Yeah, and I can't quite explain why it's so wrong. You're is technically a substitution for "you are" but it's never used like this. Maybe because it doesn't sound like the way it'd be spoken like it does normally?

[–] grue 82 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago) (1 children)

I actually know this! Or at least, I half-remembered it barely well enough to find the Tom Scott video that taught me about it: there’dn’t’ve.

TL;DW: trying to use a clitic without an object to go with it creates a syntactic gap and has weird stress patterns. Or something like that; IDK I'm not a linguist.

[–] [email protected] 53 points 3 months ago (1 children)

Congrats on finding the clitic!

[–] [email protected] 12 points 3 months ago

I thought it was a myth

[–] Tudsamfa 16 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago) (1 children)

"He was ten times the man you're"
"I'm greater than he's"
"Who do you think you're"

[–] [email protected] 2 points 3 months ago

Interestingly enough it's often pronounced like that just because common parlance lends itself to elisions.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago)

It was weird to me too.

In fairness to the author, I can find a way to speak those two words aloud in a way that works, and sounds like something someone could genuinely say, but that requires a pretty specific stress and pitch.

You're already!

But the first time you read the words it's just not going to come out like that.

And that's the problem. As a writer you can't just put words on the page the same way you yourself might speak them, and expect people to read it that way. The spoken word does not translate perfectly to writing.

You need to have an awareness of how people are likely to parse the words on the page, and choose wording that doesn't cause people to trip or stumble, even if it isn't the exact phrasing you'd use in organic speech.

The comic fails on that at the final line.