> > You can find someone on the internet who will believe anything is > > incorrect. > > Sure, but that's rather beside the point. We're not talking about the > opinion of J.Random Nutter here, but about something that Fowler's > Modern English Usage, also published by Oxford, warns about. And.. there are a considerable number of people who consider that Fowler's is J Random Nutter (notably everyone from Cambridge who don't even agree with Oxford spelling rules) > > Oxford by the way take bug reports, so you can write them a > > letter giving examples of the problematic usage and suggesting changes - > > but IMHO you have to balance excessive detail against usefulness in > > any learning process. > > Indeed so, but the problem arose here because someone, quite > reasonably, tried to use the Oxford Advanced Learners Dictionary as an > authority. It's clearly not fit too be used as one. I think that's It's not an authority, there is no authority except the person who wrote the words, hence Humpty. > wrong: advanced learners deserve to be treated with a little more > respect. Even if you believe that anything goes, it's unfair not to > tell an advanced learner that there is a controversy. We could all go one better. As it was obvious what they meant so you could simply have assumed that meaning. Who *cares* about the finer points of US v Indian v UK English providing people are understood ? Should I go around correcting every time some American writes "If I was" or other horrors ? Alan (Who considers the queens subjects to be the bits that go with the queens verbs and the queens objects) -- users mailing list users@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx To unsubscribe or change subscription options: https://admin.fedoraproject.org/mailman/listinfo/users Guidelines: http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Mailing_list_guidelines
