Two comments in the queue

August 27, 2013 • 2:38 pm

One of these people won’t be posting here again (guess which one), but I thought these comments were humorous, even though both were meant seriously:

1.  From Mel Shuller:

Anyone who uses the non-word, irregardless, instantly loses his/her credibility with intelligent, thinking people!!!

My response:  Anyone who completely disregards someone’s ideas over an issue as trivial as this is a pompous ass.

2.  From ian:

why do you put a star in dog

My response: Every regular reader here knows the answer.

188 thoughts on “Two comments in the queue”

    2. I’m in agreement. The first one is impolite but no worse than others that generate a warning alone.

      The second one is a legitimate question assuming a new reader. We aren’t all regulars!

      1. The first comment is the first time this person has ever commented here. Such a first comment doesn’t warrant entry to the community. If “Mel” was a regular, it would be different.

        1. I agree. The first one is not just pompous and impolite, but insulting, to Jerry and the rest of us. He’s basically saying that if any of us still take Jerry seriously after that post that we are not intelligent, thinking people. I was going to comment on the word irregardless as soon as I read it, but then I decided not to because I didn’t want to distract from the main point of the post and hijack the comments over a trivial issue. If anything, a private email would have been appropriate. Good riddance to Mel Shuller. We hardly knew ye.

          1. Good points. Of course we all know about “irreg***less”. Thirty years ago I would have been tempted to point it out, but 30 years ago I was also an ass. Now I know better (I hope!)

          2. Anyone who uses three exclamation marks at the end of a sentence instantly loses his/her credibility with intelligent, thinking people!!!

          3. I have to confess that “irregardless” makes me cringe. Probably because, about *40* years ago, my dad took me to task one day for using it, saying it was something one would hear from ignorant radio commentators (he had a hate-on for radio commentators, many of whom, it must be admitted, deserved it, and for reasons beyond mere vocabulary abuse).

            Apparently, I’ve never gotten over the trauma.

          4. Yes, a negative experience can affect how we view things for years after the event itself. And words can trigger the feeling!

          5. As a youth, I was mugged in a dark alley by an interrobang, and have never gotten over it ‽

          7. Yes negative enforcement is a good one. When I used to translate Latin in highschool you would often come across the verb “to lead”. Romans did a lot of leading. The past is “led” not “lead” because “lead” is the metal. I only made that translation mistake ONCE because my Latin teacher slapped me on the hand (jokingly).

          8. Not really “because lead is the metal”. Those Germanic verbs are often irregular:

            lead led, read read, knead kneaded…

          9. I’m afraid we’re losing the battle for “led.” And a lot of other irregular verb forms as well–shone, flew, etc.

        2. If “Mel” WERE a regular. Sheesh!

          Just teasing. Don’t ban me, don’t ban me!

          1. Damn you subjunctive. I think we should get rid of it from English. Also “whom” because we don’t have cases.

          2. Dermot decided to reply to Diana. He thought she wrong; she disagreed with he; he disagreed with her.

            To revert to the first and second persons, I disagree with you, but I don’t disagree with I; do you agree with I or do you agree with me?

          3. That’s reductio ad absurdum Hey notice how that highly inflected Latin uses cases to distinguish between subject and object? More on that below!

            I said get rid of “whom” not personal pronouns. Personal pronouns are the only things that maintain gender and the declination of cases in English other than “who”. For this reason, “whom” is a relic that doesn’t makes sense to us in English and I actually break the rules and use “who” all the time when it’s the object or indirect object and requires “whom”. Why do I do this? Because everyone understands me without using whom and distinguishing between the subject and object using declension of cases other than with personal pronouns, actually sounds odd to use it. It is almost as weird to an English speaker as using gender (only used in personal pronouns) for things and reflecting that gender in definite and indefinite articles.

            How do I know there are no other declinations? When was the last time you declined a definite or indefinite article? E.g.: “The man who the dog bit”. Both “the”‘s are the same but clearly one is the subject and one is the object. Did we get confused? Did we not know who did the biting? No. Why? Because English relies on word order over inflection to convey meaning. English, is less inflected than its other Germanic language rellies and it does quite well this way and no one gets confused. Therefore, we should just get rid of the relic that is “whom” and rely on word order like we do with “the” and everything else in English. Or we could go back to speaking Anglo Saxon as I’m pretty sure it kept all the cases. QED

          4. Yes, Diana, Modern English has cases in the personal pronouns, the most commonly used words in the spoken language. It also retains the remnant of the Old English genitive –es ending, abbreviated to ‘s.

