Worst Gaga Lyric?

[Togekiss 2,519]

On 4/29/2024 at 9:43 AM, Ladle Ghoulash said:

Nah, shifting tense without good reason is pretty clearly bad grammar lolol 

Don’t make me break out my linguistics degree

[Ladle Ghoulash 23,651]

16 minutes ago, Togekiss said:

Don’t make me break out my linguistics degree

Babe, I’m an English tutor LOL There are cases where it’s potentially rhetorically justifiable, but as a pretty basic rule of thumb, it’s a no-no. How would you rhetorically justify jumping from present to past in this lyric? Honest question 

[POPANEINONEONE 280]

22 hours ago, Nathaniel Arven said:

'i'm a gypsy'

 

no you're not.

Are you hating on gypsy? The Police is coming for ü

[Guest]

13 hours ago, POPANEINONEONE said:

Are you hating on gypsy? The Police is coming for ü

hmmm low key but not for that reason actually... I just wanted to make a joke about funny/campy lyrics in a facetious way but i made it look more like an incel joke than a drag queen one. 

[Togekiss 2,519]

On 5/1/2024 at 5:15 PM, Ladle Ghoulash said:

Babe, I’m an English tutor LOL There are cases where it’s potentially rhetorically justifiable, but as a pretty basic rule of thumb, it’s a no-no. How would you rhetorically justify jumping from present to past in this lyric? Honest question 

“I want to dance but he took me home instead.”

The constituents are in order. Verbs agree with their subjects. It’s a naturally occurring utterance in the English language.

The guideline about not changing cases in writing is about stylistic and pragmatic continuity in prescriptive contexts like academic writing. For example if describing an experiment, “The subjects are asked to taste a sample. They were then asked to describe what they tasted” would be awkward or perhaps introduce ambiguities, but there is no violation of grammatical structure. The working parts fit together just fine.

All of that said, if you are a tutor of English for academic/creative use, stylistic rules are useful in the right context. It’s just not necessarily about what is grammatical.

 

[Ladle Ghoulash 23,651]

1 hour ago, Togekiss said:

“I want to dance but he took me home instead.”

The constituents are in order. Verbs agree with their subjects. It’s a naturally occurring utterance in the English language.

The guideline about not changing cases in writing is about stylistic and pragmatic continuity in prescriptive contexts like academic writing. For example if describing an experiment, “The subjects are asked to taste a sample. They were then asked to describe what they tasted” would be awkward or perhaps introduce ambiguities, but there is no violation of grammatical structure. The working parts fit together just fine.

All of that said, if you are a tutor of English for academic/creative use, stylistic rules are useful in the right context. It’s just not necessarily about what is grammatical.

 

Eh, it’s pretty standard grammar to ensure that, in a retelling of a past event, all of the verb tenses indicate that the event occurred in the past. I don’t really think there’s a stylistic justification for the different verb tenses either, so the idea that non-academic writing doesn’t follow prescriptive rules is a bit of a cop out, but we’ll agree to disagree here. 

[rafaelgherardi 980]

Hold My Hand bothers me a bit because it sounds like a poor rhyme in this part of the chorus:

'But don't you let go of my HAND
You can cry every last tear
I won't leave til I UNDERSTAND
Promise me, just hold my HAND'

but I love the song anyway haha