Probably a Dumb Question
 

I am a baseball umpire who is helping coach a collegiate softball team this season and I just had an NCAA rules question.

With two outs and a runner of first, can the batter-runner advance to first on a dropped third strike?

I know you can in baseball, but the wording the NCAA rulebook seemed a bit confusing to me. Thanks in advance for your help.

Yes. And yes, their wording here is a little "hinky"

hinky = syntactically and grammatically faulty

NCCA wording:

When with two outs or fewer than two outs and first base is unoccupied, the catcher fails to catch a third strike before the ball touches the ground.

Correct wording:

When with two outs, or with fewer than two outs and first base unoccupied, the catcher fails to catch a third strike before the ball touches the ground.

Amazing how powerful, useful and effective a single comma is.

In another 10 years punctuation will be obsolete in ordinary daily written communications. Just consider the last 10 years - email to IM to text messaging - and what it has done to accepted syntax, spelling, and grammar of the written word.

I won't be long before teaching such things in our schools will be as obsolete as teaching Latin is now.

Just consider the last 10 years - email to IM to text messaging

The father of one of my daughter's friends called the cell phone company to find out why his bill was outrageously high. Customer service explained that it was the text messages that had been sent on his daughter's line. When he pointed out that he had purchased the "media package" option that covered a monthly 1,200 text messages, they informed him that his daughter had sent 2,093.

I've also had to caution my own daughter about going over her 1,200 limit. (The girls are best friends; I'm sure many of the messages are to and from each other.)

In a 30-day month, 2,093 text messages is almost 70 a day. I haven't seen any of the messages, but I strongly suspect that these girls don't open the "character map" to insert a comma when formal English requires one.

I've seen them send text messages. They open the phone, hit the keys with incredible speed, and send the message, all within a few seconds.

I agree with Dakota regarding the proper use of punctuation. Nothing upsets me more than not using the correct punctuation (now watch me goof up..)

As for the "art of texting", my 18 year old daughter wants to look at the cell phone bill each month to see if she "beat last month". Her record is.....8,000 text messages. Thank god we have unlimited text on our plan. My daughter's response to the abundance of texts??? "Well, atleast we are always below on our "anytime minutes"; gee, I wonder why?!?!?!

Her record is.....8,000 text messages.

In one month?

If so, that's 266 a day. That's about every waking hour. She's got my daughter and her friend beat hands down.

That was during the summer, with no school and no job. Just sitting at home on the computer; must be nice. Almost as good as a "dog's life", except she has to make her own breakfast and lunch.

My DD hit 3,000 one month, and this was during the school year and cell phones were supposedly banned in classrooms. "Banned" was more like "keep it on silent and no one cares." We did reach an "understanding" after that, however.

I had a plan on my DD's phone that was unlimited texting to anyone on the same carrier, but "only" 500 per month to others. Of course, her best texting buddy is on another carrier. After two months of 600 billable texts, she went unlimited all (for another $10/month).

Yep, when we text, she waits for me, because I understand how important punctutation is to proper understanding. It can often save 3 extra explanatory texts to be clear with one. But, then, that doesn't help you break any texting records.

I think my school has the same policy as Dakota's ("don't hear, don't see: don't care") in most classrooms. It has been handy to relay "Practice Cancelled" messages. My DD can't seem to hear announcements in the last period (Band), so when her Coach sent an e-mail today cancelling this afternoon's scrimmage, I texted that to my DD so that she would know. And called my wife (who doesn't even do e-mail. Sigh.)

I understand that for school use, kids set the ringer at a high frequency that kids can hear but adults can't.

The dumbing down of America s nothing new and it isn't all cell phones and IMs.

College students submit papers with spelling and punctuation that would not be accepted for someone my age when in the 4th grade.

It is atrocious and it is basically colleges giving up on trying to force the students to do it right.

Before you all tell me about how wrong I am, I have talked to parents who have complained to their students professors and the most response received were shrugged shoulders. My wife's nephew used my laptop to put together a paper. I've seen better spelling from my grand daughter. His parents told me it was the norm. This was confirmed by his older sister who graduated the same big time university in WalMartland.

Anybody remember the old Saturday Night Live routine (Belushi/Akroyd days) with the government flunky explaining the proposed switch to a leaner, more efficient "metric alphabet"?

The entire alphabet had been reduced to the ten most needed letters, thereby eliminating the need for such redundant consonants as "c" and "k" and creating a universal vowel to replace "a, e, i, o, u".