            ‘Whom’ makes sense to English speakers. And, depending on context, it can be more mellifluous to the ear and easy on the tongue. Take Psalms 16:3, “As for the saints in the land, they are the excellent ones, in whom is all my delight.” Doesn’t the rather Shakespearian final phrase have the audible edge? As against your alternative which the hearer would receive as, “…in whowiz all…”? Subjective I know, but neither you nor I can be the arbiter. In any case there ain’t much we can do to influence the survival or not of ‘whom’.

            In specialized areas English speakers use gender: ships, transport, countries. In certain non-standard dialects, the use of a gendered pronoun to denote inanimate objects is much more common.

            The last time I tried to decline an article was when I tried and miserably failed to learn Old English; which had 5 cases. They had all but disappeared by around the fourteenth century.

            Btw, are you sure that ‘declination’ is a synonym for ‘declension’?

            Cheers.

          5. You’re right that the trend in language evolution is to lose inflections. Latin had six standard cases plus a couple of fossils (remember domi and domum in the centurion’s lecture in Life of Brian…) Proto-Indoeuropean had at least a dozen.

            “Who” has a possessive (“whose”) as well as an objective (“whom”) case. (In old money that’s genitive and accusative.) But pronoun cases are not our only inflections. Nouns have possessive and plural inflections. There are verb inflections for person, number and tense, as well as subjunctive, imperative and conditional forms. Adjectives have comparative and superlative forms. Demonstrative adjectives have plural forms…

            I think “Whom did you meet?” sounds archaic, but “For whom the bell tolls” sounds fine. Mind you, I’m archaic.

          6. Greek slowly lost its cases as well. Classical Greek has 6 (nominative, genitive, dative, accusative, vocative, locative and I want to say imperative). Then went down to 4 in modern Greek: nominative, genitive, accusative, vocative. Strangely, I remember learning all these cases in Classical Greek but I’ve read it’s Mycenaean Greek that had a bunch of cases, including the instrumental case. I remember Koine Greek (biblical Greek) was the easiest. Pro tip: if you find yourself in a Classical Greek class with modern Greeks, they’ll trip on the cases and you’ll get an edge on the exams. 🙂

            Anyway, yes, the cases seem to diminish over time. I think this “whom” needs to go. Whose is okay.

  2. Nice. I needed the LOLs today and I do like the “pompous ass” reply. I’ll steal that one for later use on pompous asses I come into contact with regularly. 🙂

          1. Sirius is sometimes informally called the Dog Star.

            Although in the spirit of pomposity, I should point out that the * in d*g is actually an asterisk.

  4. For simpleminded people like Mel: There are two kinds of people in the world: those who divide the world into two kinds of people, and those who don’t.

      1. There are 10 types of people in the world – those who understand binary, and those who don’t

        1. There are {{{}},{{{}}}} types of people in the world – those who understand Peano’s axioms describing the natural numbers and those who don’t.

        2. There are 10 kinds of people in this world, those who understand ternary, those who don’t and those who think these 1x + 0 kinds jokes (where x is a number base) are getting a bit boring.

        3. There are 10 types of people in the world. Those who understand hexadecimal, and F the rest!

      2. There are 3 types of people in the world: those who know how to count and those who don’t.

      4. There are two types of people in the world: those who can extrapolate from incomplete information

  5. Irrespective of irregardless, irrational responses to irrelevant errata are irritating…

    Asterisk is a star? I thought is was a punctuation mark.

    An former boss of mine would gently mock those who used “irregardless” and misuse “premise.” The telco people would always tell us they were “on the premise” and the boss would reply that’s good, “when are you going to arrive at the premises”? Confused them every time.

    1. Let me meet your pedantry with more pedantry. An asterisk is a punctuation mark that is Latin for star so technically both are correct.

      1. From the Greek asteriskos, “small star”, diminutive of astēr.

        (Just to trump Selene in the Classics. And pedantry.)

        /@

        PS. Gotta be careful with Mac OS X auto-correct; it even auto-corrects text you past in, not just what you type.

          1. Well, I didn’t expect bathos. To be hunted down with a silver bow, perhaps? Maybe that was a lunatic hunch… (A ¾ moon, then.)

            Am I not a formidable myrmidon?! (tongue very much in cheek here)

            /@

          4. “…formidable myrmidon…” is pretty good.

            I think it’s better than “hunch”.

            But, wow, that comment has a very high allusion to word-count ratio!

