ATTN: Copyeditors and Grammar Fiends

non silvatici sed barbari

you got me there i'm a business grad

OK, oops, I got the US/UK tendency the wrong way round per Fowler (writing in 1926 or 1965, not sure the date of this entry): "Latin plurals sometimes become singular English words (e.g. agenda, stamina) and data is often so treated in the US; in Britain this is still considered a solecism, though it may occasionally appear."

I am still inclined to think that this judgment has now switched round: that upper-end US style sheets would be more tenaciously classicist and/or respectful of loan-words, Brit ones more laissez faire and/or johnbullish.

My stamina for this discussion are depleted. Time for supper.

I am still inclined to think that this judgment has now switched round: that upper-end US style sheets would be more tenaciously classicist and/or respectful of loan-words, Brit ones more laissez faire and/or johnbullish.

yeah this is definitely my experience in science

i was a singular data dude all my life until i started publishing in journals. still feel such a prig using plural.

Surely nobody says that's the people I was telling you about? As for that's me, I remember discussing this a lot in Italy. Where we would say "Hello, it's me" when arriving home (and calling out to someone known but unseen), they would say "Sono io" which is like "I am me" (or more literally "I am I"), which seems weird.

People do say "That's the people I was telling you about"! And when they don't, they might say - much more often in fact - "There's the people". You wouldn't usually write that, formally. But nobody says the correct versions: "There're the people", "Those're the people". The former is impossible to say, the latter indistinguishable in most accents from "There are".

"Thoser" sounds different enough from "therer", or at least no more similar than a bunch of other words that we manage to tell apart?

People do say "That's the people I was telling you about"!

That's crazy, I've never heard that!

nobody says the correct versions: "There're the people",

uh yes they do, here anyway

Xp: What? I would definitely say "Those are...". Maybe this another GB/US split. I would agree that I generally say There's before plurals, though, instead of There are.

(my xp was to eyeball kicks)

people are going through dumb mental contortions to pretend that other people don't say "that's who I was telling you about"

there're is v pronounceable fyi

I wasn't very happy with that example, but I've def heard it, and plenty of other instances of using "it's" or "that's" with a plural complement which I can't recall exactly right now

I mean if someone said "who are those people over there" I'd follow their word choice and reply "those are" or "they're", but if they said "who's that over there" (indicating more than one person) I'd probably say "that's the people from xyz"

(I'd also definitely say "that's Frank and Bob and Sandy" and would be surprised to hear "those are", but it sounds more natural in a US accent so maybe it is another example of ILX's Great Divide)

uhh but even if you don't think you've heard "that is (plural noun)", you might agree that it's a lot better than "that are", which is completely wrong in English but not in other languages, and I've completely forgotten my point now, if I ever had one. someone please tell me if I am misusing the grammatical concept of "complement" btw

(Not that it's important, but my last post had a big mistake in it: the final two words should be "Those are", and I meant that unless you speak very slowly "Those are" is the same as "Those're", no matter which words you think you're saying.)

'that's the people i was telling you about'

!

― RIP Big Muam mißya til I'm Libya (darraghmac), Thursday, October 27, 2011 12:53 PM Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

"The Jews"

Being a westerner, I always favor "them's the folks like I was telling you about".

Brackets vs. Dashes vs. Commas

I'm never sure when to use which and usually end up guessing when it comes to parenthetical sentences. Any easy rules for this?

By brackets do you mean parentheses?

Commas, like in this very sentence, are for small pauses that flow. Dashes for bigger breaks -- like this -- that fuck with the flow of a sentence. Parentheses for longer clarifying remarks that don't fit with the narrative of the paragraph (a word whose first reference in the OED is from the 13th century).

This story is heartbreaking, but there's a sentence in here that made me pause.

Stephanie Decker, 36, lost one leg above the knee and the other above the ankle, and broke seven ribs, but her two children, Dominic, 8, and Reese, 5, were unharmed after a twister with 175 mph winds leveled their house in Marysville, Ind.

I'm assuming that she lost her leg below her thigh and below her shin? I mean, I understand what her injury was, but saying that she lost something above her ankle -- well, she lost her ankle too.

