Gun Grammar

[braceyourself07]

I am with the camp of saying "failure(s) to eject". Easiest thing to do is remove the modifying phrase and reduce the complexity of the statement... so you are left with "failure"--if you have had more than one, you've had "failures"... not "to ejects".

However, since we're being picky on grammar... isn't "to eject" an infinitive phrase, not a prepositional phrase?

Mike

 

[JohnBiltz]

I could care less about clip and magazine and all the rest. What gets me is people who insist a pistol is an automatic. I always want to ask what was the proper magazine capacity for a duel when its "pistols at dawn". In the military a gun is a crew served weapon, you don't call a rifle a gun, you don't call a pistol a gun. But the military is anal about a lot of things that don't really make sense, I know I was in for 20. Language evolves, people use slang, if you understand what is being said why be anal.

 

[ngnrd]

The biggest issue I have with firearm jargon is how everybody is looking for the best "accuracy" from their weapons. C'mon people, you can easily correct accuracy issues with the sight adjustments. What you are actually looking for is precision.

Precision: How repeatable a particular operation is.
Accuracy: How close the actual results are to the expected results.

If 10 shots through your hunting rifle prints a 0.5" group 4" low and 6" to the right at 100 yards, it's very precise but not very accurate. If it prints a 3" group centered on the bull, it's plenty accurate but a lot less precise.

 

[toivo]

However, since we're being picky on grammar... isn't "to eject" an infinitive phrase, not a prepositional phrase?

Yes, it is.

I'm going to the diner to eat.

"To the diner" is a prepositional phrase; "to eat" is an infinitive phrase. In my example, they're both functioning as adverbs. In "failure to eject," the infinitive phrase is functioning as an adjective that describes what kind of failure.

The key is to look at what follows the "to." If it's a noun (or noun phrase), you've got a prepositional phrase. If it's a verb, you've got an infinitive phrase.

Guess what I do for a living?

 

[Safjac]

I could care less about clip and magazine and all the rest. What gets me is people who insist a pistol is an automatic. I always want to ask what was the proper magazine capacity for a duel when its "pistols at dawn". In the military a gun is a crew served weapon, you don't call a rifle a gun, you don't call a pistol a gun. But the military is anal about a lot of things that don't really make sense, I know I was in for 20. Language evolves, people use slang, if you understand what is being said why be anal.

How about calling an "automatic" a revolver?

Yes, it is.

I'm going to the diner to eat.

"To the diner" is a prepositional phrase; "to eat" is an infinitive phrase. In my example, they're both functioning as adverbs. In "failure to eject," the infinitive phrase is functioning as an adjective that describes what kind of failure.

The key is to look at what follows the "to." If it's a noun (or noun phrase), you've got a prepositional phrase. If it's a verb, you've got an infinitive phrase.

Guess what I do for a living?

You drive a school bus?

 

[toivo]

How about calling an "automatic" a revolver?

Heh... I saw that on some "true crime" show on TV. The announcer is talking about how the woman killed her cop husband "with his own service revolver," and they're showing an evidence photo of a 1911.

 

[toivo]

You drive a school bus?

Close, very close...

 

[throdgrain]

SHOTTY.


People who call a shotgun a shotty drive me a bit mad And oddly enough just as many people do it on British shooting forums as they do on U.S ones, and we're supposed to be civilised

Calling a magazine a clip shows you have watched too much tv.

 

[youngda9]

Why do we conitnue to perpetuate the negative gun-goer stereotypes here. Stop being a nit picker for grammar. Everyone already knows that gun guys are know-it-all's that love to correct everyone and show everyone how smart they are. We don't need to go on and on here for all to see on the internet about it as well.

 

[MaterDei]

Why do we conitnue to perpetuate the negative gun-goer stereotypes here. Stop being a nit picker for grammar. Everyone already knows that gun guys are know-it-all's that love to correct everyone and show everyone how smart they are. We don't need to go on and on here for all to see on the internet about it as well.

youngda9, I totally agree with you. btw, you misspelled know-it-all's. Also, the word Internet when used as a noun should be capitalized.

I work for a company that is based in Great Britain. My PC has the British version of the English language installed as the dictionary. When I type words like color or organization I get the little red squiggly line indicating that I've misspelled the word. Even worse, it auto corrects words that I haven't misspelled, such as neighbor. This drives me nuts. I'm sure there is a way to change the default dictionary; I'm going to have to figure it out.

