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Grammar in the Forum's subtitle

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indeedwrestling
Considering that there are new rules about poster's writing skills, shouldn't we fix the "What is your favourite book or writer?" subtitle on this forum?

It should be "who is your favo(u)rite writer?".
althalus
If the server and site had been Brittish and run by Britts, then sure enough.

But since the server is in the States and at least partially run by Americans, they spell it accordingly. Wink
indeedwrestling
I was more concerned with the fact that "what is your favourite writer?" doesn't make sense. It should be "who".
Traveller
indeedwrestling wrote:
Considering that there are new rules about poster's writing skills, shouldn't we fix the "What is your favourite book or writer?" subtitle on this forum?

It should be "who is your favo(u)rite writer?".
  1. Although it sounds awkward, and could be written better, there is nothing wrong with "What is your favourite book or writer?" since "what" is closer to "book" than it is to "writer," and the correctness of such constructs is usually based upon proximity.
  2. "Favourite" is standard in England and Australia. "Favorite" is standard in the U.S. "Favo(u)rite" is substandard and would be acceptable to place emphasis upon the spelling variations, but not in normal usage.
  3. "...rules about a poster's writing skills..." or "...rules about posters' writing skills..." would be correct. "...rules about poster's writing skills..." is not. The bold letters were added for emphasis, but the normal usage would not include such emphasis.


althalus wrote:
But since the server is in the States and at least partially run by Americans, they spell it accordingly. Wink
  1. Although it is not unusual, starting a sentence with a conjunction is considered substandard.
  2. If the conjunction "But" is allowed to remain, proper punctuation would require following it with a comma: "But, since..."
  3. Regardless of the location of the server, the author of the post may be from elsewhere. Thus, "favourite" and "favorite" are equally acceptable, since each is correct. Something like "faverit," on the other hand, would only be acceptable from someone for whom English is not a primary language.


indeedwrestling wrote:
I was more concerned with the fact that "what is your favourite writer?" doesn't make sense. It should be "who".
That would be correct if there were no other components to the sentence. Since it contains a noun phrase consisting of two nouns joined by a conjunction, and the first of those nouns does match with "what" properly, it remains a correct, though awkward, usage.
indeedwrestling
Traveller wrote:

[*]"Favourite" is standard in England and Australia. "Favorite" is standard in the U.S. "Favo(u)rite" is substandard and would be acceptable to place emphasis upon the spelling variations, but not in normal usage.


I'm sorry. I was unclear. I was never suggesting that it actually be changed to "favo(u)rite". I'm from America so I would spell it "favorite". Meanwhile, I realized that it had been spelled "favourite" originally, so I was just trying to emphasize that it would be one spelling or the other.
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