I have been looking into the origins of the not ending sentences with prepositions, not splitting infinitives, and the that-which/restrictive-nonrestrictive rules, and I was wondering. What do you all consider the top ten prescriptivist rules in English. You do not have to agree or disagree with them, which are the one you run across the most in the wild?

Can I even think of ten? Your three top me out.

I nominate tautology as no. 1

http://onelook.com/?loc=rescb&refclue=delee%20unnecessary%20words&w=tautology

We need 6 more

not ending sentences with prepositions -
"What are you thinking of?" "What are you aiming for?" Are these wrong?

As referenced by you link, tautology can be used as a rhetorical device - certainly not false.

There are those who would say that they are wrong and would expect you to say "Of what are you thinking?" "For what are you aiming?"

"What are you thinking of?" "What are you aiming for?" Are these wrong?

Not as far as I and most others who speak and write English are concerned, but starting with Dryden, there has been a vocal minority who assert without evidence that those sentences are solecisms. (NB, I am not collecting these wrongheaded rulelets for some prescriptivist nosegay, I just want to catalog the ones still extant.)

here are a couple of nominees:
4) The notion that none must have a singular verb

5) A sentence may not begin with And (or But?)

ws, tautology might be the wrong word. I am thinking of all unnecessary words, phrases, elucidations, etc. Circumlocutions too. Stuff like that

Different from/than/to, not to mention nor.

They as singular pronoun.

And why don't those who pule and micturate about using they as a singular pronoun also pule and micturate about you as a singular pronoun. And in the nominative case no less!

what he said!!!

which are the one you run across the most in the wild?

Don't know if this fits the bill but Kiwispeak is full of double split infintive negatives.

Yeah Nah, too bloody right mate! It was definitely game of Two halves for sure eh?

Kiwispeak is full of double split infinitive negatives.

But the question is, do Kiwi peevologists deprecate such locutions?

do Kiwi peevologists deprecate such locutions?

Well,generally no. But outsiders may perceive it as being funny.
Culture and language eh?

Umm. Onliest negative I see in here is "Nah" and I don't see any infinitives. Was this sposed to be an example of double split infinitive negatives?

Included under unnecessary expressions are phrases such as "In my opinion", "but I think that....", "However in my own experience....", "It seems apparent to me that...." etc etc

..since if it weren't your opinion you wouldn't assert it

That's my opinion

Onliest negative I see in here is "Nah" and I don't see any infinitives.

'Too right' is the common saying the 'bloody' is added for emphasis.

Was this sposed to be an example of double split infinitive negatives?

Nah. I was trying too hard to be smart.

BTW, re which/that, I have been reading Jonathan Swift's Proposal for Correcting, Improving, and Ascertaining the English Tongue. with the aim of seeing how he handles which/that with respect to restrictive clauses. He has a couple of restrictive clauses that he introduces with that but the vast majority he introduces with which.

Dale, I am not sure what prescriptivist rule about these phrases you are referring too. the word tautalogy seems to be a descriptor rather than a rule.

Not only that, but you can assert it if it's more than your opinion or just something you think. You may know it as an established fact. As for noting that your experience differs from others is also not a tautology. You would be remiss in claiming something as an established fact if it is only your opinion, something you think, or merely what you have yourself experienced.

Not that there's anything wrong with tautologies.

Fal I guess while you would concur that in my own defense I did admit "tautology" might not conceivably be the right word, I must assert though with the most profound reservations as a matter of conjecture with which possibly few would disagree, except sometimes,

"You would be remiss in claiming something as an established fact if it is only your opinion, something you think, or merely what you have yourself experienced."

Fal I somewhat hesitatingly, I believe most might argue, thank you, though to some extent I feel compelled to in effect somewhat totally disagree. I would maintain with only personal presentiments there may be some special conditions in which you might contend to my satisfaction a qualifier possibly to be be appropriate but in my opinion, in general they're unnecessary except conceivably sometimes when the opposite tack is apparently called for, it seems to me, despite some possible ingemination, you must agree

Obviously to most of us of course it would be remiss under certain specific conditions to maintain "It is an established fact that Obama doesn't believe in God" though on the other hand in my estimation it would of course be all right to say, "Obviously he is lying," I think many might assert if properly approached under the right circumstances

But getting back to iteracy (if that's the right word) another of my pet peeves is the redundancy in expressions like "lift up" or "slash down" although I suppose you could credibly disagree, or so it might appear, at least in my own way of looking at things, wouldn't you say

...though I opine, with your permission, somewhat querulously to be sure, at least in the way a prescriptivist considers the proposition, that although you might not accord in toto, that many if not most participants might if asked endorse the elimination of much unnecessary verbiage

The unnecessary verbiage may be annoying but there is no concise rule about it that I know.

yes, it certainly does seem to be annoying. furthermoreover, and in the second place, it doesn't seem to fit, and detracts from, what zmjezhd is looking for?! (zmj, how about a summary of what you've got out of this so far, if anything..)

I couldn't fail to disagree with you less.

how about a summary of what you've got out of this so far, if anything

Sure.

