Just to be clear: I think that quiz is perfectly absurd, in a non-amusing way. It has nothing to do with grammar [and nothing to do with what I study; except that I know how to vigorously delimit it from what I study], and everything to do with arbitrary rules of ‘accepted’ English, many of which oppose native competence. I bet that, in most of those questions, you probably had an instinct about how to complete the sentence, but then chose against that instinct. Knowing what stylebooks deem the correct past form of “sneak,” or not splitting infinitives, or whether or not to use “which” or “that” is useless pedantism [and I recognize the irony that I correctly answered all/most of the questions ... I’m a decent memorizer]. It doesn’t clarify meaning. Here is what prescriptivism misses in a big way: writing well has practically NOTHING to do with language, and everything to do with how well you can organize your thoughts. Sometimes I laugh at these things, but for some reason, sometimes [like right now] they piss me off.
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mattwagers) wrote,
