ATTN: Copyeditors and Grammar Fiends

hol jet gob scrap

SKY SALIVA SHENANIGANS

as a verb spit can be transitive and intransitive, so i think the issue is simply that the object of the transitive form is what gets spat (the ejecta if you will) rather than the target of the spitting

yes, that makes sense.

SPIT SPAT IN FACE IN FACE SPIT SPAT

The same problem as with "Queen Elizabeth to be evacuated in case of Brexit unrest".

looking all this up i got distracted by the fact that ejecta and object have the same latin root (jaceo, I throw)

ejecta comes from ejicio, also meaning throw or cast (but i think in a more urgent way)
object come from objaceo, which means "i lie at the mercy or "i lie blocking the way" (of whatever, in each case) -- so a object is a thing chucked down in front of you blocking yr way which is at yr mercy, good work everyone

DE SPUTUS DISPUTANDUM EST

de sputo, but yes

Thank you

shuttle spittle battle

fox in socks, my game is done, sir

CABIN JABBIN' AFTER SPEW STEW

this just arrived through our front door and inflicted grievous internal injuries upon me, please send an ambulance

https://i.imgur.com/9yeCgug.jpg

Creasing at the multiple indignities of 15% of for oaps

excuse me, that's oap's

Lol my fucking phone is STILL spelling the piss diamonds as Lib Dem’s but it literally overwrote my authentic spelling

u love 2 see it as we sub-editor's say

Same business, elsewhere on the web. Consistent!

We do jet washing for
Roof's patio's lock block drive's Concrete drive's wall's

there's at least one thing wrong with literally every line, it's almost too completely incorrect to be real

Hmmmm... Something tells me this positive feedback on bark.com could be an inside job:

KevIn weir
3 December 2019

Great bunch of lads that alway’s do a first class job at the right price, thank’s again boy’s 👍

big 'leaving your wallet at the scene of the crime' energy

"alway's" is radical and indeed breakway stuff in this context tbf

(esp. just two words after "lads") 👍

lad's

so a colleague asked me to read through a customer email she was sending and I queried the fact that she'd put a timeframe as 6a - 10a. My query consisted of me saying er shouldn't this be 'am'?

Response:

"I’ve increasingly seen it called it “6a” instead of “6am” in the US (to be efficient? no idea). Anyway, that’s how they referred to it on our call the other day so I thought I’d play along."

US ilxors - is this actually a thing?

no

in the my adventures developing similar shortcuts i moved to "6-10am", based on the assumption that (contextually) as nothing routinely being promoted was going to be "6pm-10am" no muddle was likely. (if/when "6pm-10am" was need then put that in full, till then no need).

so i can't complain that someone has invented a new compacting on a similar principle! what else is it going to be before or after except midday?

but i highly favour the compact in these circs so

to answer the question tho, i've not seen it but i don't read to proof off the clock so may have skimmed it w/o noticing

6-10am is good I think. 'a' by itself seems like an unhelpful letter to increase the frequency of its use in isolation. More, I was just surprised, as I hadn't come across it at all.

I was thinking "that looks familiar" but I've realised it's just similar enough to the way fount size is expressed when you buy a small amount of type: the size of a small fount (not point size but number of actual separate letters) is expressed in a number of a or A, and then the other letters are in set ratios to that. So you might buy a fount that's 5A-13a or whatever.

Since your colleague admits to knowing no reason why this construction would be more useful or helpful, it seems safe to err on the side of adding back one fucking letter to make one's communication more universally clear. btw, I've never seen "a" used to denote "a.m." by anyone. if it's a thing, it's a very limited thing.

well my colleague is great, so i perhaps wouldn’t do it with the same level of vituperation, but would be v happy to say “no one(*) in the USA has heard of this, in your face, colleague” to her, as she would take it in the right spirit.

(*by which i mean the totally authoritative aimless of ilx.com, no i will not be taking questions at this time)

obviously management/executive types in US corporations hatch all kinds of weird internal jargon for nonsensical reasons, and I am not intimately involved with their multiform communication foibles, but I'd say the chances are very high that this particular idiomatic use is confined to a tiny local tribe and has not spread to anything resembling ordinary use.

broadcast media r&d in atlanta is the micro-climate here.

Hello. I'm trying to write something in the present tense and I'm stuck on a conditional clause:

What is correct?

"That's amazing!", he says...

- If he could, he would have clapped John around the shoulder.
- If he could, he would clap John around the shoulder.

they're both correct but for different situations:

the second belongs in a context like the following:
he told the others that when he found him, if he could, he would clap John around the shoulder

the first is more like:
if he could, he would have clapped John around the shoulder -- but the crowd was too big and he never reached him

so i think you want the second, the first suggests something that might well still happen if conditions turn out right

I think the second would be correct, but very awkward. You may be able to recast it into something more present: He feels a desire to clap John around the shoulder, but understands this is not possible.

feels like there's a suppressed 'have' in the first one i.e. 'If he could (have), he would have..' but that's repetitive, so you leave it out and allow the 'have' in 'would have' to do all the work

so i think actually the opposite of what mark s has said?? i do not say this lightly

i.e. the first is narrating something that happened in the past; the second feels of the present

I agree with Tracer; the second one is in the present so I'd go with that.

Very much with TH and Lily on this, with the obvious caveat that I'm a non-native speaker.

I'd change the clause entirely to "wishing he could clap John around the shoulder", which gets across the fact that he wants to but can't.

i agree about the suppressed "have" and can't work out how tracer's is "opposite" to mine?

As a thought experiment, 'He would clap John around the shoulder if he could' sounds more idiomatic to me than 'He would have clapped John around the shoulder if he could'.

it's not an issue of more or less idiomatic really, you'd use them in different contexts

mark you say 'the first suggests something that might well still happen if conditions turn out right'

but would've-could've feels like the book is closed on that

it's not an issue of more or less idiomatic really, you'd use them in different contexts

I defer to your judgement, of course, it's just that the second sentence sounds off to my ears without the extra 'have'.

ok lol i think i muddled myself (and everyone else) by writing my expanded examples in the opposite order to dog latin's

when i write "so i think you want the second, the first suggests something that might well still happen if conditions turn out right" and when i say "second" i'm referring to dog latin's order but when i say "first" i'm referring to my order! simples!

ffs

sorry abt that everyone, what i shd have said is ""i think you want the second (your second), which suggests something that might well still happen if conditions turn out right"

Tracer is right. In contrast, however, I would actually say (and write) both "have"s.

If he could have [done whatever], he would have [done whatever].

There may be a way to rephrase to get out of the clunkiness even if it takes more words. My philosophy is WARP (Words Are Readers' Pals). Maybe try inverting it, as pomenitul suggested?

He would have clapped John around the shoulder if he could have.

He would have clapped John around the shoulder, if he only could.

He would've clapped John around the shoulder if he could've.

He would have clapped John around the shoulder, but he couldn't.

He would have clapped John around the shoulder, if it were possible.

He would've clapped John around the shoulder, but didn't want people to think he was gay.

He would have clapped John around the shoulder, if he only could. Unfortunately, John was born without shoulders.

tracer is saying use the one without any haves

(i was trying to say this also but fucked it up)