Not that we know of.
― Eyeball Kicks, Thursday, 27 November 2008 10:23 (fifteen years ago) link
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!
― ..··¨ rush ~°~ push ~°~ ca$h ¨··.. (a passing spacecadet), Sunday, 30 November 2008 16:31 (fifteen years ago) link
Oop, never mind, they're in Fowler's (yes, double). Thought there'd be so many of the buggers they wouldn't merit individual entries.
― ..··¨ rush ~°~ push ~°~ ca$h ¨··.. (a passing spacecadet), Sunday, 30 November 2008 16:34 (fifteen years ago) link
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.
― ..··¨ rush ~°~ push ~°~ ca$h ¨··.. (a passing spacecadet), Sunday, 30 November 2008 16:35 (fifteen years ago) link
Copyeditors, grammar fiends, what do you think of this sentence, from The New Yorker's profile of Naomi Klein?
Klein and Lewis agree on most political issues, but Klein seems more ready to break things; more cynical; angrier.
― Manchego Bay (G00blar), Friday, 5 December 2008 15:17 (fifteen years ago) link
I parsed it differently at first -- as "... more ready to break things: more cynical, angrier". So my first suggestion was: why not "angrier, more cynical"? Then I read it again and I don't mind it as much. I'd be interested as to how many other people misread it at first.
― grimly fiendish, Friday, 5 December 2008 15:28 (fifteen years ago) link
ewww I had not seen that yet and I DO NOT LIKE IT AT ALL.
― quincie, Friday, 5 December 2008 15:32 (fifteen years ago) link
I don't understand why semi-cols instead of some other choice, there, but I don't mind it. I am a "grammar by instinct" person, though, rather than "by the book", so I can never explain anything.
― One Community Service Mummy, hold the Straightedge Merman (Laurel), Friday, 5 December 2008 15:33 (fifteen years ago) link
I think it's a matter of emphasis. Semi-colons suggest separate-but-related thoughts occuring to the writer after the fact, like someone spinning out an improvisation. A colon implies the entire sentence has built to the following list. And merely using commas throughout would read slightly unbalanced, uncontrolled.
― SongOfSam, Friday, 5 December 2008 15:44 (fifteen years ago) link
It wouldn't read unbalanced or controlled to me (your last sentence doesn't, and it deploys commas in the exact same situation); it'd read like a list of three things with the "and" omitted for style/flow. She seems:
- more ready to break things- more cynical- angrier
Grimly, one reason for "more cynical" to come before "angrier" (apart from the order the writer wanted the ideas in) is that it keeps the two "more X" constructions together.
― nabisco, Friday, 5 December 2008 18:47 (fifteen years ago) link
Yes, absolutely: my problem with that was only when I was misreading the first semicolon as a colon.
― grimly fiendish, Friday, 5 December 2008 19:49 (fifteen years ago) link
that sentence is horrible
― Mr. Que, Friday, 5 December 2008 19:50 (fifteen years ago) link
I am oddly satisfied that my discomfort has been legitimized by the fine jury of this thread.
― Manchego Bay (G00blar), Friday, 5 December 2008 20:45 (fifteen years ago) link
This construction I find more and more grating as I get older:
Just because X doesn't mean Y.
What's most grating is that I've caught myself saying it a few times. It's wrong, and it's wrong in neither a cute nor a literarily defiant way.
― PANTYMAN (libcrypt), Friday, 5 December 2008 23:27 (fifteen years ago) link
Huh. I don't really identify that as a problematic wrongness, to be honest, but I've never thought much about it either way. "Just because I gave you a present doesn't mean you have to open it now" -- this seems so wound into people's everyday speech that I have trouble considering it "wrong," as opposed to maybe "colloquial."
― nabisco, Friday, 5 December 2008 23:33 (fifteen years ago) link
I mean, I see the wrongness you're pointing to, but the construction itself is pretty well recognized in its standard meaning.
― nabisco, Friday, 5 December 2008 23:34 (fifteen years ago) link
"Problematic"? English pedantry threads aren't kept lively by doe-eyed future educators, you know.
― PANTYMAN (libcrypt), Friday, 5 December 2008 23:41 (fifteen years ago) link
Traditionalists would see this as a garden variety list or series, to be punctuated according to rule as: "more ready to break things, more cynical, angrier."
Because punctuation should be maleable to the writer's purpose and was originally designed to guide and assist readers rather than impose fast and hard rules, I can accept the semicolons as indicating slightly longer pauses, and therefore greater emphasis, than commas.
