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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: July 4th, 2023

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  • Not OP, but I think I could answer.

    Traditionally, mail is uncountable. One can count letters and packages, but not mail. Thus “I received three mails” is currently grammatically incorrect, while “I received three pieces of mail” or “I received three letters” or “I received three packages” would all currently be grammatically correct.

    It seems logical that email should follow the same rules of grammar. Thus “I received three emails” should be incorrect, while “I received three pieces of email” or “I received three messages” would all be grammatically correct.

    But English grammar is not consistent. Email is a new word and the folks that use it have decided that it is countable.

    I don’t mind this, but it seems OP does.



  • I’ll cheat the question a bit.

    I’d like all critics to have standards and to hew to them. I don’t mind if each critic operates by different standards, so long as all critics can articulate their standards and are consistent in their application.

    Most movie critics, for example, are offering their reactions to movies. They may review a movie. But nearly all of them are utterly inconsistent (hypocritical?) in their work. They explain their bad review of a film because of X and then praise another film despite it being just as much X as the film they loathed. If they address this conflict at all, it is with a great deal of handwavium - “This film makes it work.”

    If critics had standards, it would be possible to really compare the things they critique. Without those standards, each thing gets its own bespoke write up. Very entertaining, but useless when we want to know which is better or worse.