Ten rules to becoming a Python community member.

[Steven D'Aprano]

On Tue, 16 Aug 2011 10:48 am Gregory Ewing wrote:

> rantingrick wrote:
>> "Used to" and "supposed to" is the verbiage of children
>> and idiots.
> 
> So when we reach a certain age we're meant to abandon
> short, concise and idomatic ways of speaking, and substitute
> long words and phrases to make ourselves sound adult and
> educated?

Say what?

"Used to" isn't idiom. It is grammatical English. Avoidance of "used to" is
a hyper-correction done by people who don't know as much about English as
they think, like "the grammar policeman let Johnny and I off with a
warning", perhaps the most widespread hyper-correction in English.

(If you take Johnny out of the picture, the policeman let I off with a
warning... which is obviously wrong. Whether Johnny was there or not, the
policeman let *me* off with a warning.)

"Used to" is unexceptional English:

http://www.englishpage.com/verbpage/usedto.html
http://www.bbc.co.uk/worldservice/learningenglish/youmeus/quiznet/newquiz114.shtml
http://www.englishclub.com/grammar/verbs-m_used-to-do.htm
http://www.learnenglish.de/grammar/usedtotext2.htm


Any-grammatical-errors-are-deliberate-ly y'rs,



-- 
Steven