Lois & Clark Forums Forums General Discussion Fun with Polls Go with your gut -- which would you say?

Okay, this poll is a little different -- it's about grammar. But I don't want you to think about what's proper, right, correct, etc. I want to know what you really say in casual conversation, without stopping to think about it. So even if you're not a grammarian, you can certainly tell me what you say in RL, right?

I'll come back and explain where this came from and why I'm asking after I see some answers.

Bethy

Okay, I'm intrigued, Bethy. Especially as I seem to been in the clear minority. Come back and tell us what's going on. <G>

Annie

Yes, I'm intrigued too, Bethy, because I have never heard that minority option before. You mean people actually say it? *shudder*

How you answer probably has a lot to do with where you were raised. I know here we say we went to the store and got "on line" to check out. But it was suggested by one of my editors that the better phrase would be "in line" since the other tends to refer to the internet.

Different parts 'o the world have different phrasologies.

Ditto on the shudder. Unfortunately (and I hope I'm not offending anyone), I know plenty of people who say that. Especially students of mine.

Gee, I've heard both, *frequently.* 'On accident' seems to be sort of an idiomatic phase that people say without really thinking about it. I did have to vote for 'by accident,' just because, seeing it written down, it makes the most sense to me.

How interesting. Is this a general US thing? Or related to a specific locale?

It sounds extremely weird to me and just plain wrong because I've never encountered it prior to this thread, but if it's something that's common to your area and which you've always known I would imagine it would be far easier to wonder which was grammatically correct between the two.

LabRat

Well, my brain seized up for a minute when I first read the question, because I had problems actually trying to remember which was right. Sad as this sounds, I finally decided by remembering the sound of my son's voice saying a variation of one of the phrases - which I hear all the time - and then I always correct him, so that's how I knew which way to go.

Kathy

Okay, explanation time.

This question grew out of a discussion I had with my professor while working on my novel this semester. One week I met with her and as she read, she took the sentance I had written, casually crossed out an 'on' and wrote a 'by' above it. (I had written that Caleb had discovered something 'completely on accident.') It was a simple change, but it sparked a discussion -- I had written 'on' unconsciously and 'by' sounded really, really wrong to me.

She said that she had thought it was a quirky habit only her daughter had. But she had no clue where her daughter had gotten it from. So I started trying to figure out why I said 'on.' And I've been asking people all over the place which one they use -- language is constantly changing, so is this a shift that will take hold, like ending on prepositions seems to have done?

I also tried to figure out why the shift happened in the first place (if it is a shift and not just some teenage thing like 'like' and 'you know'...which have both spread to a lot of adults I know...). Here are my theories:

1. We say that something is 'an accident.' When speaking, "It was an accident" sounds very similar to "It was on accident." Which is easily transferred to "I did it on accident."

2. When we do things purposefully, we say we do them on purpose. And yet, we do them by accident. What gives? and still say 'on accident' in my speech. What can I say? I'm used to it.

My prof thinks it might be my generation that says it. But where did we get if from? So, for the other four who voted for on, would you mind saying your rough age group and rough location? Maybe it's a location thing, in addition to or instead of an age thing.

Thanks to everyone who participated. I guess I really am in the minority...or maybe the high proportion of writers here just proves that you all have better grammar than the average population.

Bethy

I say 'on' and the vast majority of people I come into contact with do too. 'By' looks funny to me, so I was surprized to be in the minority, even though I know that 'by' is grammatically correct.

As far as age and geography, I'm 20-something from Seattle.

~Anna

I think this particular slang seems to have spread to adults just because it's been around for so long. It was originally known as "Valley Girl" and it was really popular when I was a teenager (I'm 36 now).

I am 22 from Ohio and I say "by accident." I just asked my two friends that I am sitting here working with and they both said "by accident." Originally, I thought that I spoke like this because my dad is the grammar psycho, but my 23 year old friend and 24 year old friend both (one from Ohio by way of India and the other from Ohio) said "by accident."

