it roll, and only focus on the important stuff.

I guess I shouldn't have let sarcastic humor leak into this conversation. Cause thats all it was, no intention to derail, just poking a little fun (at myself more than anyone else).
If there is magic on this planet, it is contained in water. --Loren Eisley, The Immense Journey

Her Royal Majesty's Chief of Insect Genitalia Dissection
Grand Visser of the Six Legged Class
Chanticleer of the Holometabola Clade Church, Diptera Parish

Reginald Ret

Quote from: LMNO on April 13, 2010, 06:18:17 PM
If you're not trying to troll, and are in the midst of a good conversation, let it roll, and only focus on the important stuff.
I was going to say sometimes small corrections are all one can offer and no offense is meant but then i reread and noticed the "in the midst of a good conversation"  caveat.



Be wary of false positives when trying to detect pedantery, sometimes the poster is just splicing a small correction into a mittens post.

that reminds me :mittens:
Lord Byron: "Those who will not reason, are bigots, those who cannot, are fools, and those who dare not, are slaves."

Nigel saying the wisest words ever uttered: "It's just a suffix."

"The worst forum ever" "The most mediocre forum on the internet" "The dumbest forum on the internet" "The most retarded forum on the internet" "The lamest forum on the internet" "The coolest forum on the internet"

BadBeast

One of the most grammatically perfect posts I've ever had the pleasure to read.
(Except for a little gratuitous capitalisation in line twenty.)
"We need a plane for Bombing, Strafing, Assault and Battery, Interception, Ground Support, and Reconaissance,
NOT JUST A "FAIR WEATHER FIGHTER"!

"I kinda like him. It's like he sees inside my soul" ~ Nigel


Whoever puts their hand on me to govern me, is a usurper, and a tyrant, and I declare them my enemy!

"And when the clouds obscure the moon, and normal service is resumed. It wont. Mean. A. Thing"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zpkCJDYxH-4

Cain

I don't know why I fucking bother.

HEY, ASSHOLES!   "Ironically" carrying out the actions I criticize isn't funny, smart, cute, intelligent or even vaugely unexpected any more.  It does, however, help convince me that between the pedants and terminally unoriginal, I shouldn't actually ever waste my time writing here.

So congratulations.  You just witnessed Cain's final rant. 

NotPublished

huh

I like rant regardless.

Quote
Loosen up.  Allow people the right to get things wrong, if it is not a big issue.  Don't get stuck on petty linguistic formalism - it's the most boring and uninteresting of all styles one could adopt.  Or else, there is going to be nothing worth coming to this site to get pedantic about.
In Soviet Russia, sins died for Jesus.

BadBeast

Quote from: NotPubli on April 14, 2010, 12:57:46 AM
huh

I like rant regardless.

Quote
Loosen up.  Allow people the right to get things wrong, if it is not a big issue.  Don't get stuck on petty linguistic formalism - it's the most boring and uninteresting of all styles one could adopt.  Or else, there is going to be nothing worth coming to this site to get pedantic about.


Oh, don't get me wrong, I loved it, it was a fine rant, eloquent, succinct, and obviously sincere,  it was everything a rant should be! I just couldn't let such a perfect rant on pedanticism pass by, without trying to find something within it, that would offer an opportunity to be at least a little bit pedantic. So I re-read it aloud to myself, and it's punctuation was perfect too. Flowed like words you'd say, in conversation. Then I saw what at first I thought was a self indulgent bit of over-capitalising, but now I'm suspecting it was a deliberate excercise to trigger the inner pedant, in the unwary reader, who would then validate your rant, by being obsessive over the minutae, and appearing foolish.


I'm just glad I didn't fall for it, like some idiot, . . . . .   
"We need a plane for Bombing, Strafing, Assault and Battery, Interception, Ground Support, and Reconaissance,
NOT JUST A "FAIR WEATHER FIGHTER"!

"I kinda like him. It's like he sees inside my soul" ~ Nigel


Whoever puts their hand on me to govern me, is a usurper, and a tyrant, and I declare them my enemy!

"And when the clouds obscure the moon, and normal service is resumed. It wont. Mean. A. Thing"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zpkCJDYxH-4

Dr. Paes

Quote from: Cain on April 14, 2010, 12:46:01 AM
I don't know why I fucking bother.

HEY, ASSHOLES!   "Ironically" carrying out the actions I criticize isn't funny, smart, cute, intelligent or even vaugely unexpected any more.  It does, however, help convince me that between the pedants and terminally unoriginal, I shouldn't actually ever waste my time writing here.

So congratulations.  You just witnessed Cain's final rant. 
I should/could have called this whole thread while I was reading the OP, which, btw, I thought was great.
You're right, Cain. That kind of shit isn't unexpected, so it appears that you posted this, expecting replies like that?
Did you plan ahead that you were going to get upset about it when it happened, too?
Just seems strange to me, is all.

If you're going to let posts like that stop you from putting time into contributing here, that's a real shame, but understandable.
IMO, the rant pretty much sums up the issue, so there's not a lot I can see to contribute besides a "Yes, all of these things he is saying are accurate" and maybe some mittens.

Doktor Howl

OP is the post of the decade.

And the people who thought they were being funny (one of whom really was a really unpleasant surprise), why?  Why did you do that?  Didn't it seem predictable?  Seriously, it was like watching Memnoch try to be witty.

And Cain, you knew that shit would happen.  You fucking knew it.  So why are you so upset?
Molon Lube