            🙂

    1. Great article. I particularly like this part:

      ‘But if in conversation someone says, “I literally hit the ceiling when they sprang a story on me that wasn’t on the budget,” I understand that literally is hyperbolic, not factual. And I make no objection to its use, because I’m not empowered to make a citizen’s arrest over the way people talk.’

      2. I actually do dislike the usage of the word literally in a hyperbolic fashion. Because it blurs the lines of a word that is meant to clarify things.

        Many common sayings are derived from actual reactions, but are used in circumstances that aren’t that noteworthy.

        Jaw-dropping, for example. When you say “My jaw literally dropped” I expect that you were standing there, mouth gaping in shock.

        I always know what someone means, irregardless of whether they use regardless or irregardless or not. But ‘literally’ is used in opposition to ‘figuratively’. If you want to use some other word to emphasize what you mean, don’t use a word completely opposite to a perfectly fine description of what you’re talking about.

        Language is only wrong when you fail to convey the correct meaning. I’ve been confused over usage of literally, but not over irregardless.

        It’s not a big deal, though. There’s lots of fun for jokes when people use the word ‘literally’ when it wasn’t actually literal. So, all in all, while it’s the one bit of word usage I’m anal about, I get more fun out of it than I do anger 😀

        1. I loved that skit & hadn’t seen it before! Everything Mitchell & Webb have done is gold!

    2. And I think that d*gged concern of the grammar hounds are extra misplaced in science blogs. After all, similar terms are fixated for no other reason than history.

      For a similar example, I can think of “recombination” in cosmology. The first time matter cools enough to combine from electrons and nucleons into neutral matter it is called “recombination” instead of “combination”. Purely because people classically took the energetic ground state as the reference.

      So now “re-” lost its specific context here. Combination, recombination, flammable, inflammable. Irregardless, science moves on.

  8. Shouldn’t that have been:

    Anyone who uses the non-word ‘irregardless’ instantly…

    A mentioned word should have scare quotes around it, and the commas are incorrectly used. As it stands, the comment is actually using ‘irregardless’ as a functional part of the sentence: “Persons utilizing the (unspecified) non-word, no matter the circumstance, lose credibility.”

    This is a classic case of Muphry’s Law.

      2. Can your publisher put out a Kindle version for your detective trilogy? Available UK too?

        1. Thanks, Michael. The last two are available as ebooks. My publisher in the UK, for the first two anyway, is Robert Hale, Ltd.

      4. “Using”, please, not ‘utilizing’. OOps, “‘utilizing.'” Shouldn’t that be ‘”‘utilising'”‘?

    2. I had no idea there was a Muphry’s Law [as spelled] ~ genius !!

      Today I’ve learned a groovy new thing ~ thank you

      Also impressed Tulse, that you’ve produced a non-linking linkety link, for demonstration purposes I guess 🙂

      2. Yes. The broken link was of course totally for ironic effect, and not due to carelessness in any way whatever.

  9. Yeah, dogs don’t deserve stars! Stars are reserved for CATS!

    As in “This is my cat ***Stars**Supernova** KINK! ***More Stars!***Shooting Stars!!!!***

    That sort of thing.

    1. I loved the use of the adjective “arsey” in this sentence: “In no way are any of these people vain, arsey pedants”

      I’m putting “arsey” in my arsenal.

  11. I couldn’t figure out the asterisk thing for the longest time. I grew up hyper-Christian, but we always spelled out the words. The long-time non-religious know more about conventions in religion than I do!

    1. (That being said, once I became a regular reader, I eventually learned these neat little things. So I reckon I don’t disprove Jerry’s #2.)

    2. I have often wondered why Christians who consider themselves true Christians and follow so many arcane bits of Leviticus or Deuteronomy don’t become indistinguishable from the hassidim. Don’t they know they can’t spell out d*g? or speak it!

  12. “Anyone who completely disregards someone’s ideas over an issue as trivial as this is a pompous ass.”

    Wow. Anyone who responds to a silly comment about “irregardless” like this is way, way too heavy-handed.

    “Every regular reader here knows the answer.”

    Surely getting smacked down for questions like this doesn’t do much for attracting a new audience. I come here often, but this response is a turn-off, man.

    2. I’d be with you on the first one IF the commenter had been even the slightest bit humorous, polite, or even sheepish (“as an insufferable pedant, I can’t refrain from pointing out that…”). But reread Mel’s comment–it’s blatantly insulting, essentially stating that there’s a distinction between JAC and “intelligent, thinking people.”

      Good riddance, Mel. And BTW–anyone who uses three exclamation points at a time loses his/her credibility yada yada yada.

