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Re: Reporter style writing versus technical writing -- GRAMMATICAL QUESTION

Subject: Re: Reporter style writing versus technical writing -- GRAMMATICAL QUESTION
From: "Peter Neilson" <neilson -at- windstream -dot- net>
To: techwr-l -at- lists -dot- techwr-l -dot- com
Date: Thu, 27 Sep 2012 07:03:52 -0400

On Thu, 27 Sep 2012 04:21:19 -0400, Debbie Hemstreet <D_Hemstreet -at- rambam -dot- health -dot- gov -dot- il> wrote:

In a world where people want a minimum of words, why on earth would anyone use

Past Perfect Simple Tense: The families have been using...

Instead of

Past Simple Tense: The families used...

Throughout an entire article.

In my experience the misuse of the continual (or "progressive") form of verbs is associated with ESL speakers who have avoided learning the (admittedly complicated) forms of the irregular verbs. They discover that mastery of only the verbs "to be" and "to have" allows production of copy that will pass a naive check for grammatical correctness.

Fails grammar check:
"I bringed him the book that he won't yesterday."

Passes grammar check:
"I was bringing him the book that he had been wanting yesterday."

Perhaps somewhere in academia there is a group of MLA-inspired people who are trying to overthrow the irregular verbs, and are teaching the crap you saw as a new paradigm. Hold on a moment while I look...

[sounds of rumbling through Google] [more fruitless rumbling] [rumble, rumble, rumble]

Nope. I only find a few complaints that some such conspiracy might exist.

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Reporter style writing versus technical writing -- GRAMMATICAL QUESTION: From: Debbie Hemstreet

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