WTF grammar
We need a new term. Prescriptive grammar says 'thou shalt not say (things that meet conditions) XYZ'. Descriptive grammar says 'love the vernacular, and say what you like'. But what do we call it when you're taken grammatically aback by something you hear or read, and then try to figure out what the problem was?
This process is somewhat prescriptive, in that it starts with a perceived violation of internalized norms (what Geoff Pullum and Barbara Scholz call correctness conditions). But it's also rather descriptive, in that you try to understand the problem by means of a systematic investigation of relevant patterns of usage. So how about reactive grammar? Or more informally, WTF grammar?
Case in point: Eric Bakovic's reaction to a sentence in an old Mac OS X manual.
Unlike Snow Leopard - Mac OS 10.6 - the new 10.7 Lion release breaks a lot of old software. The Storage Bits take 'Thou shalt not upgrade until 6 months after release' is the 11th Commandment. Aug 26, 2002 And most of all, thou shalt upgrade to Mac OS 10.2 when it comes out. Advertisement: Best of luck with your switch. Given a little more time to work out the kinks, I think you'll not regret it.
If you have an older Mac and upgraded the processor, don't expect it to work or support from Apple.
Eric's reaction: 'It's just bad.' He has a story to tell about why it's bad, but his badness reaction comes first, and his explanation comes second.
And sometimes the explanation phase turns out to be remarkably difficult.
Back last summer, Eric had another one of those WTF moments when he read this sentence about resistentialism:
Here, at last, was a word for the rug that quietly curls up so it can snag your toe, the sock gone AWOL from the dryer, the slippery piece of toast that always hits the floor jelly side down.
This hit Eric with an image of the writer experimentally dropping the same bit of breakfast over and over again, though it's clear that we're supposed to generalize over encounters with many different instances of jelly-clad toast. Eric analyzed the problem as 'the use of the word always, universally quantifying over the predicate of the relative clause (hits the floor jelly side down) that in turn modifies a singular definite noun phrase (the slippery piece of toast)'.
David Beaver suggested a different analysis: 'The problem is simply that relative clauses, as has often been observed, are what we term scope islands'.
I in turn objected to David's story, pointing out examples like
(link) Their Barbera is a fun and fruity wine that always pleases us..
(link) My mother used to make a fantastic beef stew that always tasted better the next day.
(link) My mother used to make a fantastic beef stew that always tasted better the next day.
David responded with an account in terms of Carlson's distinction between different types of generic sentences, 'only some of which involve reference to kinds', suggesting that 'piece of' resists being kind denoting'. (If this isn't completely clear to you, that's the point -- it's high semantic wonkery, and if David's account is correct, you'll need quite a bit of background to understand what's really going on here.)
This morning, Gabriel Nivasch wrote to me with a different proposed explanation:
Regarding your post on the toast falling with the jelly side down:
There is a difference between 'food', 'wine', and 'seafood' on one hand, and a 'toast' on the other. The former are non-countable nouns, and the latter is a countable noun. Therefore, you can say
![Thou shalt not mac os 11 Thou shalt not mac os 11](https://amin-ahmadi.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/12/picture_stamperxcf1.png)
'food that always satisfies'
because each time it is a different piece of food that is being eaten, yet they're all placed together under the word 'food'. The same applies to'wine' and 'seafood'.
On the other hand, if you say
'a piece of toast that always falls'
it seems to say that the *same* piece of toast is falling one time after the other, so it sounds a little weird.
Thou Shalt Not Mac Os 11
One problem up front is that toast isn't all that countable -- we usually say 'Do you want some toast?' or 'Do you want a piece of toast?', not '*Do you want a toast?'
Anyhow, I don't think that Eric's original WTF reaction was caused by 'the piece of toast' being a count-noun kind of expression. Consider this quote from the brochure for the 1968 Renault 1100:
This is the car that's always been DIFFERENT and for 1968 it's differenter!
This quantifies over generic experiences with cars in different Renault model-years, not over experiences with any specific vehicle -- but car is certainly a count noun.
Thou Shalt Not Kill Verses
The best story still seems to be David Beaver's observation that piece of 'resists being kind denoting'. This is not entirely unconnected with the mass/count distinction, since piece of was motivated in the original sentence in order to countify toast, so to speak. However, I'm still not sure that this story is the right one.
So eight months and five analysts later, we've still got Eric's bizarreness reaction -- which most but not all people seem to agree with -- without any clear prescription about how to write so as to avoid it. This situation is not at all typical, because most grammatical WTFs have a simple explanation, easily accessible to someone with linguistic training. Nevertheless, this case emphasizes the fact that explicit grammatical principles are post hoc explanations of the phenomenology of linguistic experience. Norma Loquendi rules.
Posted by Mark Liberman at March 8, 2005 08:45 AMIt began years ago, though I’m uncertain as to exactly when—perhaps it was System 6, or maybe System 7. It started innocently enough, of course, with a simple observation: “Hey, hold down the Option key, and some of the menu items do different things!” At the time, not many people took notice; some even thought it was “cool” or “rad,” to use the lingo of the day. But in reality, it was neither of those things.
Instead, it was the beginning of the end of one of the Mac’s longest-lived rules for the GUI: thou shalt not hide menu items from the user. This is a very important convention, for it means that users always know where to look to make a program do something: in the menu bar. If you can’t see the command you want in the menu bar, then it simply doesn’t exist. Sadly, OS X 10.5 is the worst-yet violator of this rule, as you’ll soon see. But first, a bit more on how Mac programs are supposed to be designed.
Publicly, at least, Apple still believes in the “show everything” rule, as the company states it in its Human Interface Guidelines (HIGs). This document contains all the rules that help make it so easy to jump from one Mac program to another—by following the rules, all programs operate in a similar manner. The HIGs have long served as the gold standard of Mac application design: if you develop a program for the Mac, you’re expected to follow the HIGs.
