Jump to content

Talk:Rangers Standing Orders

Page contents not supported in other languages.
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

don't never lie?

isn't that saying you should lie to a ranger the double negative cancels each other out

The rules are in the language as they are used. Do we "fix" song lyrics that have bad grammar as well?

Aversion to double negatives is uncommon in most languages, and was not always an issue even in standard English. It comes from a questionable attempt to apply rules of logic to natural language. Using two negatives is a natural way to emphasize the negative, that's way children do it automatically until they're taught that it's incorrect.

In informal American English, as in several other languages, a double negative is not a negation. It's an emphatic signal. The Rangers Standing Orders which were adopted in the Ranger Handbook were written by Kenneth Roberts in his novel Northwest Passage, and were verbally told by an uneducated but veteran Ranger to the narrator.
To assume two negatives makes a positive only holds absolutely true in mathematics.GABaker 18:10, 12 October 2007 (UTC)GABaker 18:10 UTC 12 Oct 2007[reply]

2 articles[edit]

What about this? Robert Rogers' 28 "Rules of Ranging" I think it's the same topic, isn't it? --Kun25 16:36, 11 October 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Looks like it to me. And I don't understand why the first list is included here if it comes from a novel published 200 years later. I'm nominating this article for deletion. Alcarillo 19:33, 13 November 2007 (UTC)[reply]
On second thought, I propose a merger Alcarillo 19:50, 13 November 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Merged and redirected[edit]

  1. redirect Robert Rogers' 28 "Rules of Ranging" RJFJR (talk) 16:39, 23 November 2007 (UTC)[reply]