ATTN: Copyeditors and Grammar Fiends

if the broken paragraph was many lines long i might not do it this way, but if it's this short yr talking abt the eye taking it in in one blink

Are these captions for people speaking, or is like a silent voiceover kind of deal?

(xpost)

Hmm, I think you're right. I did it the first way without thinking when writing the script in a doc, but it looks fussy in the gif. I'll go with your suggestion, thanks.

Are the ellipsis going to be visible?

It's just a little promotional gif - no sound.

Yeah, either way, I'd have ellipses on screen as written above.

in that case I would have a space after 'screen' (but again I think that's just personal preference).

INVITE as a noun, c/d

there seems to be a history of it, but also i hate it. i mean INVITATION is right there (as is INVITEE, for even more horrifying usages)

asking a colleague if they got an “invitation” to a meeting or a zoom call feels inappropriately festive or momentous to me - “invite” sounds right to me in that situation

Either tbh

^^^canceled and cancelled xp

but maybe you're right

Bet that the aussies call it an invie or something

Theyd call british disgust at same the pommie tsks of invie maybe

the sad bells of invies

it’s a weird area

sometimes i call my work planner my “diary” and sometimes my “calendar”

people who call it their “outlook” are disgusting dogs imo

What if you are....using outlook?

Invite is even pronounced differently than invite.

Yes, it’s evolved like the noun version of embed in that regard. I’m at peace with both. In fact I don’t really see why people get het up about verbs becoming nouns.

Fuck an "invite". I'm not going.

ive probably said this before in this thread but the way words can cheekily step out of their parsed category is one of the excellent things about the english language (and it isn't just nouns and verbs)

my off-the-cuff theory is that it's bcz english doesn't really deploy word-endings as declensions or conjugations but the why of it matters less than the fact that it happens and it's poetry

also poetry: the shift of the accent in invite and invite

Naw, “invitation” is way too associated with things you want to attend, and has a valence of being something extended in honour and attended as a privilege.

The “INvite” to the cross-functional alignment meeting, OTOH, is extended in the spirit of mutual suffering and perfunctory ritual obligation, and I feel like the word reflects that.

See also: pre-sént (v) and prés-ent (n).

There way seems to be a tendency to stress the first syllable on the noun version of verb/noun words

Present, invite, embed and record all follow this, at least.

I think some people do 'access' that way too, and I quite like it, but most of us just stress the first syllable regardless.

Lots more here, in fact:
https://www.english-at-home.com/pronunciation/noun-and-verb-syllable-stress/

When they begin the beguine

When they present the present

https://moteefe.com/store/science11/48527977-YAll-Sucker-Need-Science-T-Shirt?color=black&product=men-s-t-shirt

Why will no-one correct “a myriad of” in any book, ever, anymore? Is “myriad” no longer an adjective?

*weeps*

Well, googling tells me that the noun form is fine & actually predates the adjective.

*tears of pedantry*

A myriad originally denoted the specific numeric quantity 'ten thousand'. Over time, it acquired a much less specific meaning, denoting 'an unspecified large number or quantity'. In this usage the whole amount being described is treated as a unit, and it is analogous to other unitary measures such as a bushel of peas, a handful of dust, a cup of water, or a lot of people. Used in this way it has a myriad of applications.

Apparently.

old-timey pictures of the sphinx which are terrible

^^^or shd it have been "old-timey pictures of the sphinix that are terrible"

when my if…. book came out martin skidmore said (among nicer things) that it was full of me getting the which/that choice wrong -- basically (ppl who hire proofing editors close yr eyes NOW) i go more by feel and sound and not some dumb rule (but what even is the rule lol): here i was likely just bodyswerving the repeated "th" and i'd do it again copper

I'm sure there is a proper rule, but without checking I can't quite articulate what I think it is. I'd say the thread title should be "that".

I slightly prefer “that” there but lol mark’s post otm.

Also sphinix another typo uo can use

Spinix from the ashes

Fat finger salute

Oh yeah I had a question the other day, how do people feel about the word “distaff”?

I think 18c English novelists were right about "that" and "which" and "the which" and "but that" all being essentially musical choices and that the post 18c copyeditor standardization of the rules on this question has been bad for prose. attend ye to the music which causeth your numbers to sing mark s

Asking for a friend because I just remembered a long ago somewhat amusing incident of someone we know being asked to remove it by a newspaper of record.
(xp)

The rule I know comes from Harry Fieldhouse's Everyman's Good English Guide:

The need or lack of need for a comma is a convenient test of whether the sense requires that or which.

He goes on to say:

If the pronoun can be left out altogether the matter is clinched in favour of that (though that cannot always be omitted) - There's the shop window (that) I told you about.

strongly prefer "there's the shop window, the one I was telling you about, not sure if you remember"

This is looser in the UK, I think. I had restrictive/nonrestrictive drilled into my head in journalism school but I am not doctrinaire about it in casual speech and informal writing.

"A date which will live in infamy" violates the rule, but I don't much care.

which is a building

which is on fire

I don't use "distaff" and don't think it works well anymore because its root sense is about women's proper role being domestic (specifically spinning/weaving)

the person who introduced me to distaff was a canadian cyberpunk feminist who entirely used it not to be taken seriously so

I don't think, after all this time, that I grasp the which / that distinction.

Somewhat happily it appears that other people aren't bothered about it either.

Meanwhile, separately: Guardian style, almost always omitting 'that' as a conjunction, often creates inelegance and confusion. I would never do this myself, given a choice. (If I wrote for the Guardian presumably they would muck up my writing, but I don't have that honour.)

oh i take "that" out of my own copy like crazy, it saves a word in tight word-counts!

and other ppl's also lol

Feel like "which" has a subordinating function, "that" is kind of a determiner that (do u see?) can often be omitted.

Much of 20th century newspaper style decisions had to do with space, and almost always erred on the side of omission / conciseness when there was a choice to be made.

Hence the AP rejection of serial commas, hence the rule forbidding forms of "to be in headlines," hence a preference for closed compounds.

By 1995 or 2000, there really was no reason for this. Even if the internet had not been emerging, DTP software and inexpensive paper would still have allowed print outlets to use all the space they needed.

The old listserv COPYEDITING-L had an injoke about being a HARPy ("hyphens are readers' pals"). HARPies tended to resist concision for concision's sake, and advocated for using more ink when doing so aided clarity.

My own style tends toward more words, rather than fewer. I leave in a lot of "thats" that a more terse stylist would delete.

Like that one ^

So Peter Seller's-almost mother-in-law Judy Garland sang about "The Man I Love," which (do u see?) could have been "The Man That I Love" if George and Ira had wanted another syllable, but not "The Man, Which I Love" or even "The Manwhich, I Love," which (do u see?) of course would be "The Man, Who(m) I Love." In the first case, she is narrowing it down to which (uh oh, so confusing) man she loves, in the second case, we presumably already know who this man is, and she is giving us the extra info that she loves him.