This New Yorker sentence simply represents a variation on Madison Avenue adspeak, which is notoriously where the following sort of useage was first introduced: "Buy Trojan(tm) condoms. They're better. Stronger. More colorful. Always ribbed -- for her pleasure!"
― Aimless, Saturday, 6 December 2008 04:21 (fifteen years ago) link
Doe anyone know if there's a word for a sentence that starts and ends with the same word? the internet is being unhelpful in this regard.
― Background Zombie (CharlieNo4), Monday, 15 December 2008 10:55 (fifteen years ago) link
googled: sentence begins ends "same word"
the answer: epanadiplosis
― Eyeball Kicks, Monday, 15 December 2008 12:31 (fifteen years ago) link
Crikey! Thanks.
― Background Zombie (CharlieNo4), Monday, 15 December 2008 13:40 (fifteen years ago) link
This sentence from a story in The Guardian about Chris Hoy (http://www.guardian.co.uk/sport/2008/dec/15/chris-hoy-bbc-sports-personality) is troubling me:
The six-year-old, who fell in love with cycling after watching the movie ET, began competing on the track only at 18.
I don't like the first comma. It seems to suggest that Chris Hoy is actually only six years old now.
― The Resistible Force (Nasty, Brutish & Short), Monday, 15 December 2008 16:00 (fifteen years ago) link
Yeah, that's a problem. But just omitting the commas (it'd have to be both) turns it into a strange and different construction with a different thrust -- not so much wrong as just strange and presumption -- so it'd seem to call for reframing the sense of the thing entirely.
― nabisco, Monday, 15 December 2008 16:55 (fifteen years ago) link
Hoy, who fell in love with cycling at the age of six after watching the movie ET, began competing on the track only at 18.
― total mormon cockblock extravaganza (jaymc), Monday, 15 December 2008 17:01 (fifteen years ago) link
This is an exact syntactic paraphrase of a sentence I am editing:
Our company through its partners have most efficient possible production than any most suppliers to offer the necessary support.
(I'm pretty sure this was written by a British person.)
― nabisco, Tuesday, 23 December 2008 21:11 (fifteen years ago) link
^ That's not a grammar question, I'm just taking a whine break from many, many pages of similar stuff
― nabisco, Tuesday, 23 December 2008 21:12 (fifteen years ago) link
Urgh, no, no. He's six! He can't be 18 as well!
― Not the real Village People, Tuesday, 23 December 2008 21:41 (fifteen years ago) link
^^ you've lost touch with your inner child
― nabisco, Tuesday, 23 December 2008 21:44 (fifteen years ago) link
gl with that stuff nab, looks like hell
― "made smashable" (k3vin k.), Tuesday, 23 December 2008 21:52 (fifteen years ago) link
"special in her own way" -- I can almost see how you can be special in someone else's way, but it seems unnecessarily qualified
― nabisco, Tuesday, 23 December 2008 23:28 (fifteen years ago) link
I just want to apologize for suggesting that British people were responsible for the thing I was (and still am) complaining about. It was Australians wot done it.
― nabisco, Wednesday, 24 December 2008 00:33 (fifteen years ago) link
"special in her own way"
yes! i hate this.
― horseshoe, Wednesday, 24 December 2008 00:45 (fifteen years ago) link
"in its own special way," too.
― horseshoe, Wednesday, 24 December 2008 00:46 (fifteen years ago) link
"And if you're one of the many, many people who've been following the perky pair's post-Big Brother career with interest..."
This is right, isn't it? To my tired eyes, "who's" doesn't work - but I think this might be one of those either/or taste-based issues.
― Background Zombie (CharlieNo4), Thursday, 8 January 2009 10:06 (fifteen years ago) link
Your sentence shouldn't be right, but it is.
― Tracer Hand, Thursday, 8 January 2009 10:26 (fifteen years ago) link
Who have -> who've ... it's an ugly contraction, but it is right, yes.
― Special topics: Disco, The Common Market (grimly fiendish), Thursday, 8 January 2009 10:47 (fifteen years ago) link
Sentences like that have always confused me, i.e. "One of (x) have" rather than "One of (x) has". I'd have thought the skeleton of the sentence is "(singular subject) (verb)", and I'd have thought that verb would agree.