Sorry for the tangent.

My biggest pet peeve, I guess, would be the use of the non-word, alot.

 

[cambeul41]

Back to post 1.

so it looks like we, as gun owners, know how to speak english?

Capital E on English, thank you.

 

[Mp7]

...

This thread cracks me up.
There are so many basic mistakes made by people
in everyday language ... how can you expect them
to be better around firearms?

(I was the best in my senior year in English
during U.S Highschool. As a foreigner )

 

[Rodentman]

I am peeved by the use of words and expressions such as:

Like
Whatever
You know
You know what I'm saying
Heck of a play
Exaaaaaactly

Sometimes I feel that language has degenerated to the level of 3rd graders at the mall with their cell phones. I have told total strangers, as well as coworkers, to stop saying "like." I plan to continue doing so.

 

[shockwave]

Well, well, well. A thread on language here at the HR.

Yes, it's FTEs, but: failures to eject.

William Safire Orders Two Whoppers Junior.

Ha! Excellent. And correct - the cognate here is AGs, but: attorneys general.

Very simple question. The other one, on FTFs, I've always understood as "failure to fire." It covers "failure to feed," but also any other failure such that when you pull the trigger, the result is a click with no bang.

In actual speech, this doesn't come up very much because we in the gun-enthusiast community usually speak the acronyms and say "FTFs" and "FTEs" and don't explode them to their full versions.

 

[psyfly]

This is a great thread.

That was a complete sentence.

Wasn't it?

My wife is a writer and very picky about the way she chooses language.

I am a psychologist and I work hard to be really precise in what I print and say.

Often one or the other of us will turn and ask; "That was correct, wasn't it?".

English grammar is often extremely difficult to get right and I have yet to meet anyone who gets it right all the time.

I come here to learn and to share what little knowledge I've been able to gather.

Ain't it great that even my bad grammar can be fun?

Now let's do one on spelling .

Best,

Will

 

[Tinpig]

ordinance/ordnance



Clip/magazine isn't just about watching too much TV. A lot of old-timers who used a lot of firearms in WWII called magazines clips. The terminology hall monitors can correct them if they want to...I'm not going to.

Tinpig

 

[CraigC]

Why do we conitnue to perpetuate the negative gun-goer stereotypes here.

Here's another pet peeve of mine. People who think we should never have any type of heated discussion, for fear of what 'they' will think. Language and proper terminology are important, it's what separates us from apes of the third world. It's the folks who think "you know what I mean" is "good enough" that perpetuate our gradual decline into oblivion. Texting third graders indeed.


Someone brought up "shottie". It drives me nuts. All those cutesy little nicknames like Bushy, Remmy, Winnie (my favorite to hate, seriously, like Winnie the Pooh???), Mossie, Savy, Annie, ad nauseum. It makes grown men sound like a bunch of 12yr old girls.

 

[HGUNHNTR]

It torques me when folks are using the word "then" instead of "than"! As an example, "Its easier to use soft butter to spread "than"....." , instead of, "Its easier to use soft butter to spread "then"...", follow my meaning? Use the correct word here folks, its not that hard.

Right on 788ham! This error is in the latest CTD catalog that came to the house. Lazy grammar and spelling are often the result of lazy thinking. It is hard to take a post seriously that is full of errors or cliche's.

"Electrolytes, it's what plants crave."

 

[Tim the student]

People that refuse to acknowledge the difference between precision and accuracy.

If you want to use them interchangeably (as I often do too, since it is usually quite easy to make a precise rifle more accurate), I don't care.

But don't sit there and tell me they are the same thing.

Calling enbloc clips magazines gets me too. (Yes, it has happened to me. Better I guess that they call everything a magazine and be right most of the time, than vice versa I guess.)

 

[22-rimfire]

Remember there are detachable magazines as well as ones that are built into the rifle. Stripper clips are inserted into the magazine. I think. It gets confusing.

Tubular magazines are also fixed magazines.

The accuracy and precision wording is also something that gets totally mis-used.

Added: FFL... Federal Firearm License.... often used to mean FFL dealer; even more correct would be FFL'd dealer. To me they are not the same thing, but common usage here is "I bought the gun from a FFL."

