English Rules That Need Changing

Mind you, this can just be American English. You Brits and Australians can do what you want. American English needs tohave standardized and simplified rules.

• Removing excess commas. You want to teach students that commas represent a pause in thought or an item on a list, that semicolons are a conjoined sentence, and that colons are for a list. what you decidedly do not want is a generation of idiots who misplace or overuse commas.
• Remove dashes except as an alternate to a colon for defining terms or sections, or when having a conjoined word like risk-assessment.  A mid-sentence dash is usually meant to create a break in a sentence, but what happens instead is a tangent that risks not being closed (use parentheses for aside comments instead.
• Lower the amount of irregular verbs and nouns.
• Remove whom. Also remove an. These are situational words. English shouldn't be situational, it should be (more) consistent. Also, I loathe an because spelling and grammar check doesn't catch when I type and, but the d either fails to type because of keyboard flaw or me typing too fast.
• Ampersand is not a replacement for and. It should be for when two words are fused together. For example: Elvis ate banana & peanut butter sandwiches. Burger and fries, chicken & waffles, pancakes & maple syrup. The burger has the fries on the side, while the maple syrup is a condiment to the dish and considered a part of  the whole.
• Oxford comma (e.g. eggs, milk, and toast) is mandatory. The reason that a comma is must for that last and or or is because you can have lists of paired words. For example:  John's pregnant wife ate mustard & onion sandwiches, ice cream and pickles, yogurt and applesauce, and some rice with fish.
• Removing the period from title abbreviations. The reason I have no use for this rule is that I oppose excess punctuation in sentences, having occasionally dealt with nuisance sentences where I added too many commas. With periods, their primary goal is to close a sentence. Let's look at the following sentence, in the latter you can tell while half-asleep where the sentence ends:

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Mrs. Thatcher called Mr. Anthony and told her than she had better behave now, or else Rev. Warwick would give her the fear of God, and Dr. Martin would take out her appendix.
versus
Mrs Thatcher called Mr Anthony and told her than she had better behave now, or else Rev Warwick would give her the fear of God and Dr Martin would take out her appendix.

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American English needs sensible rules that are idiot-proof.

What the English language needs more than anything is spelling reform.

Some? I could use more British spellings for acknowledgement and the like.

But, a sentence that has too many commas, because people don't know where to put them, looks really, really fucking stupid.
versus
But a sentence that has too many commas, because people don't know where to put them, looks really really fucking stupid.
or even
But a sentence that has too many commas looks really really fucking stupid, because people don't know where to put them.

See?

We got rid of a lot of U 's.
Not to mention the ED in Z

We got rid of a lot of U 's.
Not to mention the ED in Z

ZED's dead.

English is one of the most complex and versatile languages.

If punctuation usage bothers you so, get off the internet.

Yes,

English is one of the most complex and versatile languages.

If punctuation usage bothers you so, get off the internet.

Exactly! These gentlemen need to broaden their minds!

• Remove whom. Also remove an. These are situational words. English shouldn't be situational, it should be (more) consistent. Also, I loathe an because spelling and grammar check doesn't catch when I type and, but the d either fails to type because of keyboard flaw or me typing too fast.
• Ampersand is not a replacement for and. It should be for when two words are fused together. For example: Elvis ate banana & peanut butter sandwiches. Burger and fries, chicken & waffles, pancakes & maple syrup. The burger has the fries on the side, while the maple syrup is a condiment to the dish and considered a part of  the whole.

So you don't want English to be situational, but you want the ampersand to be situational? ???  Sounds like you need to be more consistent.

I want there to be consistent rules about usage.

Like were you use two different rules for the number 2, there should be a specific instance for each. Like using the number 2 in a mathematical context, but when speaking in a general context in a sentence, the word is two .

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ZED's dead.

Wait what?!? They killed Lord Zed?

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Basically, I have no issues with English being situational. When I have a problem with is English being whimsical.  If there is no specific instance when you use an ampersand rather than an and, people just start using & anywhere, and it looks wrong and stupid.  Like saying extreme instead of the proper word Xtreme.  Everyone knows when something is Xtreme, you should say so.  I learned this in the 90s when I was still in school.

Xtreme isn't English.

Xtreme isn't English.

French?

Gibberish.

Xtreme isn't English.

It's not English. It's American English.





And that's the point, these are rules for American English. You can keep your British or Australian English rules.

Then put that in the original post headline, or those of us that speak English are going to imagine you are talking about the actual language, rather than some mangled pidgin version, squawked in an ex-colony.


Try this, https://www.bbc.com/pidgin
It's a thing.

There is a rule for that.  They call it contractions, albeit atypical, but contractions, nonetheless.

Then put that in the original post headline, or those of us that speak English are going to imagine you are talking about the actual language, rather than some mangled pidgin version, squawked in an ex-colony.


Try this, https://www.bbc.com/pidgin
It's a thing.

Ummm?

Mind you, this can just be American English. You Brits and Australians can do what you want.

Wasn't that the first two sentences of the very first post?

Well.... It might have been, so I probably didn't read it TBH.

All the same did you read the pidgin English version of the BBC, it is great.

Xtreme isn't English.

It's not English. It's American English.





And that's the point, these are rules for American English. You can keep your British or Australian English rules.

Technically it is a creative spelling used for branding ^^