Posted: Mar 07, 2013 4:43 pm
Zwaarddijk wrote:Agrippina wrote:Also there are different styles appropriate to different occasions. When writing online, I for one, don't use the same language I use when writing an academic essay. Funnily enough, just yesterday, I spent the day editing essays for a student doing a third-year English course. Most of my editing was to correct her casual language. She literally (and I mean literally) wrote the essays the way she speaks: using colloquialisms, filler words, casual use of split infinitives and so on. When we speak we don't say for instance "the is the man to whom I shall be writing a letter!" We'd probably say "I'm going to write to that guy over there!" or "...that person you told me about." So, [sic] there is a distinct difference between the way we speak, the way we write conversational prose, and the way we lecture, or write formal dissertations.
Split infinitives probably are going to gain ground in academic language though, as it's pretty well recognized among people that it's an artificial rule with no actual historical basis in English grammar except that some 18th century grammarian disliked it and made a rule up.
In South African English, we don't use "shall" the way the British English do, in speech. We don't say "I shall pick you up at so and so." We say "I'll pick you up." Asked if we intend to do something, we say "of course I will" or "yes, I'll do it." We do use it in the question "shall I pick you up, or will you get there on your own?" So our kids, when they get to formal writing, they find the use of "shall" a little clumsy and have to have it spelled out to them.