ATTN: Copyeditors and Grammar Fiends

xp

Yikes! I've never seen quotation-mark nesting to three levels before. The convention is single-quotes for the second level of quoting. There must be a convention for the third level, but I am at a loss what it might be. Italics?

is the same true for switching between parentheses and brackets? for example, if you have one level with parentheses (and then nest something else [in brackets, and then maybe (another level)])?

It's back and forth for the quotation.

Don't do parentheses in parentheses! You think you're Raymond Roussel?

I've seen parentheses nested wildly (just multiple sets of parentheses (like this, not alternating with another form of punctuation (the effect is especially dizzying when they all end together))).

I've also seen the convention (parentheses [brackets {braces}]). Not sure there is a ruling on this from a major style guide. A sensible person would probably try to figure out a way to restructure things so you don't have such a complicated sentence.

nested parentheses in maths go the other way around { [ ( ) ] }

Anything in parentheses should be banished to a footnote or eliminated with extreme prejudice

(Tracer Hand)

excelsior bait, that

I don't think you need the third level of quotes. If What the hell were a second level I'd leave them in, but your job is to aid the reader, and in this case you aid the reader by taking them out:
“It could be [called] a lot of different things, but it will take a while to get to that point,” Anderson said. “You’ve heard me say before, 'It might be 25 minutes of hell and 15 minutes of what the hell are they doing?' Hopefully it will be the type of basketball that our fans can enjoy, our kids can enjoy. They’ll get a chance to showcase their God-given abilities. It’s fun for fans. And it’s winning basketball.”

i think that's confusing, too!

one (my) solution would be to put it in italics:

“It could be [called] a lot of different things, but it will take a while to get to that point,” Anderson said. “You’ve heard me say before, 'It might be 25 minutes of hell and 15 minutes of What the hell are they doing?' Hopefully it will be the type of basketball that our fans can enjoy, our kids can enjoy. They’ll get a chance to showcase their God-given abilities. It’s fun for fans. And it’s winning basketball.”

though on the other hand i relish the opportunity to inceptionize language

Part of the context of this is that Anderson with Nolan Richardson pioneered the "40 Minutes of Hell" approach to college baseball. It became more than just a description to the way the game played. Almost like "Greatest Show on Dirt" or something.

So his "15 Minutes of with" is a little self-parody on his part. But to match it with the "40 Minutes of Hell", you still have to separate it from the rest of the sentence, as a title.

Plural of "centre-half" (to describe two or more footballers who play the centre-half position).

I want to type centre-halves but it looks wrong as they aren't halves of a whole. Centre-halfs also looks wrong and the spell checker gives it a red squiggly line but I say it as "halfs", I think.

I could cheat and use "centre-backs" or "central defenders" but I'd still like to hear opinion.

"centre-half players"?

centres-half

centre-halfs imo but i agree it's against instinct

My instinct is to rewrite the whole thing.

^stock answer itt :)

everyone else seems to use halves though, maybe it's just one of those accepted inelegancies

"soccer players"

^stock answer itt :)

Yeah. Sorry. I gave up battling the language a long time ago. If it's hard to make work, there's probably a better way to do it. Your question is bloody good though — it's one of those constructions that doesn't seem to have an easy/obvious form.

there's a baseball version of this. "to fly out" is to make an out by hitting the ball and having someone catch it before it hits the ground. so the past tense is... "flied out". feels a bit wrong but "flew out" would be 1000000x wronger

technically "centre backs" is more correct in reference to the modern central defender position, i use "centre back" and "centre half" interchangeably like most people but iirc "centre half" technically refers to the old style W formations and other oddities where the centre half wd be positioned more like a modern holding midfielder tho they wd still have the key defensive duties.

having said that, or if "centre half" is specifically what you wanna use, i wd go with "centre halfs" too.

You know, I struggle with this on a weekly basis on ILF. Perhaps if I only had one centre half to moan about, this would never be an issue.

I think I generally plump for centre halfs.

(actually general plump for "useless bastards" which pluralises much more easily)

I'd go with central defenders. It's clearer in meaning.

xp tho of course if you're talking about centre-back pairings of useless bastards and you want to talk about more than one pairing you have to use 'useless bastardses'.

just a little unrelated q that came to mind when i was writing recently - is "him or herself" the right way of putting it? that 'him' seems a little off. "him- or her-self"? dinnae hink so.

Thanks for all the answers everyone - I realise "centre-half" is something of a throwback to yesteryear when we had half-backs, inside-lefts and wing-halfs/halves and that centre-back is the more correct modern term but I'm stuck thinking of them as centre-halfs/halves.

I think I'll go with the Glaswegian "centre hoff" as you'd only ever pluralise that to hoffs.

All this so I can moan about them collectively for the next 40 weeks :)

(ailsa, misread your 2nd last as "I generally go for plump centre halfs"!)

haha, my soft spot for Gary Caldwell still shining through :)

"centre half" technically refers to the old style W formations and other oddities where the centre half wd be positioned more like a modern holding midfielder tho they wd still have the key defensive duties.

― graveshitwave (Noodle Vague), Friday, 22 July 2011 13:42 (1 hour ago) Bookmark

not necessarily an outmoded concept tbf, although you would have to signal that you were using the term verrry deliberately. (in any case you wouldnt have more than one these days).

not sure where to post this but this quick vocab quiz game is a fun time-killer

http://www.merriam-webster.com/quiz/index.htm

3960 was my high

Hm 3360 on first try. Try try again!

3980!

Getting to 3960 or 3980 would partly depend on the percentage of words rated as medium or hard that the quiz randomly generates. I don't think the "speed bonus" is quite sufficient to push the score that high all on its own. I tried it once and got 3780. At max speed on all words (I'm assuming 180 is the max speed bonus), that could have been 3900.

the speed bonus starts at 200 and drops 20 for every second you take; answering in less than a second (which is doable) gets you 200

just got 3980

Final Score: 4000 Points!

yeah getting difficult words is half the battle

3800 on first go, but after three glasses of wine. Does anyone have the formula to work out what my wine-adjusted score is?

fuck I got the word 'quiddity' and all I could think about was the q&a thread and the debate we had over whether or not quiddity was appropriate for the title

3740 on my first try

3880 on first go. Don't fancy trying it again now for fear I'll just get worse.

I got 3800, and that was with getting all ten right and clicking as fast as I damn could on my stupid laptop trackpad, so it seems like doing any better would just be luck.

"Pro and anti-government protesters"

"Pro- and anti-government protesters"

It's a case where you can't recast. I'm going for the former, as the latter looks ugly and the hyphen leads you briefly to expect something else. Any idea what some of the main manuals of house style would say?

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/video/2011/mar/31/sanaa-yemen-protests-abdullah-saleh

http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2011/02/02/egypt_protester_violence_mubarak

I would go the latter

Thanks conrad. Hmmm, I think I'm going to go with the former, AA. Specifically in this case it's for an on-screen item, and the latter looks a bit fussy to my eye. I guess the latter does indicate clearly that it belongs to something coming a bit later, though.

Especially where 'pro' can be taken as an abbreviated form of 'professional'.

I prefer the latter as well.