My best friend and I just agreed that both of our younger sisters (who coincidentally go to the same university and are strangely friends - 19 and 18) both say "on accident."

And then the conversation turned to the weird things that the younger people do on aim. My sister's away message yesterday: ne way i m doin sum hmk. I was like, what the heck, just type out the words! "anyway, I am doing some homework".
I mean, any is just one more letter than ne - and much easier to understand!

Then again, my sister is the girl that writes papers for 15 minutes, sends them to my dad, gets yelled at for 5 hours, then has a nice, A-worthy, paper written by my dad - with no effort on her part. I can't believe it, personally. I have never even had my dad check my papers since high school because I hate his writing style and how he rewrites everything I write!

- Alicia

However, when I speak - but almost never when I write - I use "like" and "you know" all the time!

- Alicia

I'm 19 and from northern Ohio. I say "on accident" and so do most of my friends. I asked Dad (who's 42) what he says, and he replied "why don't you just say that he accidently broke the vase?" I told him that his answer wouldn't work and that this was for a poll, and he said "well, I'd say on accident." Then I thought that maybe it's a northern Ohio thing. Mom came downstairs shortly after that and I asked her. She said "oh it's definitely by accident." But, she studied English in college so she always speaks correctly Well, that's just my two cents.

Becki

I think what Bethy said makes perfect sense. I never really paid attention to whether I actually say 'by' or 'on' in my everyday speech, but I definitely hear both in Midwestern America. If I do use both, I blame it on the bad 'grammatarians' that surround me!

I don't think so. I'm from Parma and my best friend is from Mentor and we both say "by accident."

- Alicia

Maybe there's a bit of psychology in the mix somewhere. Let me explain (it won't be a very good explanation, because I don't know the technical terms, but I'll do my best!).

If I say something happened '*by* accident' it kind of lessens the personal responsibility for the accidental thing. It was an accident; an act of God; something which just happened. I didn't make it happen, the invisible accident-causing pixie made it happen. Not my fault, mush! <g>

If I say something happened '*on* purpose' it sounds more like it was something I meant to have happen. It was planned; I had a hand in making the thing happen.

If I were to say something happened '*on* accident', there's a kind of weird conflict taking place. It sounds like the accident was planned; was deliberate.

And finally, if I were to say something happened 'by purpose', it sounds like the purpose-causing pixie made it happen and not me.

I suspect this an incredibly crappy explanation, but maybe someone out there can make some sense of it.

Yvonne

I've lived in the West, the midwest, and on the northeast coast and have worked with people from all over the country and I've never heard "on accident" before. I'm quite old, btw.

I have heard "on line" because I know a lot of people from NJ.

Shadowfax

Becki said: Is this where I don't admit that I'm about to graduate from college with a degree in both English and French? That's why it puzzled me so much -- my grammar isn't exactly what you'd call bad. I have learned a ton about English grammar from studying foreign languages, so my grammar is better than that of most people I know. (In RL -- am not including the writers on these boards here, because most of them seem to have better grammar than me.) And yet, I never even had the slightest clue that I was saying that wrong.

Oh, well. I'll live. Thanks again for your input on this, everyone.

Bethy

Just found this one. I could be wrong (Linguistics 501 was a very long time ago), but my guess is that 'on accident' is an example of hyper-correction. This is a stage in language development in which young children internalize a rule of grammar or a set phrase and then extrapolate it to other examples even though it doesn't work. For example, we all know that the past tense in English is usually formed by adding either a "d" or "ed" to the end of the present tense form, i.e. I walk. I walked. Shortly after young children figure this out, they start saying "I goed, I comed, I seed," even if they had previously known and used the irregular past forms of these verbs (went, came, saw).

So Bethy's example of "on purpose" can be extrapolated to "on accident." I can't honestly think of anyone over the age of five or six that I've heard use "on accident" but I'm sure some people probably never lose it.

Schoolmarm