(b.2) And the correcting impulse was usually just a matter of taking the train home from proofreading work and still being in proofreading mindspace and wanting to mark up every ad in the car
― nabisco, Monday, 25 August 2008 17:08 (fifteen years ago) link
i know this is v impt, but could people stop using "schwag" for "swag"? kthxbye.
― gabbneb, Saturday, 30 August 2008 15:02 (fifteen years ago) link
Is there a thread expressly for whinging about English language transgressions? I'm hissing like a pressure cooker.
― the usual olfactory abuse (Autumn Almanac), Wednesday, 17 September 2008 08:08 (fifteen years ago) link
When you require an overhead activity to be undertaken, ...
^ Subjunctive mood? Or should I start the sentence again?
― You are wrong (Autumn Almanac), Friday, 19 September 2008 06:31 (fifteen years ago) link
WAHT DOES THAT EVEN MEAN?
― quincie, Friday, 19 September 2008 15:19 (fifteen years ago) link
Wanky business talk. I think I rewrote it in the end.
― You are wrong (Autumn Almanac), Friday, 19 September 2008 21:03 (fifteen years ago) link
Where do we stand on blog vs weblog, (noun) bloggers (noun), to blog, blogging (verb) blog post vs blog posting (noun) etc.
In a linguistically conservative economics publication.
What do the newspapers do?
I don't like blog as a verb, myself, but I'm not sure what else to use,
― Jamie T Smith, Wednesday, 24 September 2008 13:49 (fifteen years ago) link
bloggingblog (noun) collection of articles, (verb) action of publishing an article to the blog: "I just blogged about that"
^^^ Guardian style guide.
― Raw Patrick, Wednesday, 24 September 2008 13:55 (fifteen years ago) link
Yeah. Thanks. The Times don't even have it in theirs.
― Jamie T Smith, Wednesday, 24 September 2008 14:06 (fifteen years ago) link
post wins vs. posting i'd think
― Tracer Hand, Wednesday, 24 September 2008 14:17 (fifteen years ago) link
I don't like blog as a verb, myself, but I'm not sure what else to use
You'd have to add words, basically, so that "he blogs about the election" becomes "he maintains a blog about the election" or "he covers the election on his blog" or similar ...
I think the issue with this isn't linguistic so much as, like, philosophical -- i.e., do you really think of blogging as a form of writing that just happens to be done on a blog, or do you think of blogging as a distinct activity that is functionally different from, e.g., "she writes about the issue on her blog." I like blogging as a verb because I think it really is a distinct activity in a distinct context, and it's nice to have a word that captures that.
― nabisco, Wednesday, 24 September 2008 17:50 (fifteen years ago) link
Considering 'blog' is a recently made-up word, it probably doesn't matter.
― You should be an artist, in in your shower. (Autumn Almanac), Wednesday, 24 September 2008 21:25 (fifteen years ago) link
Cf. "journal" as a verb.
― jaymc, Wednesday, 24 September 2008 21:41 (fifteen years ago) link
do you really think of blogging as a form of writing
no.
― synaptic knob (grimly fiendish), Wednesday, 24 September 2008 21:54 (fifteen years ago) link
which is right?
The ___ project was conceived in the late 1980s as a “multimedia-based ___ experience,”
or
The ___ project was conceived of in the late 1980s as a “multimedia-based ___ experience,”
the latter seems correct but also awkward, i guess because it's in passive voice? i can't just say it was conceived, right, because it means baby-makin'?
― metametadata (n/a), Thursday, 25 September 2008 20:36 (fifteen years ago) link
____s are specific details i took out for no particular reason
Whether you can conceive an idea is perhaps debatable, although I would argue that #1 is totally legit.
#2, however, is a big NO NO NONO BOXCAR to me.
― Vampire romances depend on me (Laurel), Thursday, 25 September 2008 20:38 (fifteen years ago) link
why not rephrase it?
