Stats
Communities
View all
Stack Exchange network consists of 180 Q&A communities including Stack Overflow, the largest, most trusted online community for developers to learn, share their knowledge, and build their careers.
Visit Stack ExchangeTeams
Q&A for work
Connect and share knowledge within a single location that is structured and easy to search.
Learn moreI am a member of Editors Canada and a technical writer at Dell. Previously, I was a technical editor at the software company VMware, and then a freelance editor. Before that, I was a senior technical support engineer at VMware.
Since being hired at Dell last year, I have stepped back my contributions here—although I have recently started participating more frequently again.
Language has two important aspects that work together in order to convey comprehension.
Syntax deals with sentence construction and semantics involves meaning. Each informs the other to some degree, but they can also stand apart.
Because of this distinction, I can say that something is syntactic but ambiguous:
They are cooking apples.
Is it a group of people preparing apples to eat or is it a description of apples meant for cooking?
I can say that something is syntactic but nonsensical:
Colourless green ideas sleep furiously.
From the linguist Noam Chomsky. Further information about this can be found at the Futurity website in the article "Chomsky Told Us: We Have Grammar In Our Heads" by James Devitt-Nyu.
And I can say that something is asyntactic but comprehensible:
All your base are belong to us.
I can haz cheezburger?
When people use the word grammatical, I've found that what they often mean is syntactic. However, I've also encountered situations where people will mean semantic, arguing that something is grammatical because it's used and understood—even if it goes against common so-called rules of grammar and lexicography.
This distinction can also shift from one discussion to the next, where somebody will change their usage of the word depending on their agreement or disagreement with something that they've heard.
As such, if you're going to be precise, it's sometimes best to not say grammatical at all but use the specific language words for what you're trying to convey.
Your privacy
By clicking “Accept all cookies”, you agree Stack Exchange can store cookies on your device and disclose information in accordance with our Cookie Policy.