― Tracer Hand, Thursday, 8 January 2009 10:55 (fifteen years ago) link
Oh: it would have helped if I'd read the entire sentence. Didn't actually look at the "one of" bit at the beginning. In which case: my gut instinct would be to stick with "have", because although the subject is "one", it's not really like we're talking about one single person; the subject is arguably the more awkward concept "one of the many". The Guardian, IIRC, uses this model, eg "One in three ILX0rs have posted to the Copyeditors and Grammar Fiends thread", which I think makes sense from a semantic point of view because, again, we're not talking about one person; we're talking about 33% of ILX0rs.
My paper, though, would go with "one of (x) has"; a style I don't agree with (except in the situations where it really is talking about one person and one person only) but obviously adhere to when I'm at work.
Sorry for not reading the thing properly first time round. Charlie: I think that if you don't have a house style, stick with "who've". Or recast the sentence completely: "And if, like many, many others, you've been following ..."
― Special topics: Disco, The Common Market (grimly fiendish), Thursday, 8 January 2009 11:10 (fifteen years ago) link
xpostNah, but the verb isn't connected to the "one", it's:
If you're one of <the many people who've been following them>
if that makes sense..it's the same construction as:
If you're one of <the New York football Giants>
i.e., what I've put in brackets is a stand-alone group of which the full sentence is discussing membership.
― Gorgeous Preppy (G00blar), Thursday, 8 January 2009 11:14 (fifteen years ago) link
One in three ilxors hasposted to the thread.
but
If you're one of the three ilxors who have posted to the thread...
― Gorgeous Preppy (G00blar), Thursday, 8 January 2009 11:16 (fifteen years ago) link
fuck. has posted
Eh? Those two sentences mean totally different things, obviously ... not sure I get your point.
― Special topics: Disco, The Common Market (grimly fiendish), Thursday, 8 January 2009 11:17 (fifteen years ago) link
I do.
― Alba, Thursday, 8 January 2009 11:19 (fifteen years ago) link
Your example:
One in three ILX0rs have posted to the Copyeditors and Grammar Fiends thread.
is a different construction from Charlie's original, which was:
If you're one of the many, many people who've been following the perky pair's post-Big Brother career with interest..
I'd disagree with have in your example, because one is the singular subject for that verb. But I'd keep have in Charlie's example, because it rightfully belongs to the plural people. xpost
― Gorgeous Preppy (G00blar), Thursday, 8 January 2009 11:20 (fifteen years ago) link
Oh, right, I see ... but nah, I still think the same rule applies to both, for the reason I stated above: "One in three ILX0rs" doesn't mean "one ILX0r". I mean, if it was "two in six ILX0rs", we'd say "have" ... and, er, that's exactly what it is saying.
The problem is that the syntax is trying to do something different from the underlying grammatical structure; I'd argue that the Guardian/Grimly solution, although wrong from a purely grammatical point of view, would make sense to more readers.
― Special topics: Disco, The Common Market (grimly fiendish), Thursday, 8 January 2009 11:26 (fifteen years ago) link
Grimly -
= equivalent to Charlie's original question, which I agree with G00blar is best treated as "one of <the three ilxors who have posted to the thread>"
One in three ilxors has/have posted to the thread.
= The kind of issue you are talking about, treated differently by The Guardian and your newspaper. A red herring, when it comes to Charlie's question.
[xpost]
― Alba, Thursday, 8 January 2009 11:26 (fifteen years ago) link
Yes, Gooblar explained that. I get the distinction you're trying to draw, but I think it's the same fundamental issue, ie the grammatical subject "one" meaning -- fundamentally -- more than one person.
― Special topics: Disco, The Common Market (grimly fiendish), Thursday, 8 January 2009 11:30 (fifteen years ago) link
Actually, we're parsing Charlie's sentence in ever-so-slightly different ways, I think (which don't actually matter when it comes to meaning): I can see why we're disagreeing, but I'm not sure I have the functional language to explain it any more. This is where I'm really tempted to produce two different sentence trees to explain it, but that would take me a long fucking time, and time is something I really don't have right now :)
― Special topics: Disco, The Common Market (grimly fiendish), Thursday, 8 January 2009 11:32 (fifteen years ago) link
Ah, I see now; the "one in three ilxors" doesn't necessarily mean "one ilxor", it's a ratio, and suggests many people...my point about the difference in subjects in the two constructions stands tho!
― Gorgeous Preppy (G00blar), Thursday, 8 January 2009 11:32 (fifteen years ago) link
xpost to self ... which doesn't actually matter? Depends on whether "different ways" or "the fact we are parsing in different ways" is the subject. Christ.
― Special topics: Disco, The Common Market (grimly fiendish), Thursday, 8 January 2009 11:33 (fifteen years ago) link