1. Not splitting infinitives.
2. Not ending sentences with a preposition.
3. Not starting a sentence with a conjunction.
4. Not using they as a singular non-gender-specific pronoun.
5. Eschewing the passive voice.
6. Eschewing tautology or redundancy.
7a. Not verbing nouns.
7b. Not nouning verbs.
8. Not using decimate with the sense of destroy.
9. Not using none or all of with the plural form of verbs.
10. The that-which rule.
11. Not using modifiers with unique.

They fall into a couple of broad categories:

a. Usage preferences mis-categorized as grammatical rules.
b. Eschewing polysemy in lexical items.

[Added some I forgot about earlier.]

that/which would give you ten, or have you dropped that?

that/which would give you ten, or have you dropped that?

Yes, I added that and the unqualified unique ukase, too.

Here's a listing up with which I cannot put

You will note that if you un-pied-pipe the "up with" you will get Here's a listing which I cannot put up with that violates the which/that rule.

if you un-pied-pipe the "up with"

Pied-piping was one of the many linguistic neologisms coined by the John R Ross (link).

o avoid adjectives and adverbs
o avoid fancy words(!)
o [and for daleh, and Faldo too; see #6 above] avoid needless words

give White some credit though, for (in his added chapter, An Approach to Style) relaxing some strictures such as those against split-infinitives and prepositional endings.

What a great thread! I can't think of any, though I have wracked my brain. Will post if I come up with one. Hmm--maybe the rule about using among or between; but that's prolly too weak to be a top-tenner.

But there might be a whole class of rules that have their seeds in the old dual vs. plural numbers.

old dual vs. plural numbers

Ah, yes. The between or among nonsense. And, isn't there something about couple, few, and several?

I'm also thinking of things like "May the best man win" when there's only two guys competing.

that's one I've never heard *anyone complain about.

that's one I've never heard *anyone complain about

Oh, I have. Thanks for the nudge in the noggin, Faldo.

i have not heard this but is the complaint alleging that it should be "better" not "best"?

Yep. It's maybe not all that common but it does pop up from time to time. I like lumping it with other cases of dual/plural agreement. The are other cases of complaining about use of the superlative when the comparative is considered more appropriate.

So, under which issue does "there are a lot" fall?

When you get these all assembled and dissected are you going to put the bloody remains on your flying words blog?

There's a problem with this? Presumably, the sentence goes on from there, e.g., "there are a lot of dingie-hoozies ..." If you're talking about the lot then, yeah, it should be "there is a lot ..." but if you're talking about the dingie-hoozies "there are a lot ..." is surely correct.

When you get these all assembled and dissected are you going to put the bloody remains on your flying words blog?

Actually I am toying with putting them in book form.

Will it be a flying book?

Will it be a flying book?

I doubt that they will be flying off the shelves.

[Fixed typo.]

I guess I'm really stupid, then, and need this explained to me. I don't understand how "there are a lot of dingie-hoozies" is correct, but "there are a group of dingie-hoozies" is wrong, unless, of course, it is correct. The following are all correct, then, although they sound wrong to me:

There are a box of dingie-hoozies.
There are a roomful of dingie-hoozies.
There are a crapload of dingie-hoozies.
There are a quantity of dingie-hoozies.

dingie-hoozies Definition, please!

I would venture to guess that they have nothing at all to do with goofaglarbians.

OK. If by "a lot" you mean, say, seven or more, then it's the dingie-hoozies you're talking about and they're plural. If there is a lot of dingie-hoozies in amongst the Rodin sculptures, Monet paintings, and stuffed fantods up for auction at Sotheby's then it is a single unit and it would be "there is a lot of dingie-hoozies."

My ear tells me, in your examples:



In this case it is the box that we're talking about and it happens to contain dingie-hoozies. That's just my ear, mind.




This one is a little more questionable. My ear hears "There is a roomful ...". I think it's a matter of "box" and "roomful" not being really number-type terms.



I think this one could go either way. It's complicated by the fact that "there's" is becoming the default construction whether the complement is singular or plural. This is partly because it's easier to say "there's" than it is to say "there're" and partly because there seems to be a tendency for this syntactic construction to be singular, at least in Indo-European languages. Compare German es gibt, Spanish hay¹, and French il-y-a².

This whole argument also holds for your last example:


1. As I remember, the Spanish hay derives from the 3rd person singular ha of the verb haber, 'to have'. I forget where the y comes from.

2. In retrospect, I'm thinking that the question about the 'there is/there are' rule might boil down to concern about this drift in present day English.

PS

To Jackie.

Dingle-hoozies are fantods with the stuffing taken out of them.

Edit: To twosleepy:

Nothing stupid about it. English grammar is not a simple concept and some aspects are fairly controversial. See Pullum and Huddleston, Cambridge Grammar of the English Language on the subject of prepositions. They make, IMNSHO, a hoorah's nest out of the definition of prepositions. Somewhere I have a link to, I think it's Google Books's link to the appropriate section of CGEL with their definition of preposition. Right now, I don't have the time to find it.