ATTN: Copyeditors and Grammar Fiends

Although this is weird: I was convinced that "old-school" was hip-hop slang that somehow wormed its way into mainstream usage within the last ten years or so! Webster's marks its first usage as 1803!

Important statement: I've never worked anywhere that didn't route something or other in cross-it-off fashion.

More important question: where would one acquire classics of copyeditor porn, such as Sorority House Style, Cap that Ass, Stet Me Hard, Big Black Bullet Lists, and Little Non-Hyphenated Adverb/Adjective Modifiers with Big Hard Hyphens?

To my credit, I did not go berserk.

>Elaine: People go to South America.
>Jerry: Yeah, and they come back with things taped to their large intestine.

I suppose Jerry gets a free pass, since Elaine used the plural subject "people," not him, but note that damned numerical disagreement that keeps bugging me lately!

-- nabisco (--...), March 9th, 2006 4:40 PM. (nabisco) (later) (link)

Srsly. I keep fixing that now that you've alerted me to it.

I also keep running into a similar agreement issue that's less egregious but still bothers me:

"Lemurs have a tail that allows them to swing through branches."

I don't like the implication that many lemurs have only one tail among them, but the alternative ("lemurs have tails") makes it less clear as to how many tails each lemur has. I change this sometimes and leave it as is when the pluralization sounds clunky, as it often does. And about a third of the time that I change it, it comes back to me stetted, anyway.

That structure is actually really weird, politically speaking -- it's very rationalist and essentialist! To the point where it sounds really musty and Victorian plus smacks of the kinds of essentialism that now creeps us out ("The female of the species is XXX" / "The Negro is XXX" / etc.) But then we start talking about something where essentialism is exactly what we want -- lemurs have tails! -- and the right construction has been somewhat diminished.

http://www.moresaltplease.com/images/salt%20shaker.gif

An astronomer, a physicist and a mathematician were holidaying in Scotland. Glancing from a train window, they observed a black sheep in the middle of a field. "How interesting," observed the astronomer, "all Scottish sheep are black!"

To which the physicist responded, "No, no! Some Scottish sheep are black!"

The mathematician gazed heavenward in supplication, and then intoned, "In Scotland there exists at least one field, containing at least one sheep, at least one side of which is black."

i'd suggest: "a/the lemur's [adjective] tail allows it to swing through branches". the adjective is important here: what's so great about this tail? i mean, badgers have tails but they can't swing through branches.

at least, i don't think they can.

i've never read the first post in this thread before. it makes me want to rip out people's eyes and eat them. there really is no fucking hope for (english-speaking) humankind.

if it genuinely arouses markelbyesque levels of intense, pointless rage, though, maybe you should re-examine things, a little

BASTARDSSSSSS

With apostrophes, it's cos it makes you expect a different progression

RJG, i'm a subeditor! futile rage against tiny grammatical transgressions is my raison d'etre. without it, i am lost.

Oh spelling masters of ILE, can you settle this dispute?

-- grimly fiendish (simonmai...), March 10th, 2006 7:52 AM. (later)

See one Language Log post about "word rage."

Bad moment to misplace an apostrophe.

is feels better but i can't explain why

basically: how closely linked are the two concepts?

"shopping and fucking are important to me."

"drinking and fighting is important to me."

also, the phrase "a vital membership" is common to both participles/gerunds/whatever they are, which suggests that "building and maintaining" is a single ... christ, what? gerundive noun phrase, i guess. apologies if my terminology's wrong: it's a long time since i've dealt with this sort of stuff academically, as opposed to just shouting and rewriting.

(this is a pragmatic approach, rather than a structuralist one, but i think it works. next!)

out of context, i'd suggest: "building and maintaining membership is vital to X's success." you could also use "the" or "our" membership. perhaps.

i'd have rewritten the whole sentence, but i lack the authority. don't ask about "vital membership"--you'll just be told about "solutions"

xp tracer, as ever, otm