ATTN: Copyeditors and Grammar Fiends

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I mean, I can't think offhand think of any other instance where you can have believed + adjective. "The woman is believed to be blonde" - you couldn't say "The woman is believed blonde".

― underpants of the gods, Friday, 13 April 2007 14:15 (nineteen years ago)

thanks, that's what I was feeling.

― Dr Morbius, Friday, 13 April 2007 14:18 (nineteen years ago)

You hear "believed missing" or "presumed dead" a lot too.

― NickB, Friday, 13 April 2007 14:19 (nineteen years ago)

Hmmm, that's true...

― underpants of the gods, Friday, 13 April 2007 14:21 (nineteen years ago)

Both most common at police press conferences though, so I blame the goddamn fuzz.

― NickB, Friday, 13 April 2007 14:26 (nineteen years ago)

"shitties are presumed whipped"

― Tracer Hand, Friday, 13 April 2007 14:31 (nineteen years ago)

"Found guilty" or "found dead" are also the same thing aren't they?

― NickB, Friday, 13 April 2007 14:33 (nineteen years ago)

meh, I'll query it at most. Fortunately it's in a loose line that can use extra words.

― Dr Morbius, Friday, 13 April 2007 14:38 (nineteen years ago)

"illnesses for which more than one treatment method exist"

I understand the conecpt of "two or more," but still ugly.

― Dr Morbius, Monday, 16 April 2007 17:19 (nineteen years ago)

It looks ugly because of the numerical weirdness, surely -- plural illnesses usually have more than one treatment, because there are more than one of them. Technically that clause could be referring to two medicines that both treat a whole group of related illnesses, rather than various illnesses each with multiple treatments.

Also, "exists."

― nabisco, Monday, 16 April 2007 17:23 (nineteen years ago)

'Found dead' is an interesting one - it implies the person was dead when you found them. 'Found to be dead' implies you weren't sure and had to investigate before coming to your conclusion.

― Madchen, Monday, 16 April 2007 18:51 (nineteen years ago)

I am so sick of seeing and hearing the words 'select FROM ONE of the following'. Wrong wrong wrong.

― braveclub, Thursday, 19 April 2007 11:16 (nineteen years ago)

anyone have a concise explanation of when to use "poor," and when to use "bad"?

― 69, Friday, 20 April 2007 15:40 (nineteen years ago)

NABISCO

― 69, Friday, 20 April 2007 16:44 (nineteen years ago)

I'm not sure I understand the issue -- could you give an example of where you can't decide which is right? I don't know of any grand grammatical distinction between "poor" and "bad": they're adjectives with similar connotations, but mostly you just use poor when you mean poor (suggesting a lack, deficiency, poverty, or inadequacy) and bad when you mean bad (suggesting something just flat-out negative).

― nabisco, Friday, 20 April 2007 16:59 (nineteen years ago)

it sounds clunkier to say (about a baseball player, for instance) "he played badly" than "he played poorly."

like OH why does it seem to me to be IMPORTANT that the dude in last crusade say "he choose... poorly," instead of "...badly"?

― 69, Friday, 20 April 2007 18:40 (nineteen years ago)

Some of the books I'm reading for this hellish essay I'm doing cap up the words Dada and Futurism but then don't cap up the word Modernism. Should I cap up modernism? I checked over my lecturers emails to see what she did. She did both Modernism and modernism. Maybe she was typing quickly or something.

― Zoe Espera, Monday, 23 April 2007 11:15 (nineteen years ago)

i don't think you should.

others would disagree, and have good cause to do so.

you should check with yr tutors as to what they expect.

― grimly fiendish, Monday, 23 April 2007 11:27 (nineteen years ago)

ie this is style, not grammar. next!

― grimly fiendish, Monday, 23 April 2007 11:29 (nineteen years ago)

I think that deliberating over modernism vs Modernism is a way of delaying writing your hellish essay. I suggest you at least pick a more productive avoidance tactic, like doing the washing up.

― Alba, Monday, 23 April 2007 11:30 (nineteen years ago)

I can't do the washing up. I am in Egham. The washing is in Hounslow.

I'm going for Modernism.

But that leaves me wondering what to do about modernity.

I'm going to get some chocolate.

― Zoe Espera, Monday, 23 April 2007 11:38 (nineteen years ago)

okay, picky pedants. hanging hyphens. how do we feel about them?

eg "a range of two-, three- and four-bedroom properties" or "two, three and four-bedroom properties"?

the former is certainly more precise (and, i'd argue, gramatically correct); the latter, however, is still clear and is more aesthetically appealing.

comments welcome.

xpost: surely modernism (see why i don't post using caps?) is a movement and modernity isn't? so you can cap one and not the other without too much grief.

― grimly fiendish, Monday, 23 April 2007 11:38 (nineteen years ago)

a more pedantic detail there is not. i use them with pride :)

― mitya, Monday, 23 April 2007 11:42 (nineteen years ago)

yes, grimly, I agree it should be Modernism and modernity. I will now have to (pretend to be) pondering something else as I go for chocolate.

two-, three-, and four-bedroom properties looks AWFUL! So awful it's worth not being quite so precise in order to PROTECT THE PAGE from the awful -, -, -, -, -, and - making the place look untidy.

― Zoe Espera, Monday, 23 April 2007 11:43 (nineteen years ago)

Gah. I mean I will now have to be (pretending to be) pondering something else.