― Aimless, Thursday, 25 September 2008 20:39 (fifteen years ago) link
there isn't really a group or person listed as having created the project, so can't really shift it into active tense
― metametadata (n/a), Thursday, 25 September 2008 20:43 (fifteen years ago) link
transpose to: 'proposed', or perhaps 'initiated'
― Aimless, Thursday, 25 September 2008 20:45 (fifteen years ago) link
yeah that'll work fine. i typed "intitiated" at first
― metametadata (n/a), Thursday, 25 September 2008 20:45 (fifteen years ago) link
I don't see that second one as quite the calamity Laurel does -- it was conceived of in the late 80s, no big. (There's nothing particularly wrong or unusual about winding UP WITH two prepositions in a row, and I'm not sure who'd balk at, say, "the project was dreamed UP IN the late 80s" or whatever) -- in any case the easier rewriting route for avoiding it would be just changing the verb
xpost AND THAT WAS DONE, HOORAY
― nabisco, Thursday, 25 September 2008 20:47 (fifteen years ago) link
xp Is what you're objecting to the two prepositions next to each other ("of in")? I wouldn't say that's wrong per se, just not totally elegant.
― jaymc, Thursday, 25 September 2008 20:48 (fifteen years ago) link
yeah, it just read awkwardly, then i got confused about whether "conceived" was ok instead of "conceived of" or if i was saying something dirty by accident
― metametadata (n/a), Thursday, 25 September 2008 20:50 (fifteen years ago) link
Weren't we just talking a while ago about how the double prepositions thing is so American, that it sounds really weird to British-Englishers?
― Vampire romances depend on me (Laurel), Thursday, 25 September 2008 20:52 (fifteen years ago) link
What about Churchill's famous retort "This is the kind of arrant pedantry up with which I will not put"? Or are you going to claim it's because his mom was American?
― jaymc, Thursday, 25 September 2008 21:01 (fifteen years ago) link
That is kind of a problematic example, though, obviously.
But I can't say I've ever noticed British writers avoiding any of the many, many situations in which that comes up quite normally.
(Okay how is this the one time on ILX where we don't have British people rushing in to go on about their linguistic habits?)
― nabisco, Thursday, 25 September 2008 21:27 (fifteen years ago) link
It's 10:30 their time; give people a chance to get back from the pub!
― i am the small cat (HI DERE), Thursday, 25 September 2008 21:29 (fifteen years ago) link
I don't know, I just remember people saying it was crazy, it must be American.
― Vampire romances depend on me (Laurel), Thursday, 25 September 2008 21:30 (fifteen years ago) link
Wait, inadvertent proof there: Brits would totally say "go on about"
― nabisco, Thursday, 25 September 2008 21:31 (fifteen years ago) link
Ha, I assumed "in to go on about" was intentional.
― jaymc, Thursday, 25 September 2008 21:42 (fifteen years ago) link
("in to" was, "on about" was, as they say, accident-gravy)
― nabisco, Thursday, 25 September 2008 21:42 (fifteen years ago) link
aren't you that nabisco off of the internet?
(this was incredibly common in the north-west of england, where i grew up; so much so that i remember arguing with a friend who swore blind it was the correct usage, eg "that fuckin' twat off of the telly -- what a fuckin' twat!"
for mildly comedic riffing on the theme, check out any issue of Viz comic; the current one has something about "so-and-so off of out of something-or-other". of course, it's arguable that "off" isn't prepositional here but adjectival ... anyway.)
― synaptic knob (grimly fiendish), Thursday, 25 September 2008 21:47 (fifteen years ago) link
― nabisco, Friday, 26 September 2008 07:27 (18 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink
Americans are the weird ones in the English-speaking world. What you call 'British' rules are in fact followed by every country outside north America where English is the primary language.
