Quote:
Originally Posted by boxcorner
I was taught it's impolite to put oneself first.
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Exactly. It's convention, not grammar. There are lots of things in written English (and other languages too, of course) that are grammatically correct, but, nonetheless look "wrong" for reasons that we probably find it difficult to even articulate. Eg, "big red bus" is "right", but "red big bus" is "wrong". Why is "red big bus" wrong? As a native English speaker all you can really say is that "it just is". If you dig deeper into it you could probably come up with a rule which says that adjectives of size must come before adjectives of colour, or something like that, but we aren't normally consciously aware of such rules; we just know instinctively what sounds right or wrong.
A matter that's arisen on another thread recently is differences in punctuation between British and American English. In the paragraph above, I've written:
Quote:
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"big red bus" is "right", but "red big bus" is "wrong".
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To a speaker of American English that will look wrong because I've put the comma and full stop outside the quotes. To a British reader, though, it will appear (and indeed, is) correct. British and American English have different punctuation rules, and we "absorb" these without even being consciously aware that we're doing so.
It's a fun subject
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