      1. Exclamation marks should, in my opinion, be used almost never in discussions as those on WEIT. Only in special circumstances, where it adds to the discussion.

  13. I get so irked with grammar nazis. Correcting somebody else when you can understand their meaning perfectly well despite their small errors is just pointless and mean. I don’t like it at all. Focus on the content or don’t bother interacting with strangers on the Internet. Leave that to people who can handle reading informal writing.

    1. I disagree. When done in a non-insulting way, it’s educational. When I use improper grammar in Spanish, I am happy to be (gently) corrected. I’d rather be corrected than keep making the same mistake. I think the same goes for a native language. Why not learn the proper usage? The important point, though, is to not be insulting or condescending about it.

      1. My thoughts exactly. As a non-native English speaker, I do not mind being corrected when I make mistakes. For the past twenty years I have been living and working in countries and areas where the languages spoken are not my own. If not for friends, colleagues and strangers gently pointing out my mistakes once in a while, my ability to communicate in those languages would be significantly worse.

    2. Well, if you can understand their meaning perfectly well…

      Most of the errors that irk me are those that erode meaning or introduce ambiguity. Yes, I’m sure you wrote what you meant, but did you really mean what you wrote?

      But you still don’t have to be a Mel jerk about how you highlight those errors.

      As someone who writes for a living, I appreciate peers and editors correcting those kind of mistakes in my writing.

        1. Well done! Exactly the kind of error* my editors keep catching for me… although I don’t generally write for work in haste between breakfast and my first client call of the day. 😉

          /@

          * And the kind of error I find so easy to spot in my colleagues’ writing!!!

  14. lol.

    Yes, if someone is pompous but turns out to be right in their argument, then so be it!

    If someone turns out to be right then they’re right! It doesn’t matter whether or not they were pompous or gracious about it!

    Anyway, what does “non-word” even mean?

  15. I don’t know about the star in dog. Would have appreciated an answer of some sort. Maybe I’m just new here.

    1. Maybe you are 😉

      If you stick around long enough you’ll discover that this site is rather cat-centric. It’s an amusing conceit of ours to regard d*gs as a lower species not to be mentioned in polite society. Also c*phalopods.

      Never mind, since I am neither polite nor social here’s a heartwarming video of animals of a species which shall not be named being rescued from predicaments which only a creature of lower intelligence would have got itself into.
      http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0EJpr2GPoWU
      (Hope this doesn’t imbed…)

      1. It also alludes to the use by some orthodox Jews of “G*d” or “G-d” for “God”, since our host is culturally Jewish. And to the practice of referring facetiously to “God” as “doG”.

        /@

      3. Thanks for posting that! Heartwarming indeed! Funny how our humanity can seem to shine the brightest when we care for other species.

    2. Jerry couldn’t answer that directly because then he’d have to admit that he doesn’t hate dogs as much as he pretends to for the LOLs. 😀

  17. Pedantry is the last refuge of a scoundrel. (I borrowed that from some other word, but I can’t remember now what was in the place of ‘pedantry’!)

    1. If you’re serious about forgetting, I believe the original term is “patriotism.”

      😀

      1. Yep, Dr Johnson. One of my favourite quotes when confronted by a patriot. 😉

  18. I read everyday, but rarely comment. Maybe I am putting my commenting privileges at risk, but it does seem a bit heavy-handed to ban for a first offense, even if it is the first comment. But that’s just my opinion and it is your website.

  19. #1 deserves to be banned.

    Proof: Anyone who would write the sentence, “Anyone who uses the non-word, irregardless, instantly loses his/her credibility with intelligent, thinking people!!!,” without enclosing the word “irregardless” in quotation marks, deserves to be banned.

    Uh, oh. Am I in trouble?

    1. Yes, that was my first thought. Actually, it was my fourth thought. Having read Mel’s comment out of context, my first thought was, “ha – this bozo just said ‘irregardless'”. My second thought was, “wait… what is the non-word he/she is referring to?”. Then it dawned on me.

      I didn’t get a lot of sleep last night though.

  20. I have trouble parsing the sentence of #1, since Jerry pointed out the mistakes on (in?) public signage.

    The sentence reads as “Anyone using the non-word, without regard, instantly loses …”

    So what is the non-word?

