ATTN: Copyeditors and Grammar Fiends

things belonging to Cousin It are Cousin It's

That's what people kept telling me, but I was never that adventurous.

It used to be gramatically acceptable to use a masculine pronoun (he, him, etc.) when referring to a person of unspecified gender (you know what I mean.. I can't think of any other way to put it), but now the "he or she"/"his or her" method is the proper form.

I'm not sure if it makes a difference whether you use a slash or the word "or." I suspect that the slash is unacceptable in formal writing.

Unless it's academic writing, and it allows you to make a terrible pun somehow.

Proper, maybe. But it should be pointed out that if you're having to cram this into your sentence, you;re writing a clumsy sentence, and you should probably drop back and punt.

hyphens
Our style is to use one word wherever possible, including some instances where a word might be hyphenated by other publications. Hyphens tend to clutter up text (particularly when the computer breaks already hyphenated words at the end of lines)

Inventions, ideas and new concepts often begin life as two words, then become hyphenated, before finally becoming accepted as one word. Why wait? "Wire-less" and "down-stairs" were once hyphenated. In pursuit of this it is preferable to go further than Collins does in many cases: eg trenchcoat is two words in Collins but one under our style

Never use hyphens after adverbs, eg politically naive, wholly owned. But do use them to form compound adjectives, eg two-tonne vessel, three-year deal

Do use hyphens where not using one would be ambiguous, eg to distinguish "black-cab drivers come under attack" from "black cab-drivers come under attack"

Tracer, I read this as advocating the phrase "fact-checking" as a verb (sorry, should have made that clear) so thanks were in order!

assuming i only have one brother, would it be acceptable to write, "I went with my brother Isaac to the store" or do i have to write, "I went with my brother, Isaac, to the store" ?

for some reason i am under the impression that non-essential info can be stuck in without commas as long as it is only one or two words. but apparently, this is wrong?

(fun with nonessential elements)

'I went to the store with my brother Isaac.'

The evidence for “Americanization” of French culture is mixed, and its extent is impossible to measure, as culture is not easily definable, let alone quantifiable.

Please can you help me arrange it so it sounds better. Most importantly I need a more essay-register way of saying "let alone", but the whole sentence seems really clumsy still and I don't know how to fix it.

I hope there's someone around who can help. My head hurts.

Culture is not easily definable, much less quantifiable. Thus, not only is the evidence for "Americanization" of French culture mixed, but its actual extent is impossible to measure.

?

the "not only/but" thing is unnecessary

Thanks all.

I just finished my essay, wahey!!

this usage is uncontroversially fine: if i was bored or being testy as an acitivist sub editor i might switch in "saw" or "led to" depending on context (context = nature of nearby sentences acc my picky sub self lol) viz "the publication of X saw the first use of some new word"/"the publication of X led to the first use of some new word"

gloss: if "occasioned" maybe possibly presents a micro-speedbump for a reader, i think "saw" presents none, while "led to" perhaps implies the fact you note, that the new word arrives a little later than X…

you might also use "prompted"

but your sentence is fine as is imo

Yeah, I think "occasioned" there is a little overwritten and that with a little bit of effort "led to" would be much more readable.

saw (a young person) referred to as a 'third-generation holocaust survivor'

obviously the topic is fraught, but it seems like there should be a better way to describe someone whose grandparents survived the camps

A completely uncontroversial way to say that would be "a grandchild of Holocaust survivors."

And while - as mòokieproof says - it is fraught, it does seem a bit much to imply that you "survived" an event that you did not personally experience.

I am not, personally, a survivor of the Visigothic Sack of Rome, the Protestant Reformation, the Irish Potato Famine, the Trail of Tears, the American Revolution, the Civil War, or school desegregation.

Maybe (stretching this quite a bit) I have experienced some personal effects from the Cold War and/or the Vietnam War due to my parents' participation in them, but calling myself a "survivor" seems more like stolen valor than empathy and solidarity.

Re: ending sentences with prepositions - if you are editing your wordpress site and have a menu option called 'about' with sub items, there's a link for each sub item titled 'Out from under about'.

There are too many prepositions in out from under about.

If you had an australian themed website called 'down under' and the menu item was 'about down under'...

Oh goodness this used to be a thing in language humor books*, making long chains.

In one imagined scenario, a child dislikes a book about Australia. The child's parent suggests it as a bedtime story.

The child says, "What did you bring that book that I don't want to be read to from out of about Down Under up for?"

And the discussion goes into an absurd arms race that is eventually infinite; using nested quotes you can always add another ...for?

It's there with "Buffalo buffalo" and "had had 'had had.'" Nerd games

* = yes this was a genre

I remember a language humour book that had a sentence with lots of ands in it. A signmaker is putting up a sign for a pub, THE PIG AND WHISTLE.

The publican sticks his head out the door and says "excuse me, but there's too much space between PIG and AND and AND and WHISTLE". And so the sentence has five ands in a row, which seems puny now, but it was the 1980s and there were fewer words back them. Words and letters were still rationed in the UK until 1958. That's why the second Quatermass serial was just called Quatermass II. At the time the BBC was only allowed to use twelve letters in its programme titles. This is why Watch With Mother was originally broadcast as Watch wit' Moth, and The Perry Como Show was broadcast as Perry Como Sho.

Why twelve letters? Why not eleven, or fourteen? Because "Great Britain" has twelve letters in it. That's why.

Just for fun I asked ChatGPT how many "ands" there are in "pig and whistle". It replied with, and I quote, "there is one "and" in "pig and whistle."" Which is a disappointing answer because it's concise and accurate. I was hoping it would be weird and wrong. And perhaps ChatGPT knew that I was hoping it would weird and wrong. So I asked it why the ambient musician Jon Jenkins is so underrated. Along with David Helping his music tends to be dismissed as new age glurge. Planetarium music. Which is a shame because once you get past the naff titles his best music is evocative, emotive, and technically clever.

What did ChatGPT say? It wrote a short essay arguing that Jon Jenkins is underrated because (a) "light ambient" is a niche genre (b) his music is subtle (c) he hasn't had any of his tracks featured in prominent films (d) he doesn't have the name recognition of Brian Eno or Moby (e) he flits between genres rather than sticking with one particular sound (f) he isn't heavily promoted.

All of which is reasonable enough, although it misses the stark but subtle divide between "ambient" and "new age". They're like Optimus Prime and Ultra Magnus. Similar bodies, similar concepts, very different execution. Once again ChatGPT pleasantly surprises me. But can it outsmart a bullet?

largely approve of britishes grammar choices but *not* the title case for acronyms

Nato? Amoc? come on, cousins

It's true of BBC house style but not Oxford Style

I'm not British so I couldn't really comment on what's more common, but just pointing out that there's some variation. Would be a bit like saying AP conventions are "American" ... which they are in some sense, but it's not the whole story

i know nothing of accepted britishes stylez but have also seen it in the economist and grauniad

Aids really bothers me for some reason as opposed to AIDS

i know nothing of accepted britishes stylez but have also seen it in the economist and grauniad

― mookieproof, Friday, April 17, 2026 4:00 AM (twenty-two minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

Hmm, good point. It's something I tried looking into just now, but couldn't find a satisfying answer as to why this is the case. But you're correct that it's very bad they do this lol

ugh they do it with Sad too (Seasonal Affective Disorder)

(the Graun do, at least)

For real? Awful

https://www.theguardian.com/guardian-style-guide-s
A lot of people are saying it's Sad, very sad