ATTN: Copyeditors and Grammar Fiends

xp rent: to me, it seems like the order would be dependent on the context.

I always think of this example: "big brown paper bag."

Are you describing a) a brown paper bag that happens to be big, b) a paper bag that is both big and brown, or c) a bag that is big, brown, and made of paper?

There may not be an obvious answer to that question, but it should dictate in a general sense whether you should use commas and where.

ooo, yeah, that's good

definitely, sarahel. i suppose it's just convention in most cases to follow that order, unless the context dictates otherwise. like for example jaymc's big brown paper bag (size, color, material) fits the pattern. and if you wanted to add more (big old brown paper bag or whatever) the tendency is to stick to the order. i'm still working a lot of this out.

that's a really helpful way of thinking about it, jaymc.

For instance, in that example, I doubt that one would ever want to use (c), because the term "paper bag" is so often thought of as a single entity that it would seem odd to use "paper" as merely a descriptive adjective modifying "bag."

I'd likewise make the case that "brown paper bag" is also an entity like that (there are 10 times as many Google hits for "brown paper bag" as for "red paper bag"), but it's entirely possible that someone could be talking about a paper bag that's colored brown and yet does not look like this:
http://www.boston.com/ae/sidekick/blog/Brown_paper_bag.jpg

...in which case (b) might be preferable.

quick one - i need to know whether the use of "whereby" is acceptable in modern English.

It's for a job app, example: "I thrive under pressure, especially as a promoter whereby a last minute decision can affect the whole course of an event".

I think it's acceptable, but I'm not sure you're using it correctly. My Concise Oxford says it means 'by which'.

yeah that's not a correct use of "whereby"

yeah i figured as much. "by which" sounds a bit clunky too though.. ho hum, must rewrite.

You want "for whom", but pace whom-haters.

yeah, i changed it around and included "for whom". still not mad on it, but it may have to do.

Perhaps you should say: "I thrive under pressure. As a promoter, I've regularly had to make last minute decisions that could affect the whole course of an event." ... unless you haven't had to make these decisions ...

yeah i was just going to suggest that

[the next grozart likes this]

It shows that you have successfully operated under pressure, as opposed to had a potentially high-pressure job. If you have good anecdotes of this, this would prompt the potential interviewer to ask for them.

Whereby the bell tolls

it's an awkward sentence, but i'd say "from whom" rather than "for whom" to replace "whereby" up there. the decision is coming from the promoter, it's not for him

Is a "but" after a semicolon correct? How?

context?

Say, "he was first and formost my Father; but since day one he was my best friend in the entire world."

Isn't the semicolon a de facto conjunction, rendering the "but" redundant?

some may disagree but i would not use a semicolon there

It needs a comma instead, and no cap on Father.

if you keep the but use a comma
if you get rid of the but use a semicolon

also formost is spelled wrong

sorry, i'm working on a paper away from my style guide ... is there a consensus about how long a quote should be in a paper before it is moved from just being quoted within a paragraph to being separated out into its own indented paragraph?

i think i always used the indent for quotes of about three lines or greater

it seems sort of dependent on the format of your page in general, though -- you know, whichever looks more natural and clear

MLA iirc says four lines or more

eh, i indented it because i need to pad the length of the paper a little to be honest

i use the 50 word rule

ha it's 51 words

I liked the part where Nick said his quote was:

51 words

That was pretty cool.

lol

whoa

i'm going to make all my posts in block quotes from now on

it'll like be my thing

Came across this at work: "non-EU-member Switzerland."

My initial thought was that it should be "non-EU member Switzerland" since no one would write "EU-member Switzerland" (i.e., with the hyphen).

But then it struck me that "non-EU member" is a really weird phrase. Because ordinarily you'd parse that as "What kind of a member is Switzerland? A non-EU member" -- when in fact Switzerland is not a member of anything at all. It's not a member of the non-EU, it's a nonmember of the EU. But "EU nonmember Switzerland" gets approximately 0.07% the number of Google hits as "non-EU member Switzerland."

So I sort of feel like I get why someone wrote "non-EU-member" was used -- to keep the "member" closer to "non." I'm still not sure it works, though.

Haha, ignore obvious fuck-up in my second-to-last sentence.

I would deploy an en-dash on this one

i.e., "non(1/N)EU member" handily indicates that what Switzerland is not is the full unit "EU member"

Oh shit, you're right. I don't know why that didn't occur to me.

*Seethes with envy once again at awesome en-dash convention the UK just doesn't have*

Should the slangy contraction "'em" be capitalized in a title? For example, should it be "Make 'em Say Ooh" or "Make 'Em Say Ooh"? I'm thinking the former.

Hang 'Em High looks better to me than Hang 'em High.

CMOS gives no advice on this that I can find, and I have no answer myself, although my inclination is that the apostrophe itself, since it represents dropped letters, might also represent the capitalization of non-included letters; capping the E seems weird to me because it's not the beginning of a word to be capitalized

(note: okay, sure, I would not follow that logic at the beginning of a title, but that's different)

That was my thinking, that the capitalized T in "them" is dropped, so the "e" isn't capitalized. I could go either way, though.

(btw I'm only posting with capitalization out of respect for this thread)

A quick survey suggests that my workplace capitalizes them:

George Gershwin's "When You Want 'Em You Can't Get 'Em (When You've Got 'Em You Don't Want 'Em)"
The film Give 'Em Hell, Harry!
The film Hang 'Em High
The film Keep 'Em Flying
The Singin' in the Rain song "Make 'Em Laugh"

Springsteen's "Bring 'Em Home"

'Er Indoors

Ok, will capitalize, thanks.

Although I guess I should point out that there's no style rule on the books and the capitalization on those may simply be a result of various copy editors independently saying "looks right to me."

Okay I am helping do some community newsletter. Submitters always find some amazing next level uses of passive voice. This is today's little riddle of a sentence:

A free-will donation will be received.

How can I rework this to have it make sense but still retain some of her desired timidity?