ATTN: Copyeditors and Grammar Fiends

Why do both "drugs servies" and "drug services" sound OK when "drug debate" sounds so wrong?

"drugs servies services"

"drug debate" induces ear wobble?

re: befitting, it's simple. it's a transitive verb and needs a direct object. a better analogy might be advocate vs advocate for

befitting is an adjective

it's also an adjective which is confusing

xp

not so simple then, i suppose

anyway jaymc's example should be the verb so no "of"

just don't say 'smacks of'

but befriend is something v different than 'friend'? one does not 'friend' people other than on the internet.

perhaps part of the befitting/*befitting of confusion is that there is a synonym that does take the 'of': "a premise worthy of contemporary horror cinema"

uhh xposts

i mean, that's a synonym if jaymc is going for what i think he is: 'this romcom has a premise more befitting horror tbh'

Should it be "The imprisonment of myself and a friend" or "The imprisonment of me and a friend"?

(I am always inclined to change "myself" to "me" when it's the object, rather than whatever the part of speech it is when you say things like "I did it myself", but I'm never sure if that's right in all cases)

"the imprisonment of a friend and me" sounds a little better, but I'd prefer a construction in which "A friend and I" were the subjects.

Unless you were both the jailer and the prisoner (maybe you locked yourself in somehow?), 'myself' doesn't sound right there.

My and my friend's imprisonment?

Myself is almost always used wrongly.

is there a previous sentence you could get "my friend" into, leaving this one clear for just "our imprisonment"?

as I understand it, "myself" is to be used as a reflexive object ("I jailed myself") or when using yourself as an example of a wider group ("They jailed thousands of sexual dynamos such as myself")

I would go with "the imprisonment of a friend and me" if you have to use this type of construction; I don't think "myself" is the correct word there and IIRC you should always put yourself last in a list of people for some arcane reason.

Agree with deprecation of the myself version, but for purely stylistic reasons, I prefer "me and a friend."

unnecessary use of myself is something british policemen do, e.g. "on seeing me, the suspect approached myself"

One more vote for "me and a friend" in favor of "myself and a friend".

What you may be trying to avoid is a perceived informality in "me and a friend" that gives it an overly chatty feeling that doesn't sit well when speaking of imprisonment. If so, the answer is not substituting "myself" for "me", but finding a more formal locution. Others have suggested several approaches you could use. Pick one that appeals to you.

unnecessary use of myself is something british policemen do, e.g. "on seeing me, the suspect approached myself"

no no no, they all use this particular tense that someone cleverer than me can tell me the name of - it's quite odd. "The suspect has approached me, then he's crouched down on the floor. He's struck his girlfriend" etc etc.

that's the present perfect, which does other jobs but, yeah, is used for narration in some odd contexts - footballers explaining what's happening while watching a replay is a trad example.

ah! I was gonna go for present perfect

yeah they do that too, but they do like to start sentences with "on" + gerund, and they LOVE "myself".

fuck the police.

if you referred to the friend as him/herself you can claim usage of irish colloquialism imo

is "brethren" strictly a gendered word?

eh, there's "sistren" but that's even more antiquated

oh that's terrible

because of the miracle of metaphor, no word needs to be strictly gendered. however, the plain, obvious meaning of brethren has a strong gender denotation.

yup

try 'posse' instead

i went with 'cohorts'

broheems

Help! I don't know what to do about this particular thing where I'm writing about a girl named K.C. I have to end a sentence with a quote in which her name is the last word. So is it:

". . . K.C.". Next sentence here. . .

or

". . . K.C." Next sentence here. . .

For argument's sake, let's pretend I cannot rework the sentence structure.

Oh and this is supposed to follow APA style, if that matters.

the latter imo

Yes.

At least that's how we do it in the good ol' U.S.A.

Heck, I'm not crazy about it, but it seems like every sentence that ends with a quotation these days has the period on the inside.

Do you have to have the full stops after K.C.? Could you just put KC?

I think you could get away with that if it was an acronym, but initials would have a different rule.

it's definitely the second one

Yeah I mean K.C. is the name, so I don't feel I can drop the periods.

OK here's another wrinkle. What if I needed to write a sentence that went:

. . . Kaitlin is the "K", while Carmine is the "C".

vs.

. . . Kaitlin is the "K," while Carmine is the "C."

Again, let's pretend that I can't rewrite. Where does the punctuation go, inside or out?

inside

I trust u and harbl and pp but I'd feel better if someone could site some actual rule from some actual style guide. Googling the rest of the internets has not been very helpful in this regard :(

As I always understood it inside is typographical/US style, outside is logical/UK style. Being lol british would definitely go outside for the second example, but would stick with the inside one for "K.C.", no point doubling up. Xpost sorry no useful citations here.

Inside the quotes, though I don't like it personally.

http://www.dailywritingtips.com/period-goes-inside-quotation-marks/

Alright, inside it is. Stupid grammar.