Can this ignoramus really be an engineer?

**liquidator**

"George M. Middius" wrote in message
...

liquidator said:

According to Webster's and Princeton University the words are pretty
much
interchangeable.

That's like saying brass bolts and steel bolts are pretty much
interchangeable. All the dictionaries are telling you is that you won't be
misunderstood by choosing one word or the other. You have omitted to
enrich your opinion with the stylistic inflection, and concomitant
connotation, of choosing grammatical over grammatic. Furthermore, it's not
a question merely of meaning but also of usage. Why are both words current
and equally prescribed if no difference exists? One would expect the
less-used word to fall into disuse or archaism. And yet both are still
easily recognizable as commonly used.

While I agree grammatical sounds less clumsy, I spent time as a
journalist,
where if two words are synonyms, the shorter is generally preferred.
There
the concern is fitting information into less space, the economics being
space is sold for money.

"Journalistic style" is the apotheosis of elegance in writing. All
newspapers also require omitting the serial comma (sorry, don't know the
Brit term) in the same cause of saving space.

Actually I was defending you. Complete mastery of the language is not
necessarily part of getting an engineering degree.

The Usenet law about a grammar flame (or is that grammer flayme?)
automatically engendering a grammatical error was fulfilled.

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