I think one of the new letters was something like "ell-emm-enn-oh-pee".

We seem to be heading in that direction!

That's a crock, it isn't the job of post 12 ed to teach these things.
Getting hung up on speeling and punctuation, ; is soooooo yesteday. these kids commo just fine, it's you that draws the old timey barriers. :(

fitump56, at least fix your signature line. While drinking a????? two six packs a day. Dave

No, but putting a halt to perpetuating the problem by issuing passing grades is their job.

Have you ever interviewed a person for a public contact type of job only to find out their spelling and grammar skills are sub-high school level and you are looking at a diploma from an accredited university?

This is no different than the kid who cannot make change out of a dollar for a $.77 purchase without the register giving them the correct amount to pay out. And please don't tell me this is an exaggeration. I've been dealing with this type of college educated people for years. Simple 3rd grade math and you have an adult with a college diploma at a loss.

No, the general intelligence level of this country has been going downhill for a couple of decades now and our generation hasn't the courage to stop it.

Really? Tell that to the customer which just awarded a multimillion dollar contract to the competition because of the weak communication skills of your staff. Again, been there, done that.

Interesting that this topic started out about punctuation in a rule book written by the NCAA itself, not some sub-standard "graduate".

My grammar and punctuation are not perfect, but they are a lot better because my mother would not tolerate improper usage in our home.

Maybe we could start with not converting nouns to non-existent verbs (texted, emailed, faxed, texting) just to be lazy about "sent an e-mail ".

[/RANT]
back to softball

That would be my vote.

I can't do that, sir. You gave me a buck and the register says you owe me seventy seven bucks.

Decimal? What?

Sorry, that was my fault, going off topic.

But it always amazes me that no matter which rule set you call, there are grammatical errors everywhere! Happens in my job too, which is really frustrating. Some day, when I retire, I will sit on a beach (or my back porch, whichever is closer) and re-write a rule set or two. Then, after an hour, I will get a life and go out and call a few games.

When I got my 13 year old Daughter a cell phone, I had a plan that included 300 text messages a month. The first two weeks she had the phone, she had sent or received approx 800 tests!

When I told her of her limit, 300 per month, I said that's about 10 per day....

Her response..."Dad, you can't even get a good conversation in 10 texts!"

:eek: :eek:

Who cares about the rule books? These publications are meant to communicate a specific idea, not be published in someone's journal or submitted for grades.

Making the rule book grammatically correct would probably increase it's size by 50% and confuse more than help.

And a big part of this can be blamed on the government for several reasons. To begin with, the advent and popularity of standardized testing (which, incidentally are by no means standard)in most states to measure school and student performance, which also get tied into the monies that districts recieve, the promotion of educators, and in some cases whether or not those teachers will be allowed to maintain their certificates in that state. This of course, leads to teachers not really teaching, but spending the school year preparing the student for the test. While this does impart some information to the student, of course, it does not impart some of the more practical lessons and elements that were taught in the days of academic freedom.

Now, add to this the PC society that we live, which has created special ed programs, which initially were really good things. However, they have broadened the spectrum so much lately, that I fear one day every student in every public school will fit into some category of SPED. This, of course, leads to the modifications of the standardized tests, which renders them no longer standard, and in many cases skews the actual data that is release to the public.

If you want the type of education that you speak of for the next few generations, then start supporting a move away from standardized testing as a cure all measurement, and also support revising the programs mentioned above.

^ Oh...and never, ever, begin a sentence with "and." :D ^

I agree with your first thought and disagree with your second. The rules of language syntax and punctuation are in place to make communication clear, not to give the school marm a reason to rap the knuckles of little Johnny. Grammar is less important than syntax and punctuation (IMO) considering strictly clarity of communication. Poor grammar just gives an impression of illiteracy or laziness.

A rule book should be clearly written (punctuation, sentence structure, and syntax) in order to achieve its main objective - clear communication of the rules.

A rule book should use proper grammar to achieve a secondary objective - establish its authoritative position.

Who cares what grade it would get in 5th grade English class; but we should all care if it does not accomplish its primary purpose of clearly communicating the rules of the game.

A good editor would improve the ASA book. However, it is not THAT bad to begin with. And, many of the problems it does have are most likely the result of continued revision year after year.

BTW, the college grads that can't write started out as HS grads that couldn't write.