― Zoe Espera, Monday, 23 April 2007 11:45 (nineteen years ago)

I agree with Ms Espera, though I don't think my mistress does. The sentence reads more clearly. It's not as if the reader is sitting there thinking: "Huh? Are they talking about twos and threes and four-bedroom houses?" - one's eye can naturally groups the "one", "two" and "three".

Related problem: what if your style is not hyphenate the prefixes "pre" and "post" but you have a phrase like "His budgets, both pre and postwar..." Can prefixes just become words on their own?

― Alba, Monday, 23 April 2007 11:54 (nineteen years ago)

Typos and spazzed-out missing words on this thread - oops.

― Alba, Monday, 23 April 2007 11:56 (nineteen years ago)

Surely it would be even odder if your style was to hyphenate the prefixes. To me, 'pre- and postwar' looks odder than 'pre and postwar'. Dunno, the hyphens just slow the flow of the reading, man.

― Zoe Espera, Monday, 23 April 2007 12:13 (nineteen years ago)

(Also, I'm going loads of work.)

― Zoe Espera, Monday, 23 April 2007 12:14 (nineteen years ago)

doing

blimey

― Zoe Espera, Monday, 23 April 2007 12:16 (nineteen years ago)

I'm doing to Morrisons.

― Alba, Monday, 23 April 2007 12:19 (nineteen years ago)

You do go that.

― Zoe Espera, Monday, 23 April 2007 12:29 (nineteen years ago)

pronunciation pedants: "mah-DERN-ity" or "moe-DARE-nity" ?

― Tracer Hand, Monday, 23 April 2007 12:54 (nineteen years ago)

I think either pronunciation is acceptable.

― Nathan, Monday, 23 April 2007 12:56 (nineteen years ago)

"mah-DERN-ity" or "moe-DARE-nity"

Why do I hear Loyd Grossman speaking when I read this?

― Madchen, Monday, 23 April 2007 13:37 (nineteen years ago)

Whichever's right, I think Grossman would say both.

― Zoe Espera, Monday, 23 April 2007 13:38 (nineteen years ago)

okay, picky pedants. hanging hyphens. how do we feel about them?

great! because they are right.

― CharlieNo4, Monday, 23 April 2007 13:42 (nineteen years ago)

I would hang the hyphens

― RJG, Monday, 23 April 2007 13:43 (nineteen years ago)

I would have hangs with all these hyphens

"pre and postwar" reads awful

― bernard snowy, Monday, 23 April 2007 13:48 (nineteen years ago)

Note: it's perfectly okay to use a hanging hyphen like that on a non-hyphenated word like "prewar"; it doesn't necessarily suggest hyphenation of the word, any more than (say) hyphenating a line break does.

Concessions to "looking better" on the bedroom one are reasonable enough, I guess. But I'd probably use them anyway, just because I get that lame pedant's thrill out of making sure everything goes together right. The words meant, after all, are "two-bedroom," "three-bedroom," and "four-bedroom."

― nabisco, Monday, 23 April 2007 15:00 (nineteen years ago)

So, if your publications house style is for "prewar" and "postwar", would you have "pre- and postwar" or "pre- and post-war" in that instance?

― Alba, Monday, 23 April 2007 15:03 (nineteen years ago)

I would have "pre- and postwar."

― jaymc, Monday, 23 April 2007 17:27 (nineteen years ago)

Yeah, like Jaymc says -- the hyphen isn't saying "this is a hyphenated word," it's saying "the rest of this word appears elsewhere." (Just like hyphenated line breaks!) It's like the typographical equivalent of the little jagged-line icon.

― nabisco, Monday, 23 April 2007 17:31 (nineteen years ago)

Since Michael has more than one sister, it should be "Michael's sister Janet showed her boob", but if he had only one, then it should be "Michael's sister, Janet, showed her boob", right? I don't think many people follow this rule, but it makes sense to me. Only problem is, it's not always worthwhile finding out if someone has more than one sister or whatever just for the sake of getting the commas right.

― Alba, Monday, 23 April 2007 17:37 (nineteen years ago)

Grrr you mean BRITISH people don't follow that rule. It bugs all hell out of me, since it's about the simplest of all the restrictive vs non-restrictive issues in the world, and yet I'm still constantly reading about "the English band, New Order" or something.

― nabisco, Monday, 23 April 2007 17:57 (nineteen years ago)

Only problem is, it's not always worthwhile finding out if someone has more than one sister or whatever just for the sake of getting the commas right.

Ha, I end up having to do this at work all the time.

― jaymc, Monday, 23 April 2007 18:00 (nineteen years ago)

P.S. there are contexts where you might use either of those Jackson examples, depending on how you've set up the field of people you're talking about. But for the most part I'm amazed by people's missing the nuances of these, because everyone's 100% clear on them when speaking. E.g., if there were two hammers sitting next to one another, you'd say "the hammer on the left is mine," and if there were a hammer and a watermelon sitting next to one another, and you were talking to someone who'd never seen a hammer before, you'd say "the hammer PAUSE on the left PAUSE is mine."

― nabisco, Monday, 23 April 2007 18:01 (nineteen years ago)

And they would say "why are you yelling 'PAUSE' at me?"
And you would say "COMMAS."

― nabisco, Monday, 23 April 2007 18:02 (nineteen years ago)

Jaymc - wll, OK, deadlines mean there's often not time to do so, let's put it that way...

― Alba, Monday, 23 April 2007 18:04 (nineteen years ago)

But modernist, being an adjective, would be lower case, right?

I didn't know about the hammer/watermelon thing. But it makes total sense. Wow, some of my sentences are going to change.

― Zoe Espera, Tuesday, 24 April 2007 08:30 (nineteen years ago)

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