Discussions about eggcorns and related topics
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Thanks for your understanding.
Chris -- 2018-04-11
Hello all,
This my first visit and I’m impressed with the site’s structure and amount of examples.
I do have a suggestion. From the entries, it is assumed that the reader would know the correct term that the eggcorn is substituted for. This may not be the case if the reader is looking to improve their language and have always heard the incorrect version of the phrase, it may be difficult for him/her to get what the correct one should be. Or if the original phrase is completely unfamiliar to a browsing reader, they may not understand the eggcorn.
Might I suggest that an additional field in the standard fieldset per entry to include this. Yes, the reader might be able to figure it out by looking at the first data on the page (example: “bow >> bough”), but it helps readers when it is obvious.
Thanks for a great site!
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Hello and Welcome! Thanks for the suggestion. I think that a standardized eggcorn fieldlset format is a pretty good idea. It shows that you have egg-nitiative and egg-magination!
I have a suggestion for your suggestion, however. That is, to put the eggcorn on the left hand side, reverse the arrows and put the traditional usage on the right hand side. For example, take eggcorn; the fieldlset entry might look like this: “eggcorn << acorn.” The operator symbol ”<<” plays the role of English phrases like “as spawned from” or simply “as from.” This way, the eggcorns default to primary sort key status whenever we alphabetize eggcorn stuff. In short, I like your idea of clearly indicating the direction of “spawn-sorship,” but preferably from right to left. Hope this makes sense.
I am not part of the inner-yoke, but I get the feeling that it would be fairly difficult to fully implement your suggestion at this late point in time. However, if you start using a standardized eggcorn fieldlset in your post titles, it just might catch on with the natives.
Last edited by rogerthat (2008-06-13 17:26:55)
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