ATTN: Copyeditors and Grammar Fiends

And yes, "families" -- multiple "people" have multiple "families," unless they're all related.

Thank you!

I will one day repay the favour by explaining to you the far-too-subtle difference between "estaba hablando" and "hablaba". That's if I can find a native Spanish speaker to explain it to me first...

Your point about "to look for" and "to see" reminded me that Spanish has a verb for "look for" (buscar) that's separate from "look" (mirar) or "see" (ver).

Is there any language that doesn't?

I don't know any others.

I just remember having to keep that in mind in high-school Spanish.

Yeah, sorry, I'm just thinking this through -- I'd assume most languages have a separate non-visual verb like "search" or "seek." But I suppose there's still space in between for things that mean "search for with your eyes."

By "most" I mean 99% barring unusual or archaic languages I know nothing about.

gotten is the past participle, so technically your supervisor is correct

would (modal) + have (always use have for conditionals, not technically the present perfect even though it looks like it) + gotten (past participle of 'get')

did that poor dog's wounds ever heal?

Yep, Spanish has buscar and mirar, which are pretty much used in the same way as to look and to see, which is what irked me even more about the shoddy statement in the grammar "guide". It stated: "To look for something is to see it."

If only that were true! I WOULDN'T SPEND HALF MY LIFE LOOKING FOR KEYS!

To look FOR, I mean.

Buscar - look for
ver - to see
mirar - to look

gotten is the past participle, so technically your supervisor is correct

would (modal) + have (always use have for conditionals, not technically the present perfect even though it looks like it) + gotten (past participle of 'get')

That's absolutely true in the US, but I don't think Zoe's instincts are wrong at all, since I'm assuming (by her use of the word "duff") that she's British. For instance, the headlines on these articles:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/education/7268778.stm
http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport2/hi/rugby_union/4395169.stm
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/scotland/4648981.stm

Yep, we don't use 'gotten' in Britain. Well, most people don't.

Also in Italian:
look for = cercare
look (at)/ watch = guardare
see = vedere

OOh, it's a relief to see those, thanks jaymc.

I'm just saying that her boss was US-educated, so he would think that is correct!

(Awful headlines, mind you. And perhaps they seem so because 'got' is so common in conversation. Maaaaany times over the past month people have asked me if such-and-such is correct and for a moment things have *seemed* incorrect just because I would never write them down. But in fact, as far as I've been able to make out, they're perfectly "correct" and extremely common in speech. All this is just making me want to study linguistics, frankly...)

Oh yes, I had no doubt that gotten was a correct US usage, which is why (on top of feeling dim) I was careful not to contradict her.

whoops --SHE would think that's correct. sorry for bungling the gender of your boss.

anyway, studying linguistics certainly makes teaching English more efficient.

Is this correct? (I'm asking about the numbers, just in case something else is wrong.)

Most laid-off employees receive compensation packages equal to three-to-six monthly salaries.

No hyphens.

(Except laid-off obviously.)

That's what I thought, but my boss is hyphen-crazy. It looks wrong to me both ways now :(

better: '...equal to between three and six months' salary.'

I suspect that we're almost at a got/gotten tipping point in the UK. Newspapers etc still use 'got' as the past participle, but I think most people under 35 use 'gotten' in their spoken language these days.

Yeah, well, eff under-35s, I say.

i think my favorite paranoid street slang of the past few years is the warning that if you upset the wrong dudes you're gonna "get got"

Most laid-off employees receive compensation packages equal to three-to-six monthly salaries

Woah, hang on. The problem here is that "three-monthly salary" doesn't mean what you're trying to say here. In fact, it would mean ... something really fucking weird. And a six-monthly salary doesn't really bear thinking about.

What you're trying to say, I think, is ... well, what Eyeball Kicks says above (although, if we're being really pedantic, "between three and six months' salary" would exclude three and six months, so you'd want to say "Most laid-off employees receive compensation packages equal to three, four, five or six months' salary", but that would be shit).

should it be "There is no data from XXX available" or "There are no data from XXX available"?

Not even gonna answer that one - sorry!

(OK, I would use 'is', but this specific question leads to very tedious discussion.)

(To avoid such tedium, you might be able to say 'XXX yielded no data', depending on what XXX is and why that stuff is unavailable.)

(I know that 'yielded' is an ugly word, but that's how some people speak. Data people.)

If you want to be really pedantic, it should always be "are." But especially if you're talking about data as an abstract collective thing, synonymous with "information" (rather than as multiple discrete data bits) then I think "is" sounds fine.

With "are" you are 100% safe from abuse, so I say go with that one.

I hate it when I end up making (informed) grammatical decisions according to which group of readers is snottier. Snotty groups assume that if I make a choice that doesn't accord with their idea of correctness, it is because I am ignorant, and I don't want to look ignorant, so I go along with them, even if I think they're wrong. I should get over my fear of so-called pedants who, say, believe that infinitives should never be split.

(or that data is always plural)

yeah, i figured that "are" is correct because data is plural, but also that it would be a tough fight to get it changed because most people probably do think of "data" as synonymous with "information".

Wow, is 'gotten' really a proper word? It sounds so backwards.

Ha, Alba, I always find myself thinking that, and kinda wishing there were some small orthographic mark that communicated "I am 100% aware of what you're thinking and have made a thought-out decision to the contrary"

(I sometimes wish that were possible in rhetoric and argument as well, now that I think about it)

Kind of the opposite of (sic).

'data' is plural; 'staff' is singular. Believe it or not.

Yeah, we know.

The legitimacy of 'gotten' is entirely unlooked for.

should it be "There is no data from XXX available" or "There are no data from XXX available"?

Hah. When I've got my newspaper hat on: the former. When I've got my psychology hat on: the latter. Indeed, it's this kind of thing that makes me want to remove my newspaper hat, jump up and down on it angrily, take a shit in it, burn it and never think of it again.

(Actually, no. That and myriad other considerations. Oh, shitted-hat day will be a happy one.)

Actually, the data thing and Alba's idea reminds me that I once let through a headline on a comment piece that went something like, "[Short-lived controversial issue] is a bacteria in modern thought", pausing only to think, "It should be bacterium, really, but come on". A few days' later one of these angry emails went round, saying that when such errors went unnoticed it was an embarrassment to the paper. I meekly protested that, while it may well have been an error, it was a considered error.

Is 'different than' acceptable anywhere in the entire universe?

Not that we know of.

Are "occurred" and "occurring" the correct Britisher spellings? (I know they're the correct US ones as I'm led to believe the US helpfully has the double-if-stressed rule for such things, but there's no rule in the UK, you just have to remember.)

Economist style guide (the first to come up on google) says to double the Rs, but all those consonants just made my eyes go funny.

Thanks!

Oop, never mind, they're in Fowler's (yes, double). Thought there'd be so many of the buggers they wouldn't merit individual entries.

I am supposed to go through someone's thesis looking for typos but I'm not allowed to correct any punctuation, which is driving me mad, as I keep getting too distracted by erratic comma placement to look at the actual words.