    1. +1

      I didn’t understand what was meant by Mel until reading the comments and getting that this was about ‘irregardless’.
      It actually reads, as you say, as if Mel is using ‘irregardless’ so… kinda ironic really! 😉

  21. “Non-word”? Accprding to Merriam-Webster (ultimate authority for US writers):

    “Irregardless originated in dialectal American speech in the early 20th century. Its fairly widespread use in speech called it to the attention of usage commentators as early as 1927. The most frequently repeated remark about it is that ‘there is no such word.’ There is such a word, however. It is still used primarily in speech, although it can be found from time to time in edited prose. Its reputation has not risen over the years, and it is still a long way from general acceptance. Use regardless instead.”

  22. Unfortunately, irregardless is now a word. It means – no kidding – regardless.

    One of the definitions of literally is now – no kidding – figuratively.

    Since when did we start catering to the ignorant and stupid to define our world? Oh yeah, always.

    1. This is even more serious than the surveillance state in which we now live. I jest (sort of).

      ; )?

      1. Can’t win with negatives.
        Inflammable = flammable, both mean the same.

        But I’ve just started brushing up my rusty French.
        Habitée = inhabited
        Inhabité = uninhabited

        I think the French are righter than the English on that one.

          1. I got nailed for this in sixth grade and I still hold a grudge about it. The word was inflammable are the definitions included “catches fire” and “doesn’t catch fire”. Knowing that the prefix ‘in’ means not – i.e. injustice, incoherent, etc. – I picked the logical choice and got it wrong. I HATE that word to this day. 🙂

          7. @logicophilisophocus
            “The “in-” in “inflammable” is not a negative prefix…”

            Yes I know that, I said so. I should have said ‘false negatives’, maybe.

            The ‘in’ in ‘inhabited’ isn’t a negative prefix either, except in the French equivalent…

            I always thought ‘flammable’ was a dodgy derivation coined by people who thought ‘inflammable’ sounded like a negative, and (surprise!) Wiktionary tends to agree. http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/flammable

            Curiously enough, ‘cendiary’ doesn’t seem to have made an appearance yet…

          8. “Can’t win with negatives.
            Inflammable = flammable, both mean the same.”

            Sorry to be picky, but you did appear to be suggesting that “in-” is a negative prefix.

            In “irregardless” a common error decades ago has now become widely accepted – that’s how many, perhaps most, language changes come about. Yet the “in-” prefix (Latin – assimilated to “ir-” before “r-“) in that word is a negative prefix. But “in-” is also a prefix meaning in/into, as in “inflammable”, “inflame”, “inhabit”, “intubate”, “invade”, “implode”, “immigration” etc. It’s just historical trivia, for anyone interested.

          9. Yes, I’m aware of the split personality of “in” in English. (Not sure if it shares this with French).

            But I’ll admit my wording was ambiguous.

          10. I don’t know if this is correct, but I’m going to go ahead & blame 1066 when Harold took it in the eye! 🙂

          11. “I’m going to go ahead & blame 1066 when Harold took it in the eye!”

            I still haven’t forgiven the French for that (though I suppose I could regard Agincourt and Waterloo as partial restitution…) 😉

          1. I think that criticism was … superficial. : )
            I expect both languages have words for which there isn’t a synonym in the other. But I’m not used to thinking in French so I can’t point to a counter-example.

            However, if I was looking to point up anomalies in French it would be related to the gender of nouns, and the innumerable rules of grammar, to which there are even more numerous exceptions. But what the French do with conjugation, the English do with spelling…

          2. “I expect both languages have words for which there isn’t a synonym in the other.”

            Not English. In English, you can always find le mot juste.

          1. Infamous used incorrectly drives me crazy. It’s kind of like the Latin fama famous for bad stuff, like Hitler.

      2. This is even more serious than the surveillance state in which we now live. I jest (sort of).

        ; )?

        I hear ya.

        At least we’re upping the amount of dreck someone (or something) will have to sort through.

    2. Linguistically-prescriptive pedantry misses the point. Languages are constantly changing and evolving, and words gain, change and lose meanings all the time. No-one still insists that ‘awful’ has to and can only mean ‘full of awe’, after all.

      Why pick on ‘literally’, and not ‘really’, ‘actually’, ‘truly’, ‘absolutely’, ‘totally’, ‘completely’, ‘wholly’ or even ‘very’? It’s not even the case that this ‘misuse’ of the word is a recent thing – hyperbolic usage of ‘literally’ for effect in fact dates back to the 18th century at least: visualthesaurus.com/cm/wordroutes/really-truly-literally/

      Language is about communication, not insistence upon overly-precise standards of ‘correct’ usage as a means of feeling superior to people who aren’t aware of these grammatical shibboleths. Incidentally, such prescriptions often have no actual sound linguistic basis, as is the case with rules like ‘no split infinitives’, ‘no flat adverbs’ or ‘no sentence-ending prepositions’.

