I was checking my friends page over at LJ, when at the top I spot a post by nyjoder over at stupid_free. After some link checking, I think I've got the gist of why "twatwaffle" has his knickers in a twist.

You see, stupid_free linked to a post over at thequestionclub where njyoder was being a dick informing the OP that her icon was most misleading. It didn't show, in his tactful words, "how fat you truly are." Needless to say, there is wank (and a mod smackdown), which is why it was on stupid_free.

But that's not the only thing that made it to the community, as everyone's favorite long-winded wonder shows up himself. He's determine to help the stupid people of the world understand the true meaning of "misleading":

mis·lead /mɪsˈlid/ Pronunciation Key - Show Spelled Pronunciation[mis-leed] Pronunciation Key - Show IPA Pronunciation verb, -led, -lead·ing. –verb (used with object) 1. to lead or guide wrongly; lead astray. 2. to lead into error of conduct, thought, or judgment. –verb (used without object) 3. to be misleading; tend to deceive: vague directions that often mislead

Clearly, people with icons of anime characters and animals are intending to deceive people into think that they're not actually live human beings! And just look at all the people who fell into the deception...all, 0 of them. And people using real pictures of themselves on the internet that deliberately try to hide their ugliness? Not deceptive at all. People never try to do that anyway. Prediction: many stupid, unrelated and uncreative insults to this post, because they lack the ability to defend their ignorance of the word 'misleading.'

Did anyone defend their ignorance of misleading? I honestly don't know. Did everyone and their brother poke/mock the troll? You bet your sweet ass they did.

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Re: Talk about misleading...

silrana
2007-05-12 04:50 am UTC (link)

Please. I would *love* to see you take on the editors of Tor books. The woman who introduced the term disemvoweling to the literary world would cower before your intellect. Right.

And I agree, 'everyone' is perfectly fine, inside or out of a newspaper. But that is not what we are arguing over. You used 'eachother', which is not correct anywhere.

Hacker is slang, which I have already mentioned. It is not an incorrect use of a standard word or phrase.

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Re: Talk about misleading...

njyoder
2007-05-12 04:59 am UTC (link)

Yes, I meant 'eachother,' not 'everyone.' You can say

I could easily take on their editors. They'd probably acknowledge that they have certain strict guidelines to follow, but they aren't universal...assuming they were reasonable.

They can't use "ain't," for example, but it's a real word. It was added to the OED in 1998, IIRC. Is it universally incorrect in spite of widespread usage and being recognize by the OED because the newspapers won't print it?

If you think I'm wrong, why don't you propose a criteria for correctness? Is it whatever the elite few say? If so, who appoints them and what gives them the right to control language for the billion+ people who speak it? If you don't answer this, I won't bother replying, because it i ndicates that you're not interested in being intellectual honest.

Even if 'hacker' is slang, it's still a legitimate word. Being slang doesn't mean you can use it arbitrarily, either. (It's also in the OED at this point, in any case.) Did you bother reading my example? If someone were writing for a computing publication (like an ACM or IEEE one), using 'hacker' to mean 'malicious person who breaks into computers' would be _wrong_.

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Re: Talk about misleading...

silrana
2007-05-12 05:18 am UTC (link)

I can say what?

You could not easily take on the Nielsen-Haydens. Better people than you have tried, and been left with nothing but disemvoweled posts and the laughter of many in the professional writing community. But I was not talking about what would be acceptable as, say, dialogue in a book. I mean your argument that correct language is whatever you say it is at that particular moment because a web board constitutes informal usage.

As far as a criteria, it is already in place in the thousands of dictionaries, grammar textbooks and editor's bibles all across the English-speaking world. While they can change as new words are added to the language, such as your hacker example, change has to come from a more stable source than teenagers writing bad internet poetry.

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Re: Talk about misleading...

njyoder
2007-05-14 04:46 am UTC (link)

So your criteria is "whatever [insert random books like]" say? Who appoints them as arbiters of language? That's the problem that people like you can't address: it's a circle of self-appointed arbters of language. How about I appoint myself as King of the English Language, then? You can't challenge it, because it's all by self-appointment.

I never said "language is whatever you say is at that particular moment," but if I did, that would be no less valid than you panel of self-appointed experts who proclaim the same exact thing.

FYI, since you think this argument is so easy to form against me and that they've tried and failed--why don't you point me to the arguments, then? I want to see them. So far all you've done is present the same view that other ignorant prescriptivists have: "it's whatever people I decide to appoint as arbiters of language say."

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	Re: Talk about misleading... (Anonymous) 2007-05-14 05:44 pm UTC (link)
	strikes up Entrance of the Gladiators What an encore! All over a typo. I'm going to need more cotton candy! (Reply to this)(Parent)

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