Grammar Improvement

Beast.  You had me at the fifth had.

Disgruntled publican of the Pig and Whistle to a bad sign-writer:

There's supposed to be a space between the "Pig" and "and" and "and" and "Whistle"

I'm from the literalist pedant school of Grammar.  I am always flummoxed at the foot of the escalators on the London Underground by the sign there that reads:

"Dogs must be carried"

I look around in panic for a spare dog but they never provide any.  I can be down there for hours sometimes before I ambush an elderly dog-owner and happily carry his dog up to the surface.

In Grammar School we spent a good amount of time analyzing the popular sign "No Smoking Permitted".

Here's a quesion:

Which sentence do you judge as being more correct:

1. It got dark once we left the building.

                        or

     2.  It became dark once we left the building.

Please state if English is your first language or otherwise.

Here's a fun one:

The police watched the girl with the binoculars.

Who has the binoculars?

--

More ambiguities known as "garden path" sentences:

1. The old man the boat.
2. The man whistling tunes pianos.
3. The cotton clothing is made of grows in Mississippi.
4. The complex houses married and single soldiers and their families.
5. The government plans to raise taxes were defeated.

So, essentially, what you are saying is that you can't communicate as effectively if you don't speak the standard dialect of a language as if you do?  Please clarify me if I have misinterpreted your assertion.  There are several variables to take into account here.

In the middle of nowhere (in the sticks).

(For further German-expression-clarification and insight-into-the-German-mind, refer to this site.)

Now I'm curious, Ozzie.   Would you say that that, (the time spent analyzing the sign you mention above), could be one of the (or the) major factor you devoted a significant portion of your lifetime to the enterprise known as "chess"  - for which you get little remuneration but a lot of mind-exercise ?

All your base are belong to us?

@RetGuvvie98 no I don't think so, perhaps I exaggerated, we probably spent 10 or 15 minutes talking about it, one time.

no sweat, ozzie, idle thought of an often idle mind.  was kidding about that.

I've got a question for you smart fellers:  why is the advertising industry making an attempt to redefine the word "decadent" into something positive? 

Apparently I didn't even know the meaning of decadent. Interesting observation.

What I've been noticing recently is the beer industry's gravitation towards the word "responsible". Drink Responsibly. Enjoy Heineken Responsibly. It's brilliant, actually. On its face it gets across the notion that one should not drink irresponsibly, that one should not drink & drive, that one should not drink too much, etc. But the secondary meaning is that one can feel responsible when one is drinking. That beer can be something which can help out in this manner. That it is a Good Thing.

Of course, I am a fan of beer, but that's another story for another time.

So, Gonnosuke, you have no trouble comparing modern-day America to Constantine's Rome?  It's an interesting argument, granted, but it seems a bit odd to me that a decadent society would strive to alter the meaning of a word that for years has been directly associated with the moral decay of the Roman Empire.  Mostly I find it odd due to my lack of respect for those who make money creating advertisements--it strikes me as a stretch to believe that they are clever enough to intentionally subvert the meaning of such a word--unlike Ozzie's observations about responsible enebriation.

The next time I see chocolate drooling on a cake and hear the voice over espouse the savor of this "decadent delight" I think I'm going to throw a hard bound copy of a Tolstoy opus through the damned screen!

Are advertisers truly the source of this misuse?  It's sufficiently pervasive that I too was unaware of the word's actual meaning.

Tell me, TheGrobe, where have you heard anyone use the word decadent other than on television?  Pervasive, bah!  The only time it's used is in history books and on television, in my experience.

To ozzie c cobblepot...

Surely it would be much more simple - and  grammatically correct - to say : Topics which I have posted...

Gonnosuke,

I reckon you're right.  A fella could probably find many examples of words having evolved due to them being used by imbeciles.

The simplest explanation is usually the right one.

I've not paid much attention to the source, I just know that its misuse is sufficiently pervasive that it has drowned out, to the point of supplanting, the actual definition in my experience.  I'm not unfamiliar with the word, just its definition as I'm learning. 

 I have it on good authority that this word is also seen in chess forums.