      In summary, http://xkcd.com/1108/

      1. I disagree with the xkcd comic. It’s painfully obvious that using the word literally to mean figuratively will result in a dystopian future where the “word” ‘refudiate’ must be used in every utterance under penalty of squicky.

        1. And what’s wrong with that? ‘Refudiate’ sounds like a perfectly cromulent word to me!

  24. Anyone who uses the wrong word, star, when the correct term is asterisk, instantly loses his/her credibility with intelligent, thinking people!!!

    1. Anyone who thinks there is a difference, hasn’t read the comments attached to comment 5 above. 🙂

  25. Perhaps I’m wrong but…
    This blog post and the comments section made me feel sick to my stomach. I’m a regular reader of WEIT, it’s an excellent blog/website (whatever the term you want to use), but today I felt as I have always done as an outsider looking in to a community that is condemning others for not saying the right thing or asking the right questions. And yes, my comment here is serious and if I get banned so be it (I hope it doesn’t affect my being able to read the posts or get them sent to my email- because then I’ll retract this comment, keep my mouth shut and deny everything.) but this is like a community of people so similar to situations in the real world, where an outsider coming in is ridiculed or banished without any effort being made to know them, or get to know them, some comments even put the two commenter’s down simply because they are outside the little circle of regular commenter’s, the special circle, the in-crowd, those in the know.
    This post is a microcosm of what’s sometimes really wrong in the world, the ease of which we condemn others who we have never met, in real life, all communities of humans that see the other who tentatively reaches into that community as bad or unworthy until they prove themselves in some way.
    A comment/email/text is words, you can’t see the person behind them, their facial expressions, the tone of their voice. To be condemned for something as trivial as being pedantic or asking a question (I didn’t know the answer to that one), I think there are more important things to worry about in this world.
    Please tell me this post was just a test to gauge people’s reactions on something trivial compared to the real work that WEIT does with the information (debates, science info esp.) it shares in its other posts.

    1. I actually agree with parts of your post, but at the end of the day it is jerry’s house and he gets to decide who stays and who goes.

      That’s the roolz around these parts of the web.

      I doubt your post is a banning offence. 🙂

      1. I’ve had a cup of tea and have calmed down somewhat.
        I totally agree, Jerry’s rules. And perhaps he wasn’t amused when he had to trawl through the comments and saw those. But I had to say something, it reminded me of a sort of kangaroo court, hang them, hang them, I could hear it shouted from the rafters…

        1. LOL. Good to hear.

          It’s always tempting to get on the bandwagon, but at least we try not to jump to conclusions about other people.

          I think Mel is going to be alright, what with that being his first comment and all. If not, I’d suggest he write Jerry an email with an apology and maybe all would be forgiven. I doubt Mel is going to do that though.

          Time for a cup of joe. 🙂

    2. I’m really not sure how Jerry posting a very mild rejoinder “I thought these comments were humorous” to the rather froth-flecked and non-polite opening volley from a reader:

      “Anyone who uses the non-word, irregardless, instantly loses his/her credibility with intelligent, thinking people!!!”

      makes you feel sick to your stomach.

      Did the little rant from the commenter at the host about losing his credibility (complete with insult) make you feel sick to your stomach too? Or was that okay, because commenters must be allowed to be as jackass-ish as they like?

      Outsiders are not usually ridiculed here, neither by Jerry nor the readers. However, if someone chooses to insult the site and / or its author on his very first visit, exactly how much time and respect do you think they should be given? You’re asking for rude drive-by assholes to be given kid-glove treatment when they themselves could not be bothered to try common courtesy.

      1. Apologies, if I didn’t explain myself better. In answer to your question, I agreed with Jerry, the comments do appear to be humorous. The use of ‘non-word’ and ‘!!!’ did make the comment appear humorous even if the commenter’s intention was perhaps to be serious (I’m basing this completely on the layout of the text now). It read to me more like someone having a joke, rather than being serious (it looked like a joke because he used three exclamation marks).
        Anyway, my gut reaction was to the fact that someone was banned for what didn’t look like something that serious, you know, in the bigger scope of things that life could throw at us (I could be wrong, I’m not sure of the context of where this comment was used and what was in the original post it referred to), and then I found the comments in the comments section that appeared to chime ‘off with his head’ a bit of a worry too.
        And, as noted above, Jerry’s rules, his site.

