Spyke
lmmarsanoreply
lemmynsfw.com

not how colons work

You had me scanning the image (of text without alt text: bad, OP! BAD!) for a : pretty hard until I settled on The New York Times message

Breaking News: Susan[…]

for a while. Had me wondering how else The New York Times is supposed to write that, because it looks correct.

This is why quoting exists.

15

Sure, but: it was right there all along.

Separately, Elon might be on Earth, but he's also sometimes on earth. Although he's more of an indoors boy.

1
lemm.ee

The complaint isn’t about the colon in OP’s image, it’s the colon in OP’s explanation.

OP complaining about an insignificant capitalization mistake in a Twitter post, while making a far more egregious grammatical error in their explanation is just...*chef's kiss*

22
zarkanianreply
sh.itjust.works

It isn't even an error, though. It's just wrong. "Earth" should be lowercase. I can understand being pedantic, but pedantic and wrong is super irritating.

2
Bazooglereply
lemmy.world

The original post is technically correct on the topic of capitalization for "Earth". When referring to the planet, it is a proper noun, thus capitalized. source

However, that is a pretty egregious use of a colon XD

2

Keep in mind that idioms follow their own rules. Down to earth, what on earth, and move heaven and earth do not capitalize the planet, and four corners of the earth or salt of the earth take the definite article.

"On earth" (e.g. "richest man on earth") is one of those idioms, so the E is lowercase. See here.

on earth

used for emphasis. What on earth are you doing?; the stupidest man on earth.

It's a bit confusing, but they aren't literally referring to "the planet Earth" in an astronomical sense. If you were writing a sci-fi story and comparing the wealth of the richest man on Earth to, say, the richest man on Mars, then it would be capitalized.

2
vladmechreply
lemmy.world

For a person complaining about pedantic language stuff you’re really falling apart 😂

59
lemmy.blahaj.zone

My rule with langauge:

If you understand what they’re trying to say, then they did a good enough job expressing themselves.

(Also I love how this post is getting loads of upvotes because people are just seeing Bernie’s message and liking it lol).

61
AmidFurorreply
fedia.io

I think its knot just you understand but how quicker it is to get demeaning it is also important. The more pour spells and grammer makes you to backup and red again, even if you can finally deciver it, the wurst it is.

At some point you give up, but well before that you have every right to be annoyed.

24

You have no idea, how much I hate you right now!

6

Ok but what type of LAN gauge? Are you talking like an ethernet cable tester, a protocol analyzer, what? Are we dealing with fiber, ethernet, or even shudder token ring?

1
lemmy.blahaj.zone

I get the message and generally don't care for prescriptive grammar, but for some reason this particular rule haunts me.

Let those votes be a lesson: camouflage your actual point behind a picture everyone loves and you will .... win fake internet points?

1

I think you deserve credit for finding a humorous, joyful way to make your point, instead of being obnoxious about it. I don’t even want to imagine what this post (and the accompanying comments) would be like on The Site That Shall Not Be Named.

0
lemmy.world

For all we know, in that moment Elon was standing on some dirt, making him the wealthiest person on lower-case earth.

57
sh.itjust.works

Exactly. So if we want to be pedants, earth or Earth would be fine here. Even if he's in a building, that building is still on the soil. Even if he's flying in an airplane, that airplane is supported by air, which it itself supported by earth. The only way you can't be "on earth" is if you're in space and/or in freefall. And Musk is too much of a coward to climb aboard one of his own rockets.

10

not “on the grass”
“on grass”
then you’re too high to be on earth

2

My dictionary says it's lowercase. I've only ever seen it in lowercase, unless you're taking about it in the astronomical sense (e.g. "the planet Earth").

See the first entry here. "On earth" is an idiom, and "earth" starts with a lowercase E.

21

It was an expensive victory. Dems shelled out a total of $40,000,000 on it. With musky, the repubs spent about $50,000,000.

17

Um ackshully, can you name a person wealthier than Elon Musk that’s ever stood on dirt, loam, soil, silt, or clay?

Checkmate atheists

10
teftreply
lemmy.world

Mansa Musa of Mali. His wealth was in the trillions. He basically showed up in Cairo with a bunch of his buddies in tow and spent so much and so lavishly, including just handing out gold to everyone, that he wrecked Egypt's economy for a decade. He owned something like half the world gold reserves at the time.

7

That's kind of a myth. Musa and the Mali empire were certainly wealthy for the time but you can't really compare an emperor in the 14th century with a modern oligarch.

Musa liked to boast about his wealth at every opportunity. Like, he would tell people that gold grows like a plant in Mali while he threw gold bars at them. And all the reports of his immense wealth come from the people he encountered on his pilgrimage.

The amount of gold he brought (18 tons!) would be worth about $1.5B today. That was likely all of the gold the empire had collected during his reign. And it wasn't technically his, it belonged to the empire.

The price of gold in Egypt dropped by about 15%, which was a lot but well within normal fluctuations. He also ran out of gold on the return trip and had to beg for loans which he never repaid.

9

i am glad a more liberal judge was elected to the supreme court, but she was backed by the democratic party. this is not a grassroots movement, its backed by an extremely rich party committee. this wasnt a david v goliath.

3