You didn't start that sentence with "I", so I think it's clear to everyone that the distinction between less and fewer is probably not meaningful to you. :-D
There's certainly a different between the formal rules of a language and the way that it's actually spoken and written. Learning a language in school (at least when I was at school) you were taught to speak in a formal way that natives generally didn't. It didn't mean that this wasn't the right way to construct a sentence in that language, but it also didn't mean that people who did it in a less formal way were wrong. The way you should technically use English hasn't changed. The way a lot of people do use it is different. Both sides are right, and Stephen Fry is basically a bit of a smug hypocrite given his jumping in feet first to some similar debates that he has no relevance to.
In a previous version of windows, I can't remember which, if you chose to hide file extensions then trying to add a file extension wouldn't actually replace the hidden one, but would just rename your file to something like "file.txt.doc" which certainly is silly.
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andrewducker) wrote2010-10-27 12:00 pm
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There's certainly a different between the formal rules of a language and the way that it's actually spoken and written. Learning a language in school (at least when I was at school) you were taught to speak in a formal way that natives generally didn't. It didn't mean that this wasn't the right way to construct a sentence in that language, but it also didn't mean that people who did it in a less formal way were wrong. The way you should technically use English hasn't changed. The way a lot of people do use it is different. Both sides are right, and Stephen Fry is basically a bit of a smug hypocrite given his jumping in feet first to some similar debates that he has no relevance to.
In a previous version of windows, I can't remember which, if you chose to hide file extensions then trying to add a file extension wouldn't actually replace the hidden one, but would just rename your file to something like "file.txt.doc" which certainly is silly.
no subject
The way you should technically use English hasn't changed.
Um, what? Of course it's changed over time. I'm not sure what you mean here.