        1. I don’t know….if I were commenting somewhere where I was new and I was joking but my comments could be taken the wrong way, I’d think twice about my words or cage them in a certain way. From what I can tell, that first comment was rude and the person deserved the tongue lashing he/she got and keeping things civil here is why this is a good place to go for having passionate but respectful conversations. I’ve found my conversations have helped me understand my own position better.

    3. I agree with everything you wrote. Don’t feel bad. For seven years I have tried to figure out this blog thing. I am an outsider too. I do not quite understand what commenters get out of commenting on blogs so much. If a knowledgeable person has something to teach to others, that seems great. But all the personal in-fighting and pedantry is exhausting to read. I feel like an outsider, too, always concerned that someone is going to jump on me for writing something wrong–or wrongly. I don’t get anything out of it so why bother, really.

      One of the worst things is how a blog owner can change the content of his original post any time he wishes, days later. He can do it to make himself look good when commenters had disagreed with what he’d written. Later readers come by and don’t see why the commenters would have been so harsh, because the offending language in the OP is now gone. Making such changes in the OP is not professional, and some might say downright sneaky.

      I made a comment on a person’s blog once to help them out. My attempt was genuine and good hearted. The blog owner’s response was really rude and downright b-tchy. I responded that I could not figure out why she had a comment section on her blog if she was going to treat commenters that way. She filtered out my second comment and it never showed up in public.

      This is one reason I have no interest in using my real name in blogs. Why do so when the blog owner has such control over what the public sees. My name is quite unique and I am self employed using my name in my business.

      I come here to read facts and learn more about biology and evolution. I try to stay out of the personal and emotional and opinion side of things because I don’t want it in print forever, and I don’t want someone coming to my home or calling my phone and retaliating for something I wrote years ago or for something the blog owner juggled around to make him or her self look good.

      I’m commenting here to make you feel better; you are not the only one who thinks the way you do. I don’t even know why I ended up reading the comments on this post. These sorts of posts really irritate me no matter what blog they appear on. They are petty and the commentary usually degrades into nit-picking and pedantry.

      For the blog owner, “It’s my party and I’ll cry if I want to” isn’t responsible journalism. Blogs are a weird mix of journalism and opinion, of “respect me because I am a knowledgeable person” and “don’t you dare disagree with me on other matters that I want to write about such as humor, art, or language”. I read parts of this blog for the responsible journalism segments (science) and try to skip over the rest. I’m a GOOD person and don’t need people who do not know me to tell me I’m a bad one. I have an arthritic wrist that makes typing difficult. If typos make me ignorant, and if it makes me a person whose knowledge or abilities in other areas is then not worthy of attention, well, that has more to say about the person making the judgments.

      I don’t know if any of this will help you or not. Just thought I’d mention a few things.

      1. Thanks. You said it very well about the perceptions of an outsider, new commenter and how a comment can get misintepreted. I enjoy the biology and evolution articles too, it’s what I enjoy about WEIT. I’m going to chalk this post up to experience and leave it there.

      2. One of the worst things is how a blog owner can change the content of his original post any time he wishes, days later. He can do it to make himself look good when commenters had disagreed with what he’d written. Later readers come by and don’t see why the commenters would have been so harsh, because the offending language in the OP is now gone. Making such changes in the OP is not professional, and some might say downright sneaky.

        That is indeed appalling and I don’t know why anyone continues to read those blogs. Same goes for bloggers who will actually change reader’s comments. *cough*GregLaden*cough*

        I’ve never know JAC to do anything like that–and have even seen him leave a post up for which he was roundly criticized (which is very rare, of course). He also has a great attitude about helpful editorial suggestions, usually replying with a “thanks, fixed that.”

        I occasionally think he has a short fuse, but one has to realize how busy the man is; it blows my mind that he cranks out in a day what would take me a few weeks to accomplish; and seemingly, all before breakfast!

        1. Regarding your second-to-last paragraph, well, it has happened on this site too.

          This past spring the word maroon was used in a sentence at the end of an OP to describe a well-known creationist who had made a hilarious language mistake on Facebook (that anybody could make — that in fact my fairly well-educated relative made when I told her about it).

          After commenting here had gone on a while, the sentence in the OP quietly disappeared.

          Bad form all around.

          1. But if the discussion in the comments section remained, then it would be clear that JAC had responded to what I assume was criticism by removing the word.

            Thinking twice about usage does not strike me as devious, especially compared to bloggers who rewrite a post so that it says something completely different from the original.

            (BTW, are you talking about the “bibliophile” mistake? You know of another person who misinterpreted the term the same way?!)