― You should be an artist, in in your shower. (Autumn Almanac), Thursday, 25 September 2008 21:53 (fifteen years ago) link
... he said, proving my point
― nabisco, Thursday, 25 September 2008 21:56 (fifteen years ago) link
lol, you have failed the .xls test
― i am the small cat (HI DERE), Thursday, 25 September 2008 21:58 (fifteen years ago) link
oh shit, right
― nabisco, Thursday, 25 September 2008 21:59 (fifteen years ago) link
Actually, this one bugs me to no end. The "of" here is strictly unnecessary.
― jaymc, Thursday, 25 September 2008 22:00 (fifteen years ago) link
Haha, I should've read the rest of your post!
― jaymc, Thursday, 25 September 2008 22:01 (fifteen years ago) link
the population of the United States and Canada is four times larger than the population of the UK and Australia, and the primary english-speaking population of the US is about twice as large as the primary english-speaking population of the rest of the world, thanks for playing, next
― gabbneb, Thursday, 25 September 2008 22:01 (fifteen years ago) link
FIN
― i am the small cat (HI DERE), Thursday, 25 September 2008 22:02 (fifteen years ago) link
All superfluous prepositions get up my arse, e.g.: 'His artificial leg prevented him from jumping.'What the FUCK is the word 'from' doing there??
xp Thanks for the shallow elitism gabbneb, much appreciated.
― You should be an artist, in in your shower. (Autumn Almanac), Thursday, 25 September 2008 22:02 (fifteen years ago) link
"Out of" is a Britishism, right? As in "so-and-so out of EastEnders"?
― jaymc, Thursday, 25 September 2008 22:03 (fifteen years ago) link
It's slang, though. I doubt any language reference anywhere would submit that as correct usage.
― You should be an artist, in in your shower. (Autumn Almanac), Thursday, 25 September 2008 22:04 (fifteen years ago) link
'His artificial leg prevented him from jumping.'What the FUCK is the word 'from' doing there??
this is the same shit that prevents y'all from understanding that "different to" is simply rong.
― gabbneb, Thursday, 25 September 2008 22:12 (fifteen years ago) link
Umm I really don't think this argument is necessary, the only thing that quoted bit of mine asserted is that when we start talking about Brit vs. American usage there kinda tend to be British people around and it tends to become a 600-post long thing, which I'm not sure anyone here would dispute and seems to be happening anyway even despite the absence of a bunch of British folk
xpost "His artificial leg prevented HIS jumping" is how we would phrase that if we wanted to excise the "from," since "his jumping" can function as a noun and "him jumping" does not function that way for us. Doesn't much matter, I suppose. Although I think we preserve the preposition in that role because, umm, in a great deal of cases it quite clearly matters, as British usage recognizes in the cases where its used: i.e., we'll both say cheese is different FROM/TO milk, because it means something else to say "it's different milk." (Permit me a moment of American snark in noting that at least we have decided on which preposition goes with "different.")
But so I actually think a lot of US/UK usage divides come down to something along those lines -- e.g., if something OFTEN has a function we will include it in a logical system and use it, whereas the UK seems more likely to omit something except when its function is significant. Like serial commas, which the UK uses WHEN they're important, and we use BECAUSE they're important, if that makes sense. Like we'll ADOPT a rule, and the UK will APPLY a rule when needed.
― nabisco, Thursday, 25 September 2008 22:13 (fifteen years ago) link
what nabisco said
― gabbneb, Thursday, 25 September 2008 22:14 (fifteen years ago) link
Although I think we preserve the preposition in that role because, umm, in a great deal of cases it quite clearly matters
I think in this specific situation, it depends on whether you want to emphasize "him" or "jumping" as the object of "prevented."
― jaymc, Thursday, 25 September 2008 22:15 (fifteen years ago) link
Well it prevented HIM from jumping, it didn't prevent jumping in the abstract. But you see that omission in Brit English plenty and it's fairly clear and strikes my American ears as a nice bit of regional color, so I don't much care about it...
― nabisco, Thursday, 25 September 2008 22:19 (fifteen years ago) link
You just don't know the power of that artificial leg.
― i am the small cat (HI DERE), Thursday, 25 September 2008 22:20 (fifteen years ago) link