ATTN: Copyeditors and Grammar Fiends

the subjunctive is great and should not die

^^ agreed. it has a purpose and adds information and clarity when used properly.

already dead outside america

nah, I like a subjunctive

enfeebled

whom, subjunctive and other american pedantries

just thought I would share this headline that suffers from awkward phrasing/lack of punctuation:

"15 Celebrities Most People Don't Know Are Black"

#1: Darth Vader

oh, i definitely know that celebrity.

If you only knew...

I really initially read it as meaning "Here are 15 black celebrities most people have never heard of (because society is racist)"

Exactly 15 celebrities are black, but most people have never heard of them.

or "The 15 least-known celebrities are all black"

Or, everyone has a list of 15 celebrities they don't know - every person's list might be different – and in each case, all those celebrities are black.

"Coming in at #12 on my list: Alphonso Ribeiro. Who the fuck is that? I have no idea."

How would you style John Cage's 4'33" if you usually put the titles of short works (like songs) in quotation marks? Wiki seems to italicize it.

I think the rule would say to use '4'33"'.

You mean switch from double quotes to single quotes?

http://yalepress.yale.edu/yupbooks/book.asp?isbn=9780300136999

italicized throughout

since there are three movements in it you are justified in italicizing it as you would other works with three movements, as opposed to songs, it seems to me

Nothing like editing a story for space/clarity and somehow adding 100 words.

Improved clarity accounts for the extra words. Now remove the extraneous words and bob's your uncle. Of course, the story will lose some of its effect if you pare it down to bare bones.

should it be "...provides a leveller playing field" or "...provides a more level playing field"? I prefer the first, but I wonder if the second is more correct.

second one sounds better to me

or eliminate both -- it's a cliche.

Alfred OTM. So go for No. 2 if you have no choice, that's the way it's said.

I mean, a field is level or it's not. Saying some fields are leveler than other fields or that they are more level when the speaker really means they've been leveled better or that they are flatter -- it's not a pleasant situation to be in as a copywriter.

i think you're talking about scalar/absolute adjectives? empty, bald, pregnant. level.

yeah you're right. level. thanks guys.

I can easily assign a meaning to "more level", and I can't think of a better way to express that meaning (I'm ignoring the "playing field" part of the idiom here). I'm sure I say things like "more linear" all the time, even if some people would consider that infelicitous.

ok "flatter" conveys a similar meaning but pplains would presumably argue that a field is either flat or not flat and we're back where we started

http://www.hum.uu.nl/medewerkers/a.toledo/papers/Absolute_Relative_Variance.pdf

"Flat" doesn't necessarily mean "horizontal," does it?

second option, and no there's nothing wrong with the concept of a more level playing field

Late to this party. I would encourage the construction "more nearly level", because level is a state more than a quality. To my mind, either something is 'level' or it is 'not level'.

People who say they seek "a more level playing field" are actually requesting "a playing field that has been leveled more than others" or "leveled better than it has in the past."

There's no "leveler" field. Maybe "level" isn't an absolute description of something, but tell that to my wife after I've tried to instal a shelf on the wall.

In past use, "leveler" was a noun, referring to a person who wanted to eliminate inequalities of rank in society.

They were this weird breed of green bubble-headed people who couldn't keep their balance.

http://userserve-ak.last.fm/serve/500/396653/Levellers.jpg

Dont understand the prob with degrees of level.

You'd agree that the cliffs of Dover might be more level than the cliffs of Moher?

in this case - and i want to put the grammatical element to one side - let us imagine two football pitches. Pitch A has an incline running west to east of 2 degrees. Pitch B has an incline running east to west of 9 degrees. Pitch A is clearly "more level" than Pitch B, even tho neither of them are absolutely level.

Pitch A is also "more level" in the advantage it offers to the team playing from the higher end, altho most team sports try to minimize that advantage by changing ends at some point.

imagine two carpenters' apprentices having their work judged by their master

'closer to level' > 'more level'

And home team might water according to preferred style of play obv

Ok i think thats that cleared up now

This merry bandiment around what is better than 'more level' seems to me to be ignoring that 'more level' appears as part of a whole that simply is not to be fucked with in the ways suggested

mookie i can see how that construction might be logically preferable, sort of, but it's clumsier-sounding than "more level" imo

Pitch A definitely closer to being level than Pitch B, that's for sure.

xp before mookie's

"...levels the playing field somewhat"