Comments on: Three Alternatives?

By: commonsense....

commonsense.... — Wed, 13 Jan 2010 17:31:11 +0000

I prefer to use alternate and alternative to mean different things (much like infer and imply). An alternate is a different method of accomplishing the same goal. The alternative is not to pursue that goal. An option is something that can be, but doesn’t have to be done while implementing one of the alternates. To me, this is quite clear, and adds a certain rigor to the usage, in that by using one word or another, one can imply different things, without having to go to greater lengths to explain what is meant.
In other words, an ALTERNATE juror would be used in place of a different juror, while the ALTERNATIVE to a juror might be a trial heard only by a judge, or a formal mediation or arbitration hearing without a jury involved.

A company that wanted to build a fertilizer plant might consider one alternate based on chemical process A, and competing alternates based on other chemical processes. An option might be to build a warehouse along with the fertilizer plant, no matter which alternate was selected. The alternative is not to build a fertilizer plant (in which case one might buy an existing fertilizer plant, instead).

By: mand

mand — Fri, 13 Nov 2009 15:07:51 +0000

Hear, hear, Tony. {applause}

I followed your link… Hey, you’re you! I know you!
:0)

By: Tony Hearn

Tony Hearn — Fri, 13 Nov 2009 13:42:20 +0000

I think some of you are confusing ‘grammar’ and ‘register’. Register refers to the ‘level’ of language being used. The way you speak to your friends informally will be different fro the way you would speak in a formal interview. They tend to have different language patterns. ”Me’ as what grammarians call a disjunctive pronoun (Who did that? – Me!) is normal and accepted in all but the most formal spoken English on both sides of the Atlantic. Written language, however, is often more formal. Even so, modern writing tends to be less ‘high’ and formal, so even here the more natural sounding ‘me’ is as likely to be encountered as ‘I’.

We should be aware first that ‘Grammar’ can only ever be descriptive: efforts to legislate for what people say and write are ultimately doomed. This does not, of course, take away the desirability of avoiding loose and unclear speaking and writing, nor of referring to the grammarians for guidance! And second, that attempts to lay down grammatical rule for English that properly apply to a highly inflected language like Latin are wholly inappropriate and lead on the one hand to unnatural and stilted use and on the other to unnecessary crises of conscience on the part of speakers and writers!

By: Adam

Adam — Thu, 12 Nov 2009 20:42:38 +0000

I think this is one of those lovely topics which people get too wrapped up in a strict and incomplete definition instead of using logic.

Here’s a bad example of me trying to work through this logically:

On – Off = Collection of 2 options.
I’m on. My alternative state is off.
I have 1 alternative.

Low Medium High = Collection of 3 options.
I’m set to low – I have an alternative of medium
I’m set to low – I have an alternative of high
I’m set to low – my other options are medium and high
I have more than 1 alternative.

The plural of alternative isn’t geese – I checked – it’s alternatives.

An alternative doesn’t have more than 1 option – but you can have more than 1 alternative.

By: M.

M. — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 15:23:20 +0000

On one hand My Collins says that alternative is a possibility of choice between two or more things. So I’m with you Hugh Ashton.

On the other hand my native language dictionary states that you can have an alternative only between two things that exclude each other.