ATTN: Copyeditors and Grammar Fiends

waht

wewh, close one

My friend just wrote "whoah" on Facebook.

from the nyt this morning:

"A few top universities have become more choosey about giving credit."

"choosey" with an e? guess the isley brothers approve

this post by Mark G reminded me of a question I had:

Yeah, but most if not all other female "non-pop-music" gets compared to Kate Bush.

now that 'non-pop-music' I think should be just 'non-pop music', but what are you supposed to do in general if you're adding a hyphenated prefix to a term that's already hyphenated? Two hyphens just don't look right.

Technically, the uh boy I don't know any of the terms for this, this is gonna be messy...

The original term drops the hyphen, and the new modifying term picks it up. Thus, "non-pop music".

right, that was my intuition. will come in useful someday i'm sure, thx.

Are you imagining, for instance, a magazine that employs a pop-music critic and a non-pop-music critic?

A similar example was discussed upthread.

(I would probably use both hyphens. Nabisco would use an en-dash: "non–pop music critic.")

I'm tired, so:

An era where...
or
An era when...

?

when, for me

An era of ______

well that all depends on whether you follow with an overarching description or a more specific event/occurrence?

If it's that specific, I don't think "era" would be the correct noun.

maybe so.

'when this happened' doesn;t have much of a ring to it though.

I would take era when over era where in most instances, but especially in cases where the signifier that follows is expressed as an activity, although where is acceptable, due to eras having boundaries. As in: "an era when women bobbed their hair and men wore KKK hoods."

The formulation era of would be more suitable where the signifier is expressed as an intransitive state or an abstraction: "an era of bobbed hair on women and KKK hoods on men..."

that's where i was, but i didn't know how to say that properly. clearly i should have asked on the copyeditors and grammar fiends thread

It is the Achilles’ heel of 3-D television: the clunky glasses that viewers must wear to see images pop out in 3-D.

"The Achilles' heel"? Really?

achilles's in any case imo

push the boat out like

Stupid or clumsy metaphors and similes are not strictly matters for grammar fiends, but rather for arbiters of style.

apostrophe with no additional "s" is AP style for proper names that end with "s"

but shouldn't it be "the Achilles heel" as in "the Fosbury flop"?

In my opinion one is referring to a particular heel that belonged to Achilles, so that using the possesive apostrophe is more appropriate than using no apostrophe. But that is just me talking, not an expert per se.

get an expert on the per se phone

trolling for groans

"achilles' heel" would be OK without the article

Weird that the thing that enables 3D is its weakness, but whatever.

Why don't we lead the revoltution and switch to "Achillean heel", thus saving future generations untold tears and heartache?

'weakness'

In fact I can't think of an instance in which 'weakness' would not do.

havin that

Ah, beer, my one weakness. My Achilles Heel, if you will.

In my opinion one is referring to a particular heel that belonged to Achilles

one is not! one is speaking metaphorically! otherwise:

"achilles' heel" would be OK without the article

would fly (so to speak): "achilles' heel always acted up when the storm clouds gathered over mount olympus"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bVpPLDREuwc

Pub near me has just rebranded to "Dr Ink's". The sign now reads:

Dr.Ink's                     ...and dining

A subheading reads

"Exercise independently of weight loss"

This has got to be "independent." Some editors just cut & paste from body text.

I think I'm changing it to

"Exercise effects independent of weight loss"

Is that comprehensible?

Is the story about exercise that has nothing to do with losing weight? Cardio, etc?

The section is about whether exercise can affect blood pressure ASIDE FROM a weight-loss element.

probably "effects of exercise"? can you use a comma to set off the "independent of weight loss"?

Comma there not really our style... and you have no idea how much I wish this was a "story," instead of a pile of poo perpetrated by doctors in Texas and editors in India.

Exercise independently of weight loss

That's a perfectly good imperative sentence you have there, directing the reader to take exercise without regard to any weight loss they might experience as a result.

the NYT and some others will say

"increased to $1000 from $500"

rather than

"increased from $500 to $1000"

i trip over this every time. presumably that's just because it seems less common. but that notwithstanding, is it more correct/better?

nope.

"[NOUN] coupled with [NOUN] presumably explains [OBJECT]."

or "explain"?

Recast it. "The combination of NOUN and NOUN explains OBJECT."

with the "presumably," of course.

You could even keep "coupling" as your subject. The coupling of x and y presumably explains etc etc

i don't recast, too much to do

You asked for a fucking opinion, don't wave it away when it shows up.

you're basically saying "noun - coupled with noun - presumably explains ..." so it's singular.

Yeah, singular. Recasting averted.