ATTN: Copyeditors and Grammar Fiends

xpost

Yes, but your earlier table said "UK=outside the quotes" which is wrong.

One thing that does bother me, though: a foreign word that's not in Webster's is supposed to be italicized, but if you're speaking of it in the plural, the "s" has to be in roman, which just looks messy to me. For instance:

"I ordered a Thai iced coffee and two pad kee maos."

It makes sense to do it this way, since pad kee maos is presumably not the way that the Thai language pluralizes this dish -- in other words, the "s" is functioning as an English plural, even if the rest of the word is in Thai. But still, eek.

Her favorite songs are “Hello Dolly!” “Chicago” and “Come with Me.”

As for the "Hello Dolly!" example, yeah, that's tricky.

No, stet, it's just the simple way of putting it. The reason UK style does this --

He said: “The cheese will be very tasty.”

-- isn't because of some kind of "the mark goes inside the quotes" style, it's because the full stop is actually functionally part of the quote. (The main thing style is dictating there is that you don't put a whole extra period on the outside, as well.)

So, yeah, UK goes outside. The above isn't some big exception to that, it's just an instance where the quote happens to come with its own punctuation.

What's more, we do things like
"i really like cheese," barry said

(Stet this is a minor and meaningless point but I think the arcane simplification I'm working with is that you'd no more move the period outside the quotes than you would move the quote outside the quotes, because the period is part of what you're quoting to begin with. We're verging on total obscurity here, though, so it's not really important to hash out.)

"i really like cheese," barry said

The comma goes there because it's a substitute for the full stop which would be there if barry said were not. I reckon.

<i>lol @ Kruk: "If he pitches like he did tonight in the playoffs, he'll be in-valuable!"
Ravech: "You mean as in not valuable."
Kruk: "Yeah!"

-- The Bearnaise-Stain Bears (crump...), September 27th, 2006 9:48 PM. (Rock Hardy) (later)

It's easy to laugh at Kruk here, but I felt a little bad for the professional meathead who doesn't know there are prefixes that mean one thing or the opposite, depending. "In-" as "very" (invaluable) vs. "In-" as "not at all" (indefensible). Oh well, I think I'll just lol @ him anyway.

Dusty Bottoms: What does that mean, in-famous?

Ned Nederlander: Oh, Dusty. In-famous is when you're MORE than famous. This man El Guapo, he's not just famous, he's IN-famous.

Lucky Day: 100,000 pesos to perform with this El Guapo, who's probably the biggest actor to come out of Mexico!

Dusty Bottoms: Wow, in-famous? In-famous?

Main Entry: in-
1 : in : within : into : toward : on
2 : 1en-

Main Entry: en-
1 : put into or onto : cover with : go into or onto -- in verbs formed from nouns

Neu! Britney Spears, Smoosh and Edith Piaf.

Neu!, Britney Spears, Smoosh and Edith Piaf.

also to avoid confusion with nu britney spears.

(also, at first i thought neu! britney might be kind of awesome but then i realized it really would not)

This is my first foray onto this thread, so be kind.

I keep getting sentences like this at work:

Although much of the NOC's plans are devoted to oil, ...

And the count/non-count usage of much/many is troubling me. Obviously it's grammatically wrong, because the NOC's plans are plural, so we shouldn't use much. However,it would be misleading to use many, because they don't have a bunch of different plans, some of which are devoted to oil. Something like

Although much of the content of the NOC's plans is devoted to oil, ...

would be correct, it sounds terrible. Any ideas? Or just let it slide?

ps Pity me having to sub reports about the Libyan oil industry. Sigh.

I must edit my own posts on this thread of all threads!

Or avoid the issue by using "a lot"

Lets substitute 'cakes'. (These are stupid artificial examples. Can't think of anything better)

Much of the cake was eaten. YES. Many of the cakes were eaten. YES.

Much of the cakes were eaten? NO. (And a lot can stand in for either, but the meaning changes depending on whether it's a plural or not)

You see my problem?

You don't use a full stop after most abbreviations (in our house style anyway) because people aren't cretins. I know Mr is an abbreviation. No. gets one because you don't have to be a cretin to get it confused with no, the opposite of yes. Nos doesn't get one because nos is obviously the abbreviation for numbers and not something else.

Sense trumps consistency.

Not really...

Berlin and Hamburg were bombed during the war. Much of these two cities was destroyed.

That's acceptable isn't it? In which case "much of NOC's plans" is also acceptable (and semantically different from "many of NOC's plans")

That is OK. But you've used a singular verb. In my case that would mean changing it to

Although much of the NOC's plans is devoted to oil, ...

which is horrible. I lack the wit to explain why your example works, though. Anyone else?

A number of people were gathered

Thanks.

(I am interested in the underlying grammar of this, though, if anyone else is still awake.)

I suppose 'a number' is acting as a collective noun there, though.

I think much/many is different.

Much of these two cities was destroyed.

There's an implied noun after much, IMO, e.g. "Much architecture of these two cities etc." or something similar, because the cities themselves weren't destroyed, but something in them was.

How about "most" instead of "much" in your NOC example, which I read as being a relative majority issue?

meanwhile, here's the copyediting story of the week.