 

[dirtyjim]

i guess I'm going to have to start using spell check and consult my dictionary then have my post proof-read by a professor before posting anything here.

threads like this are one of the reason i consider this forum to be a great source of entertainment but not much else.

 

[bigfische]

Think baseball; you call 100 RBIs 100 runS batted in.

 

[writerinmo]

As a starving author myself, allow me to voice my personal opinion on this matter. To the point, language is a constantly evolving subject. Words are formed and accepted by whomever it is that runs various "word usage" organizations within our society. All it takes for a word to receive a specific association is for society as a majority to use that word as such. If you pick up any dictionary you will find an abundance of words that have specific geographic locations where they have a certain meaning, in other words, you may be just as smart as where you are standing at any one particular moment.

If you think there are problems in using "they" and "they're", then don't even get involved in ''lay" and "lie"... how a word is used may be entirely up to one editor who has a particular fascination with some obscure rule of thumb that they hold near and dear.

Personally, how I speak would be dictated predominantly by the situation. If I had a pistol that was having problems and I was speaking to a gunsmith, I would attempt to be as exacting as possible, as in "I have been experiencing multiple failure-to-eject..." going on to give them as detailed a description as I could so that they would have that information at their hands in examining the weapon. If I was talking to a buddy over a beer, I might just say "This gun is pissin' me off, the dang thing jams up all the time," which would hardly be accurate if it only had a problem with a specific ammo and only sporadically.

A lot of us also adapt our manner of speaking according to the perceived general knowledge of the person/persons that we are addressing. There is a tendency to "dumb down" to the general intelligence of that person, or attempt to appear more articulate when dealing with someone whom we see as being more intelligent, or in a position of authority over us.

Basically it boils down to, do the people involved understand what the others are talking about? If the answer is yes, then mission accomplished, last time I checked no one was giving out report cards at this point!

 

[Robert Wilson]

I'm something of a stickler for proper grammar and terminology. I think everyone is familiar with the "magazine" vs. "clip" debate. But here's one that just came onto my radar screen: the plural of FTE.

I say a video the other day where the guy kept saying "failure-to-eject's." He was otherwise well-spoken, and he represented himself as something of a gun expert. I know it's written as "FTE's." But c'mon. When it's spoken, can we all agree that it's "failureS to eject," so it looks like we, as gun owners, know how to speak english?

BTW, the gun in question was a G23 with an extended slide release, and you could clearly see he was hitting the slide stop. So this wasn't even close to a FTE in the first place! This was possibly a user-induced FTF, at best! Good grief!

Anyone else with a pet peeve concerning gun grammar? Post 'em here!

I guess I'm an apostrophe Nazi. A word doesn't automatically get an apostrophe just because it ends with an "s".

For instance, "failure-to-eject's" and "FTE'S".

 

[John Wayne]

My pet language peeve is calling the slide stop, a slide release...even Beretta's 92, where you should be using it to release the slide, calls it a slide stop

9mmepiphany's statement perfectly exemplifies the ongoing debate between prescriptive and descriptive linguistics.

Prescriptive linguistics holds that there is a "correct" way to do something, and sets forth a set of rules that language ought to follow. Of course the "rules" are only as legitimate as the lexicographers that decided on (read: invented) them.

Descriptive linguistics deals with the way people actually use language. It is one thing to try and make language behave a certain way, but that ignores the fact that it is constantly evolving and changing based on the needs of its users. New words are added all the time, and old words are used in new ways. For hundreds of years, lexicographers tried to make English behaving according to the grammatical and syntactical rules of Latin, which simply does not work because English is a Germanic language, stemming from the Centum sect of the Proto-Indo-European family.

Now, bringing it back to firearms, and again referencing the sentence quoted above, calling it a "slide stop" is a prescriptive definition, based on what purists believe the device ought to be called. It ignores, however, that in function if it is being used to release the slide, the argument can be made that the device is a "slide release,'' because it is functioning as such. If you wanted to compromise, you might say that the device is a slide stop in form, but when used to release the slide, it becomes a slide release in function--as parts of speech may be different in form and function. A word can be a noun in form but function adjectivally, and so on.

Hope that clears things up