The C&H Linguistics and Etymology Thread

Top 3 wrote:

Mollymooly’s rule:

The pronouns “somebody” and “someone” are illogical, and one should use “a person” instead.

Reasoning: “Some” means either “a number of” (with plural nouns) or “an amount of” (with singular nouns). Since “body” and “one” are singular, “somebody” and “someone” mean “an amount of person” and is thus only appropriate for cannibals: “Would you like somebody? I’ve just taken a juicy missionary out of the oven.”



Makkapakka’s rule:

With verbs containing prefixes like in- or ex-, the corresponding prepositions should never be used. For example, “import” means to “carry in” so one cannot say “The drugs were imported into the U.K.” because this is equivalent to “The drugs were carried in into the U.K.” Instead, say “The drugs were imported to the U.K.”

The same applies to “enter into,” “export from,” “embed in,” “exit out of” and similar verbs, and to nouns derived from such verbs.



Ran’s rule:

“Because of” should not be used to modify a sentence in the future tense, since it is a logical fallacy to impute a cause to something that is not (yet) true. Rather, a construction such as “due to” or “owing to” should be used, or the sentence should be rewritten to be more clear.

For example, instead of “He’s going to Florida next week, because of a friend’s wedding,” one should write, “He’s going to Florida next week *for* a friend’s wedding.”

Writers who observe this rule thereby uphold an important distinction; a sentence such as “Because of the promised bonus, he decided to teach an extra class next summer” makes clear that the promised bonus is the cause of the *decision* (which has already happened), not the cause of the *teaching an extra class* (which hasn’t happened yet, so doesn’t yet have a cause).