ADS-L Digest - 2 Jan 2006 to 3 Jan 2006 (#2006-4)

[Joanne M. Despres]

The question was out there for anyone to answer, Amy.  Thanks for
your reply.  I was just trying to get a sense of whether the usage
note was obsolete because of some shift in the pattern of use and
acceptance of the word, or some such thing.  (I'm a lot more out of
it than you all are, not having taught freshman comp for 15 years!)

Your transmission of the note didn't sound erroneous to me, Amy --
but I thought the unstated implications might need to be spelled
out in case they weren't clear.  Our dictionaries definitely have a
bias toward standard written English in their reporting and explicit
statements.

Joanne

On 4 Jan 2006, at 10:29, Amy West wrote:

> Non-standard 'cause it annoys the snot out of me and I would correct
> it in any kind of public, work, or academic writing. I would correct
> it as a copy editor unless it needed to be there for some reason
> (such as conveying dialect). And I'm not a usage purist, really I'm
> not.
>
> But what the heck do I know, Joanne? This was my first time teaching
> freshman comp. And I think you were actually asking Dennis and
> Jonathan.
>
> And here's the exact usage note  from MW's C11, Dennis:
>
>   used in place of the contraction 've often in representations of
> uneducated speech
>
> So,  I think my transmission of their info was erroneous.
>
> ---Amy West
>
> (PS Joanne, I like the name change to Websteer. ;-) )
>
> >Date:    Tue, 3 Jan 2006 17:27:34 -0500
> >From:    "Joanne M. Despres" <jdespres at MERRIAM-WEBSTER.COM>
> >Subject: Re: "of" for "have" in "would have" constructions
> >
> >Would you call these student uses standard or nonstandard?   The
> >M-W Collegiate entry labels the word as nonstandard, which
> >basically means that it wouldn't appear without some kind of
> >stigma in professionally-edited prose.  That is not meant to imply
> >that it couldn't appear in nonstandard writing unselfconsciously,
> >though.
> >
> >Joanne Despres
> >Merriam-Websteer