That is, unless you’re Apple, in which case, you can make your own rules.
![Thou shalt not mac os catalina Thou shalt not mac os catalina](https://i1.wp.com/www.appletips.nl/wp-content/uploads/2009/08/Screencapture-2011-03-30-om-19.56.13.png?resize=550%2C265&ssl=1)
Contextual menus
First, consider that near-ubiquitous OS X menu, the contextual menu. That’s the one that appears when you Control-Click on something in the Finder or an application. Here’s what the HIGs have to say about contextual menus:
Always ensure that contextual menu items are also available as menu commands. A contextual menu is hidden by default and a user might not know it exists, so it should never be the only way to access a command.
- iTunes music: Want to reset the play count for a song? You’ll find that option only in the song’s contextual menu. Same thing if you want to reset the skip count, play the song next in party shuffle, add it to party shuffle, add it to or view it in a playlist, or apply a sort field. These commands are only found in the contextual menu as seen at right. They do not exist anywhere else within iTunes.
- iTunes TV shows: Want the description for a TV program? Or to mark a show as new or not new? You got it—you’ll find those commands only in the contextual menus.
- Safari: If you’re viewing a page with frames, such as apple-history.com, you’ll find a few frame-related options for opening and printing frames that don’t exist anywhere else.
You might think hiding options in a contextual menu is a good way to handle advanced features for “power users,” but here’s what Apple has to say on that subject:
In particular, you should not use a contextual menu as the only way to access an advanced or power-user feature.
Not enough? Jump over to the Print & Fax System Preferences panel, and Control-Click on any printer. One of the two options you’ll see is Reset Printing System—and again, this is the only spot you’ll find this command.
Hiding menu commands like this is frustrating for users of all levels. There are two major problems as I see them. The first is that the user has no indication as to which objects may or may not have a contextual menu associated with them, so they’re forced to Control-Click all over the place to find hidden commands. The second problem, as evidenced by my iTunes issue, is that the user is then forced to remember a unique location for the command they used. Instead of remembering that Reset Play Count is in the (for instance) Song menu, you have to remember both that it’s a contextual menu, and which item must be control-clicked (i.e. the song) in order for that menu to appear.
Dock menus
Dock menus are, in a way, like contextual menus. They appear when you click and hold (or Control-Click) on an item in the dock. As with contextual menus, Apple again recommends against hiding commands in Dock menus:
Any command you add to the Dock menu should also be available in your application’s pull-down menus. Application-specific items appear above the standard Dock menu items.
So what do we get in OS X 10.5? Time Machine, whose dock icon contains the Browse Other Time Machine Disks command. This command cannot be found anywhere else—not in Time Machine’s preferences, nor within the actual application. So I’m forced to keep the Time Machine icon in my dock, just for those times when I want to browse a backup from another machine.
The Action icon
Date with a werewolf mac os. One recent trend in OS X that I find particularly troubling from a GUI perspective is the emergence of the Action button—that’s the one that looks like a gear. It’s found in many spots in OS X, and with a seemingly different purpose in every spot.
Consider the Finder, where the Action button usually replicates the contents of the contextual menu—for many people, it’s simply easier to click the button than it is to Control-Click and use the contextual menu. I don’t really have a problem with that. Where the problems start is when the Action button takes on commands that aren’t available elsewhere.
In OS X 10.5, you’ll find such issues in two spots. First, if you run a saved search and want to edit the criteria used, it’s seemingly not possible—the criteria don’t show, and there aren’t any menu items (nor any contextual menus) that would seem to allow editing of the saved search. As you’ve guessed by now, you have to click the Action button, as that’s the only spot you’ll find the Show Search Criteria command.
The second trouble spot in OS X 10.5 is within Time Machine. If you want to delete a backup—or all versions of a backup—the Action button is again the only spot you’ll find those commands.
More generally, the other issue I have with the Action button is that it means so many different things in different programs. In iTunes and iPhoto, it creates a new smart list. In Mail, it can do that (smart mailboxes), but it also replicates some contextual and regular menu commands. It’s also the only home for the Show Account Info command. This command opens a useful summary window, showing all sorts of stats about the selected e-mail account. It’s quite useful, but if you’ve never used the Action button in Mail, you may never have seen it.
I say “may,” because Mail has a second GUI oddity with this command: it has a keyboard shortcut, even though that shortcut doesn’t appear in any menu anywhere within the program. Just press Command-I any time you want to see the Account Info window—just don’t go looking for this command in any menus.
Conclusion
Although I’m generally thrilled to be using OS X, and happy with the OS X 10.5 release, changes such as these indicate that the rules are changing, even if Apple hasn’t yet seen fit to change the printed version of the rules. With those changes, I’m afraid we’ll see more confusing user interfaces, with features that are even harder for the everyday user to find and use.
Consider in Leopard that I’m now forced to keep the Action icon on the toolbar—even though I never use it, except to open the search criteria for a saved search. Similarly, I have to keep Time Machine in the dock to get to its one command that I might want to use on occasion. And I need to memorize the various spots where hidden contextual menus exist—Accounts and Print & Fax in System Preferences—that provide features I may need to get to.
To some extent, of course, software is getting more complex and it just may not be possible to get every command into a menu, without making those menus unusably long. As long as there are rules about how to extend your commands to a non-menu environment, this could still work. For instance, if I knew that the Action button would always contain commands that didn’t exist on a menu, then I’d know to check it. But as things stand today, the “missing” commands can be hidden nearly anywhere, making for a very frustrating user experience.
Simply put, if Apple would do a better job at following its own rules, all users would benefit.