It reminds me of that Flight of the Conchords where they talk about how a guy got his body cut off from his dick.

that is really awkward phrasing

I trust this email finds you well, apologies if this finds you incorrectly.

Wish they'd gone for the full on zeugma - I trust this email finds you well and correctly.

What would the gerund form of gif be? Giffing (as in "making a gif")?

Gif is a noun, so I don't think you can make it a gerund?

Let's say I'm verbing "gif," though.

Well then yes

i'd actually avoid the second f if we MUST gerundize

GIFing, then?

yeah i'm kinda feelin that tbh but couldn't really say why

imo you should do the opposite of the regular rules to emphasize that it's an invention of your own/a neologism

In my mind, it's because GIF is an acronym, and trying to make it conform to spelling/pronunciation rules by adding another "f" seems to distort the integrity of the acronym.

xpost!

iirc wouldn't "giffing" only be a gerrund if it is, itself, used as a noun, e.g. "the giffing of Downton Abbey"

Yeah:

Excessive giffing will lead to blindness. (gerund, used as a noun)
When I saw him yesterday he was giffing in the kitchen. (present particple, used as a verb)

UK English routinely adds a consonant when you form the gerund (focussing; travelling) so there's technically a case for giffing (or GIFfing), also I suppose this helps avoid rhyming it with eg wifing or lifing (not that I've ever encountered either of those in the wild: deployed for pronunciatation comparison purposes only).

Though actually to be honest at work I fudge the rules re "focussing" as the word looks so butt-ugly on the page, and always write "focuses" -- so I would support "GIFing" and who cares who pronounces it wrong.

giffing is funnier tho

copywriter II: the giffening

The major trouble with "giffing" as a construction isn't that it is ill-formed according to the rules, but that it carries so little of its own context that if it were encountered in an isolated sentence without apparent reference to digital media, even people familiar with GIFs might scratch their heads and wonder wtf.

Q: Where does the usage of the word "cycle" to mean "series of works that go together" come from, as in Wagner's Ring Cycle? And is it appropriately used with works that, unlike Opera, are not performed? For example, the novels I'm reading right now are referred to on their book jacket as the "Patrick Melrose Cycle" and I thought that seemed odd. So then I thought maybe performative works are a "cycle" because they can be performed again, whereas there's nothing "cyclical" about novels. But maybe that's just some bullshit I made up.

IIRC "cycle" was coined by America's Next Top Model.

It's 'cycle' as complete set - like a circle that encompasses everything. I'm now going to paste the OED entry, which will be a bit dense, but has the info:

6.I.6 spec. A series of poems or prose romances, collected round or relating to a central event or epoch of mythic history and forming a continuous narrative; as the Arthurian cycle. Also transf.
Originally used in the Epic cycle [Gr. ὁ (ἐπικὸς) κύκλος], the series of epic poems written by later poets (Cyclic poets) to complete Homer, and presenting (with the Iliad and Odyssey) a continuous history of the Trojan war and of all the heroes engaged in it.

1835 Thirlwall Greece I. vi. 248 They‥formed the basis or nucleus of the epic cycle. 1837 Penny Cycl. IX. 470/1 Those cycles of metrical romances which have for their subjects the exploits of Alexander the Great, King Arthur, and other heroes. 1870 Swinburne Ess. & Stud. (1875) 66 The marvellous opening cycle of twenty-eight sonnets. 1873 H. Morley First Sk. Eng. Lit. 61 The cycle of the Charlemagne romances‥those of the Arthurian cycle. 1874 H. R. Reynolds John Bapt. i. §6. 56 The mythopoeic faculty has not engendered a cycle of miracles around the simple story.

shorter OED (those dense fucks), it's called a CYCLE bcz the stories or poems or whatever REVOLVE round a central figure/event

which i didn't know till about ten minutes ago

"I find it amazing the way these social networks run and people do what they do on them. They're talking to a bunch of Herberts they don't even know, and they are opening themselves up to these Herberts. For me, it is beyond my common sense to do that."

lads whats the protocol on capitalising herberts

the hell is a Herbert?

if it's a number of people named Herbert, I'm p sure you capitalise it.

maybe it's like the opposite of a betty

If it's like what Merdyeux says, yeah, capitalize it. Thirty Helens agree.

Yes. Capitalize Herberts.