          2. I suspect it’s actually quite widespread. In many, maybe less well-read, people’s minds “paedophile” overshadows and taints all the nice “phile” words like “bibliophile”, “ailurophile”, “oenophile”, …

            /@

          4. But was Ray Comfort mistaken? It is pretty clear reading the original exchange (rather than edited highlights) that Leonie Hilliard intended the exact interpretation that Comfort suspected and objected to – associating Biblical fundamentalists with paedophiles.

          5. Yes.

            Even if RC was deliberately baited, anyone who actually knew what the word meant wouldn’t have taken the bait! His later chagrin shows that he really didn’t know.

            /@

          6. Yes, that is the post. I can tell you I had to look up the word maroon because I didn’t know what it meant. If you look at the comments, no one mentions the word or the sentence that was there. So the persons who suggested he was being harsh look like they were over-reacting. And subsequent people in the thread ask what the big deal is. The post is not the same without that sentence.

            It troubled me for a long time and then I realized I am in no position to fix the World.

            And yes, I asked a suburban high school home economics teacher with two Masters degrees in education what the word bibliophile meant. Her answer was the same as RC’s. She is a normal middle class American. Ant (below) has it right.

      3. “I made a comment on a person’s blog once to help them out. My attempt was genuine and good hearted. The blog owner’s response was really rude and downright b-tchy.”

        Yes that can happen, but the solution is simple – stop reading the ones that do that. There are plenty of honest bloggers who, when corrected, show that their post has been changed and thank the commenter. You can choose to stick with them.

    4. FWIW, Lia, I agree with you. IMO the in-group-iness of Pharyngula is its most off-putting aspect. (It’s delicious, though, how that crowd doesn’t see the irony of its arrogance.)

      Another thing I’ve run into a number of times, esp. on science-oriented blogs, is a relatively high proportion of commenters who would have been called Asperger’s, before the DSM did away with the term. So many flame-wars stem from simply not understanding the other’s limitations.

      After my first impression, which as I mentioned agreed with yours, I reread Mel’s comment and then it did seem way too insulting; though as others have mentioned, there’s a chance it was intended to be read humorously. But the d*g business, like the ‘hunt for the eddress’ policy, are idiosyncrasies that we should all be happy to explain to newcomers, to welcome them into the fold.

  26. It occurs to me that maybe “irregardless” is actually an amalgam of “irrespective” and “regardless”. (Merriam-Webster’s bears me out on that.) What also interests me is that “irrespective” is mainly or exclusively used as part of the preposition “irrespective of”. “Regardless” is also used that way, but also by itself as either adverb or adjective.

    “Irregardless”, according to my M-W Collegiate dictionary, was used in American speech in the early 20th century, and occasionally finds its way into edited prose; but “its reputation has not improved” over the years, according to the dictionary.

    Now my thoughts: I’m guessing this word first saw the light of day when someone who was acquainted with both irrespective and regardless had some kind of brain short-circuit and melded the two in a comment. It had a nice ring to it–combining the two words added emphasis. The hybrid is longer, and both begins and ends with a negative (belt-and-suspenders reinforcement). It also feels good to say it!

    Criticism seems to center around the idea that it is a double negative and so technically it cancels itself out. But double negatives used as intensifiers are common in many languages, in speech more so than in writing. There is nothing inherently wrong with them as long as the meaning is clear. In fact, we enshrine double negatives in song and poetry: “I can’t get no satisfaction,” “We don’t need no education,” “Ol’ man river, he don’t know nothin'”, “Don’t ask me nothing about it.”

    So feel free to use the words you want, irregardless of their having a few flies on them! 🙂

  28. Just calling the anonymous a pompous arse isn’t unusual or particularly odious. This speke aboundeth in pseudo academia. Faked commonality (in style currently) is no less odious. Actually, both are theatrics, no?

    1. Can someone please explain, when USAians use the word ‘ass’ do they mean ‘arse’ or, literally, the hoofed animal?

      1. The former, unless they get called out for it in which case they insist they meant the latter. What good is ambiguity if you can’t occasionally put it to good use?

        1. Ha ha, when I was a kid, her totally insane religious grandfather said that you could say “ass” because it was in the bible. 😀

          1. When I got sent to Sunday School (which I detested because it was a waste of MY time on MY weekend and also dead boring) one of my minor pastimes was looking for rude words in the Bible. Can’t recall how much luck I had. Not much, I think, since I was too young to understand most biblical metaphors.

  29. I thank Mel and ian who allowed these funny comments just as I needed a pause.

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