I've seen those English dramas too, they're cruel

[venta]

I avoided all the BBC frothing about bad grammar the other day. Much as I like a well-placed apostrophe, the sort of people who say "I think you'll find you mean 'fewer'" are, largely, arses (up with whom one should not put).

However, a nice grammar quiz? oh yes, that sounds like fun. I can answer it and feel all smug. Except, of course, I disagreed with it.

Question 3: Read this sentence carefully. "I'd like to introduce you to my sister Clara, who lives in Madrid, to Benedict, my brother who doesn't, and to my only other sibling, Hilary." Which of the following is correct?

1. Hilary is male
2. Hilary is female
3. It's impossible to know from the context

Now, the BBC's answer is that Hilary is male, because there isn't a comma after 'brother'. Benedict is described as "my brother who doesn't [live in Madrid]", so there must also be another brother, and thus that brother must be only-other-sibling Hilary.

I claim the answer is morally 3: it's impossible to tell. Because I, for one, got so lost among the commas of that god-awful sentence that I was frankly quite bewildered enough by the end without worrying about whether Hilary was a boy or a girl. Good grammar aids clarity, it doesn't reduce English to a puzzle of whether you knew the rules well enough to divine the writer's intent correctly. If your reader has to count commas to understand your statement, you've already got it monumentally wrong.

Bah.

Comments

[dr-bob.livejournal.com]

Besides, Hilary could easily be transgender.

[feanelwa.livejournal.com]

If they're going to be all "let me infer the gender of a person who is standing right in front of me from grammatical pedantry instead of talking to them" then surely that comma is only important if Hilary is the brother who *does* live in Madrid? Otherwise Benedict being a brother who doesn't is entirely irrelevant.

Anyway if somebody's going to call their children Clara, Benedict and Hilary they are either a Tory minister or a character in a Victorian novel, in which case Hilary is probably male.

[lnr]

*applause*

[undyingking.livejournal.com]

(And the one about semi-colons is wrong too.)

[erming.livejournal.com]

I think from reading it that any sentence that long and convulated is clearly bad English as the sentence should be split into smaller sentences. Or at least that is what my HCI and technical authoring course said.

[bopeepsheep.livejournal.com]

It's a terrible sentence, whatever the 'correct' interpretation. (And I agree, if you're introducing poor old Hilary as "my only other sibling", there's something unclarified about Hilary's status or you clearly hate him/her/zie.)

[sammason.livejournal.com]

Bah, bah, bah, bah, bah.

[eniel]

*grins* Can't complete half of these questions, they're all based on British grammar, and American grammar seems to have evolved and deviated and ended up "same but different".
Also, if I had been misbehaving as a child, I might have used "I was sat in the chair" if my parents put me there :)

[beckyc.livejournal.com]

the sort of people who say "I think you'll find you mean 'fewer'" are, largely, arses

Or primary school teachers.

When someone corrects my grammar, I feel revenge correction is appropriate. Otherwise, well, I prefer to a)have friends and b)not get my face pummelled. And usually c)not to be so rude, but that one depends on my mood ;-).

[vicarage.livejournal.com]

Its a quiz, you are meant to study the sentence. I thought the questions about the names of things were stupid. Who cares what is called a gerund, all that matters is that it is used right.

[satyrica.livejournal.com]

yeah, that was the one that I got wrong, although I'd decided Hilary was female, for some reason, so I got it very wrong