Who left elementary school and couldn't write.

Oh...and never, ever, begin a sentence with "and."

"And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters."

More recently:

"And the life of the ebony clock went out with that of the last of the gay.* And the flames of the tripods expired. And Darkness and Decay and the Red Death held illimitable dominion over all."

In defense of our elementary school teachers, although some of the "rules" they gave us weren't really formal rules, they were good advice for kids learning to write. Without the "don't begin with and" rule, kids tend to string short statements together with one and after the other.

I suspect that rewriting the ASA book for maximum clarity and correctness would not lengthen it much and might even shorten it slightly. I'd like to see something on the order of an annotated ASA book, like Jim Evans' effort with the OBR book. Not that I'm expecting one soon. An ASA rule book in Elizabethan English would be nice, too.

It is true that the King James bible reflects a somewhat different set of rules for English. For example, Jesus says, ". . . for their's [today, theirs] is the kingdom of heaven," and "Whom [today, who] do men say that I am?"

*In this old-fashioned usage, "joyous, happy, merry, lighthearted."

For verily I say unto you, Till the next convention, one jot or one tittle shall in no wise pass from the book.

Patrick Ewing?:confused:

Who left elementary school and couldn't write.

It wasn't a question. It was and addition to: Originally Posted by Dakota
BTW, the college grads that can't write started out as HS grads that couldn't write.

Agree. However, any ****ing idiot can get a HS diploma. Right or wrong, there is much more value associated with ANY collegiate diploma or certificate. It is my belief that at that level, the school and an extremely well-paid staff have a responsibility to insure the integrity of the diploma.

Look on teH bright sidE!

The season is upon us and you hobos can get on the field and come up with some interesting stuff to talk about!!

Wo0T!!1

Agreed, but they do not have the responsiblity to teach basics, nor would it be fair to the other students who already know the basics.

Public colleges and universities are arms of the same government that runs the secondary schools. They are all in on the scam.

I guarantee you, though, they are all experts on recycling and the cancerous growth on this planet called people and how we are all destroying the planet through global warming.

They are all in on the scam.

An Ivy League professor told me, "I cannot think of a bigger scam than $45,000 a year for a diploma from [I won't name his school, but if you've heard of hip-hop "artist" Cornel West and people-should-have-sex-with-animals Peter Singer, it's that one]."

In terms of government schools, Newark, New Jersey, spends $16,000 annually for each of the 44,720 "students" in its public schools—more than $200,000 for one student K through 12. For this investment, the Newark schools graduate several thousand illiterates annually.

New York City discovered that some of its teachers were putting in for phony overtime. How were they caught? The teachers had put in for hours on February 30, April 31, May 32, etc. (On the positive side, at least one person in NYC government was educated enough to recognize the erroneous dates.)

I guarantee you, though, they are all experts on recycling and the cancerous growth on this planet called people and how we are all destroying the planet through global warming.

Not to mention how toothpaste commercials oppress and exploit women and perpetuate our patriarchal system of institutionalized slavery (that's marriage to all you unenlightened).

No, that would be the job of the el-his.

What the real scam is that those diplomas are actually considered as a barometer of an individuals intelligence or ability to do a particular job. "And" all the real intelligent "business" persons buy into it, but not as a level of intelligence. They look for that piece of paper and think one thing, "possibly trainable".

Then again so are simians, canines, swines, cetaceans, etc.:eek:

They look for that piece of paper and think one thing, "possibly trainable".

One employer told me that a high school diploma is a guarantee of nothing more than that the applicant didn't get kicked out of school. He also told me that his company does test applicants, and that some people with only a high school diploma are way ahead, in knowledge and skills, of others with college degrees. Interestingly, his company does place value on the General Educational Development (GED) diploma, since it is an indication that the applicant is motivated and didn't receive a diploma simply automatically.

A high school diploma—even a junior high education—used to mean something, though.

With his eighth-grade diploma, my grandfather (b. 1889) was able to get a job as an accountant at Ford Motor Company, where he eventually became an executive.

When in 1970 I began my short career as an English teacher, our high school had perhaps the last remaining "old-time" teacher in the state. She was 65 and in her 48th year of teaching. (She was graduated in June 1923 and, with her high school diploma, started teaching at that same school in the fall. It was a small town. She taught three generations of some families.) I wish my kids could have been taught by her instead of by the ones with their master's degrees in educational mumbo jumbo.