ATTN: Copyeditors and Grammar Fiends

Also, there seems to be a trend toward deleting the "the" before "Earth," as I have just done, since it's just one planet among eight, but no one seems to be suggesting that the same be done for "Moon."

Actually, I have seen "the" dropped from Moon quite a bit.

it's "the moon" for the same reason it's "my mom" vs "Mom" or "the sun" vs "Sol" etc

I like the sound of Man on Moon. But that is not a good guide for usage.

merriam-webster says both "often capitalized" and "usually used with 'the,'" which i dont really agree w/

of course, saying "often" is essentially read as "ask someone else"

"Internet" vs. "internet" also y'alls.

Maybe "the" should be dropped from "the Internet".

I will look for this tasty recipe on Internet.

iirc AP says "Internet" and "E-mail" which i think is ridiculous

That's, "the E-mail".

Anyways it's all just "mail" now thanks to the wondrous technology of backronyms and "snail" or "postal" mail.

pleas no hyphen in email

and no e in please doh

plas

oh, AP also says "Web site"

my bad, AP doesn't capitalize email, but it does add the dash

I get into this conversation fairly often, but "Internet" and "e-mail" are so standardized to me that it's impossible for me to imagine them any other way. On the other hand, "Web site" has always looked silly.

We go with the Internet, but email and website.

But anyway, we have started extracting stuff from the reports we doand putting them into PowerPoint, which we then have to sub (a bit).

But it drives me mad!

For example, how can I do a non-breaking hyphen, an optional hyphen, a non-breaking space? Help!

In PowerPoint? I don't imagine you can, to be brutally frank.

Has no-one ever wanted to do a line break in a presentation? Or not split Mr and Smith?

Gah!

"business-friendly formats"

Non-breaking space: don't have PPt here, but try alt+0160 (on numpad).

Non-breaking space: similarly, try alt+0173.

Optional hyphen: I wouldn't be surprised if it isn't possible, that sounds like word-processing type funcionality.

I was riding the train to work, and across the aisle, I saw a woman with a cardboard box perched on top of her backpack. The boxstarted to slide off, but she hesitated before catching it -- so I must've saw it fall before she did. Or must I have seen it fall before she did?

seen

wait what

"I must have seen it"

Seen would imply past imperfect though, and this was a one time thing?

NEVER use "have saw"

seen is past participle

Have saw will travel. I don't know what's wrong with my grammar nowadays. ;-:

'...must have saw it...' is always wrong. If the thing troubling you is that the box didn't actually fall all the way to the ground before the woman caught it, then you could change it to "I must have seen (or noticed) it falling (or start to fall) before she did"

'have saw' seems to be exclusively an American colloquialism. It is very very very very very very very very wrong, whether American or otherwise.

Have saw. Will travel.

oh d'oh

'have saw' seems to be exclusively an American colloquialism.

No, I think Leeee was just overthinking this. I've never heard anyone say it.

Ok... one I was picked up on by a fellow grammar fiend (Grammar Fiend?) a few years ago. And was ashamed never to have thought about.

"I am ..." (doing something etc.)

Does the opposite construction exist?
"I amn't..."

If so, why do we say "I aren't...", when we wouldn't say "I are...".
If this is subjunctive skullduggery, please use words of one syllable.

Do people say "I aren't..." though? I don't think I do. You would say "I'm not", rather than "I amn't" though, surely.

no one in the history of the world has ever said "i aren't"

Only pirates say "I aren't."

Does the opposite construction exist?

Yes. "I'm not."

In fairness, though: turn the construction round and we do accept the grammatical anomaly, viz:

"It's snowing today so we're going to build a snowman, aren't we?" (fine)

"It's snowing today so I'm going to build a snowman, aren't I?" (certain dialects would say "amn't I" -- I had a girlfriend from the north-east of Scotland who did this -- but who would say "am I not", and who would bother to correct "aren't I"?)

"'have saw' seems to be exclusively an American colloquialism."
"No, I think Leeee was just overthinking this. I've never heard anyone say it."

I've heard "have drank" a lot, possibly more from Americans but also over here, so would not be surprised if other verbs with different simple past tense and past participle were also losing one or the other. Will it always be the participle?

Then again that is probably one of those things that people have been saying for centuries, and I suspect I wouldn't have to look too hard through the working classes of Victorian novels to find some examples there too.

(Apologies to true grammar fiends if I have the wrong terms in this post)

My powerpoint query:

Non-breaking space: don't have PPt here, but try alt+0160 (on numpad).

Non-breaking space: similarly, try alt+0173.

For some reason this didn't work using alt, but if you go to insert>symbol and put them in the box and select ASCII (decimal) it works fine.

Thanks

Today's Times Online - God alone knows whether it was in the paper proper -

Victim waves anonymity after rape at hands of racehorse owner

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/crime/article5677546.ece

holy moley.

victim waves goodbye to anonymity

throw anonymity in the air
and wave it like you you just don't care

omg the picture of the week: http://www.timesonline.co.uk/multimedia/archive/00482/POTW_06_02_09_05_482219d.jpg

lol trying to think of a humorous circumstance under which that sentence would make sense but no, it's just rong

The first delivery on board a new generation Q-Flex tanker, with a capacity of 211,885 cu metres of LNG, is currently on route to the South Hook terminal in Wales.

So, initially I was just going to change it to en route, but can you actually use that expression like that? ie prepositionally? Dictionary just lists it as an adverb.

Easy to change the sentence to "on the way", but out of interest ...

"I admired the mountain, from which five corries have been ripped out of its east-facing slopes."

This construction seems wrong to me. The "its" is where it jars. I've come across this problem before, but am not very articulate when it comes to syntax. Am I right to think there's something wrong?

It's also that you've got "from which" but then "ripped out" - first you're careful to put the preposition up front, then not.

"I admired the mountain, from whose east-facing slopes five corries had been ripped"?