MetaChat - Dear pyjama [sic] warriors:

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27 August 2007

Dear pyjama [sic] warriors: just because you never learnt [sic] British (or Canadian, or Australian) spellings is no defence [sic] for being an arse [sic]. If you must try to win an arguement [sic] by criticising [sic] someone's spelling, please fulfil [sic] the most basic requirement of this manoeuvre [sic], and look up the fecking [sic] word first? Scornfully depositing "[sic]" after a perfectly cromulent Britishism when quoting someone really doesn't demolish your opponent or show off how skilful [sic] your rhetoric is by comparison, trust me. In fact, it just makes you look like a bloody prat [sic].

post by: taz at: 02:22 | 33 comments

IANB. Just sick of [sic] and fed up with the stupidity. It's the supercilious yet pathetic attempt to be scathing and superior that really puts it over the top for me.

posted by taz 27 August | 02:22

Here, here!

Please tell me your favourite colour so that I may make an appropriate star for you.

posted by gomichild 27 August | 02:42

Hee. I'll take a nice madder. *groan*.

Also, gah - reading back... "scathing and superior". Beam in my own eye here. Embarrassing. But bear with me, y'all - I'm almost never like this.

posted by taz 27 August | 02:53

Yeah talk about having tickets on yourself lovey... (~_^)

But really if I can overlook US spellings and phrases why is it not often reciprocated? Variations are just as valid. Not necessary to have them pointed out.

posted by gomichild 27 August | 03:08

No, that's the unintentionally funny part: they really think it's a misspelling... because, apparently, they never read anything by British (or at least, non-American) writers? Never visit English language web sites that aren't American? I don't know.

posted by taz 27 August | 03:16

It's just Manifest Destiny, Language Edition. Americans tend to be very arrogant when it comes to their variety of English.

Remind where this is from again?

posted by chuckdarwin 27 August | 03:23

[hic]

posted by mischief 27 August | 03:31

put that in writing, mischief. [bic]

Where what is from, chuck? My rant, the immediate origin? Not telling! :)

posted by taz 27 August | 03:35

oh - but it's about no one here, and nothing that's been posted here.

posted by taz 27 August | 03:37

You had me eating right out of your hands until you used the Simpsonism "cromulent"... And we all know that Springfield is not in any REAL country anywhere...

posted by wendell 27 August | 03:43

That’s a fine rant, taz; I never did like the condensed superciliousness of [sic] either—although it’s something I’ve oftenest seen deployed by uptight British writers, so ’muricans have no monopoly on looking like a [dic].

posted by misteraitch 27 August | 03:46

Yes, this is true... and I really dislike that as well. But at least the uptight British writers know that it's an American spelling, and choose to be specifically [dic]ish, while the [dic]s who [sic] British spellings are both [dic]ish and specifically ignorant, which for some reason burns my ass a little more.

yeah, wendell... I did fall down on "cromulent". :(

posted by taz 27 August | 03:55

Dictionary.com lists cromulent as slang and, buy the looks of the small print below the definition, it looks like it might make the next edition of Websters.

posted by TheDonF 27 August | 06:13

heh. How long will it take, I wonder, before most people don't remember the origin, and are routinely using it non-ironically?

Anyway. I shouldn't have thrown it in there, since, in this context, it just sort of confuses things.

posted by taz 27 August | 06:41

Most amusing, taz!

It's just Manifest Destiny, Language Edition. Americans tend to be very arrogant when it comes to their variety of English.

Sorry to jump on it & be an arse but I hope you don't actually subscribe to this view. You seem all too eager to criticize your home country often, chuckdarwin.

posted by chewatadistance 27 August | 07:01

amen, chewie.

posted by jonmc 27 August | 07:21

'Cor, 'e must harve 'is reasons, then, wot? [sic]

posted by Hugh Janus 27 August | 07:53

In my experience, the English are far worse at this. What's best is when they criticize Americans for coming up with some variant spelling not realizing that it is actually the original spelling as used in Britain, and it's actually the British who have changed the way they spelled things, sometimes out of an instinct to avoid "Americanisms."

posted by grouse 27 August | 09:18

Do Latin American countries have the same issue with Spanish Spanish [or vice versa?].

posted by birdherder 27 August | 09:35

I like how the FBI spells "kidnaping." Flies in the face of all I learned in grade school, but they're the authorities, right?

posted by Hugh Janus 27 August | 09:49

The only thing that drives me crazy is when some American kid goes over to England for a semester and comes back and insists on called french fries 'chips,' and goes around saying 'Wot!' and 'Bloody Hell!'

posted by jonmc 27 August | 10:15

Overthinking a plate of bollocks.

posted by Hugh Janus 27 August | 10:25

Go easy on those poor American kids, jonmc. Americans seem to think my occasional use of "proper" after four years of living here is an affectation, while Brits seem to think my use of "y'all" after 21 years of living in Texas is. Can't win.

posted by grouse 27 August | 11:27

my occasional use of "proper"

Please, Hammer, don't hurt 'em!

posted by Hugh Janus 27 August | 11:31

Too true, jonmc. It's not so much the adaptation of local colloquialisms but more the pretentious poser bullshittery that chaps my hide. Grouse, thanks for teaching me the word 'affectation' - it's much more efficient than the preceeding sentence. As long as it's truly genuine, it counts.

posted by chewatadistance 27 August | 14:16

So am I obnoxious if I point out to gomi that it's not "Here, here"?

Hi, gomi!

posted by Specklet 27 August | 14:17

Specklet, I think you meant "Here [sic], here [sic]."

You're welcome.

Whee! Being obnoxious to nice people is fun! Not really, though.

posted by occhiblu 27 August | 14:56

*pokes occhi with a stick* Poke poke!

posted by Specklet 27 August | 15:52

See, here's the nice thing about dual citizenship. Unless I'm writing to a specific style guide I feel entitled to use whichever spelling I feel like, whenever I want.

I'm pretty consistent. "Color" gets no "u" because I think it looks brighter without one. "Honour" does get one, because it looks more Norman that way, and I don't mean Rockwell.

That thing that's halfway between black and white? Of which there are many shades? It gets an e if it's on the warmer side, with more yellow; an a if it's cooler, with more blue. I'm indulging my synaesthesia here.

And "neighbo(u)rhood" -- well, that obviously depends on where it's located.

posted by tangerine 27 August | 17:21

The only thing that drives me crazy is when some American kid goes over to England for a semester and comes back .. saying 'Wot!' and 'Bloody Hell!'

The most egregious, unforgivable instance of this I have ever seen is this cringe-making attempt at humour in the New Yorker. The writer is under the inexplicable misapprehension that a taxi driver in York would speak cockney; he then tries to affect that accent with a truly astonishing lack of success. It's the prose equivalent of Dick Van Dyke's "cockney" in Mary Poppins; like fingernails on a blackboard to anyone who's ever been within a thousand miles of London.

posted by matthewr 27 August | 17:39

America deserves all the Hell I can give it.

posted by chuckdarwin 28 August | 04:16

Hey chuck: you bailed, and that's fine. I certainly understand the temptation. Then again, some of have to live here, y'know.

posted by bmarkey 28 August | 04:32

some of us have to live here

posted by bmarkey 28 August | 04:33

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