Gun rag patois

[Perd Hapley]

I've a question about gun magazines, and I think we've some members with gun-writing experience. I'm reading a Mark Keefe, IV article called The Easy Road, in the latest 'Murican Rifleman, and he started two sentences (so far) with "too."

"Too, the safety levers were very easy to press..."

I've never seen "too," in place of "also," outside of a gun magazine. I first noticed it years ago, and it pops up from time to time. Is this just a Mark Keefe thing? Or is it a gun writer thing? Anyone else noticed this?

[Hawkmoon]

I haven't ever seen it, even in "gun" rags. I suppose it's not completely wrong in a very technical sense, but IMHO it's quite wrong from a stylistic perspective.

[Perd Hapley]

I haven't ever seen it, even in "gun" rags. I suppose it's not completely wrong in a very technical sense, but IMHO it's quite wrong from a stylistic perspective.

I agree. Too, it makes me wanna slap a cracka'.

[zahc]

This is old practice, at least decades, but that doesn't make it less annoying.

[Hawkmoon]

This is old practice, at least decades, but that doesn't make it less annoying.

  I'm decades old, and I have never seen that particular usage. What I have seen (rarely) is opening a sentence with "Then too, ...", which is grammatically correct but a style I consider to be British rather than American.

[230RN]

I'd just let the matter lay there.

[Ben]

I'm decades old, and I have never seen that particular usage.

Thou art a whippersnapper.

https://stancarey.wordpress.com/2011/12/01/too-its-a-strange-usage/

a long and untroubled history from OE until the 17C. […] at which point it became rare or obsolete, only to be revived in the 20C., chiefly in AmE.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Recency_illusion

[K Frame]

Too is, and has been for a long time, a synonym for also.

Common association

Sent from my SM-G960U using Tapatalk

[230RN]

There ya go.  Stick to your gonnes, Mike.

[freakazoid]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Recency_illusion

I get the feeling that whoever wrote that is just trying to excuse poor language usage.

"Singular they": the use of they, them, or their to reference a singular antecedent without specific gender, as in someone said they liked the play. Although this usage is often cited as a modern invention, it is quite old.[3] The usage is found, for example, in Shakespeare.[4]

This is the Shakespeare reference,

There's not a man I meet but doth salute me / As if I were their well-acquainted friend

That's not referencing the singular "man" it is being used to reference everybody who he meets; more than one person.

[Hawkmoon]

I'd just let the matter lay there.

Grammar check: As used in your sentence, the correct verb is "lie," not "lay."



[Did I pass the pop quiz? That was a test, right?]

[Hawkmoon]

Thou art a whippersnapper.

https://stancarey.wordpress.com/2011/12/01/too-its-a-strange-usage/

The American Heritage Dictionary (4th edition) says it ‘cannot be called incorrect, but some critics consider it awkward’. The Columbia Guide to Standard American English says it’s ‘rather stiff when compared with besides, moreover, also, and the like’.

I do not recognize the American Heritage Dictionary (4th edition, or any other edition), and consequently I do not accept their opinion that it cannot be called incorrect. I say it's incorrect, and they can't tell me I don't have a right to say that.

So there. 

Burchfield quotes several examples, including one from the New Yorker: ‘But, too, he was a charmer.’ But is this usage a charmer? It’s certainly not wrong, but it sounds slightly strange to my ears, probably because I encounter it so rarely.

There's nothing quite like citing an example of something different to prove your point ...

[Ben]

I say it's incorrect, and they can't tell me I don't have a right to say that.

So there.  

That just means that everything is correct and everything is incorrect, because everyone is right and everyone is wrong.  

[230RN]

Quote from: 230RN on Today at 07:10:54 AM

I'd just let the matter lay there.

Grammar check: As used in your sentence, the correct verb is "lie," not "lay."

[Did I pass the pop quiz? That was a test, right?]

Right.  Meant as a joke, though, not really a "test."

That just means that everything is correct and everything is incorrect, because everyone is right and everyone is wrong.  

I pointed that out here several times: that with the blurring of definitions due to misuse on the un-edited and un-proofread 'net by uneducated dolts, soon every word will mean every other word, leading downhill to a language of mere grunts.

Which is how language got started in the first place.

We will have come "full circle." Or, in other words,  "Ugh oombagwa."

Terry, 230RN

[Hawkmoon]

That just means that everything is correct and everything is incorrect, because everyone is right and everyone is wrong.  

Didn't the white rabbit tell us that?

[brimic]

At least he didn't say 'Thutty-Thutty', because that level of fuddspeak is like teeth scratching across a chalkboard.