ATTN: Copyeditors and Grammar Fiends

Of. Something can be "spun off from" but it can only be a spin-off OF.

Never had this mental image of an All In the Family carousel spinning out of control with Maude and the Jeffersons flying off out of its orbit.

agree with in orbit

film in "off of" foofaraw

i went with "spin-off of" in the end yeah

if one were speaking of, say, A.J. Pierzynski and A.J. Burnett, would one call them a pair of A.J.s or a pair of A.J.'s?

i support the former, but it looks weird with the periods

"a pair of men sharing the initials A.J."

"a pair of A's J."

In serious I'd probably just do some variant on what Aimless said, as there's no real gain in meaning or literary flair in referring to them as "A pair of A.J.'s" imo.

yeah, that's actually what i did -- i was just curious about the official ruling

plus that way I get to avoid the problem, and I have an avoidant personality

The former is fine. You'd only use the latter if there was some ajs word that would confuse the reader.

http://www.theguardian.com/science/2013/sep/30/10-grammar-rules-you-can-forget

fucking apostate

Much of what may be safely ignored depends upon the context in which it shall be applied. Calling many of these strictures "rules" is an overstatement, because the authority on which they are based is nothing more than highly inflated opinion. Breaking them does not cause any ambiguity or loss of information. Such rules only matter who insist on them, due to their innate inflexibility. A few of the rules mentioned do introduce minor problems in some cases, such as the one regarding the double negative, but they are hardly fit excuses for shaming and finger pointing.

the subjunctive is great and should not die

^^ agreed. it has a purpose and adds information and clarity when used properly.

already dead outside america

nah, I like a subjunctive

enfeebled

whom, subjunctive and other american pedantries

just thought I would share this headline that suffers from awkward phrasing/lack of punctuation:

"15 Celebrities Most People Don't Know Are Black"

#1: Darth Vader

oh, i definitely know that celebrity.

If you only knew...

I really initially read it as meaning "Here are 15 black celebrities most people have never heard of (because society is racist)"

Exactly 15 celebrities are black, but most people have never heard of them.

or "The 15 least-known celebrities are all black"

Or, everyone has a list of 15 celebrities they don't know - every person's list might be different – and in each case, all those celebrities are black.

"Coming in at #12 on my list: Alphonso Ribeiro. Who the fuck is that? I have no idea."

How would you style John Cage's 4'33" if you usually put the titles of short works (like songs) in quotation marks? Wiki seems to italicize it.

I think the rule would say to use '4'33"'.

You mean switch from double quotes to single quotes?

http://yalepress.yale.edu/yupbooks/book.asp?isbn=9780300136999

italicized throughout

since there are three movements in it you are justified in italicizing it as you would other works with three movements, as opposed to songs, it seems to me

Nothing like editing a story for space/clarity and somehow adding 100 words.

Improved clarity accounts for the extra words. Now remove the extraneous words and bob's your uncle. Of course, the story will lose some of its effect if you pare it down to bare bones.

should it be "...provides a leveller playing field" or "...provides a more level playing field"? I prefer the first, but I wonder if the second is more correct.

second one sounds better to me

or eliminate both -- it's a cliche.

Alfred OTM. So go for No. 2 if you have no choice, that's the way it's said.

I mean, a field is level or it's not. Saying some fields are leveler than other fields or that they are more level when the speaker really means they've been leveled better or that they are flatter -- it's not a pleasant situation to be in as a copywriter.

i think you're talking about scalar/absolute adjectives? empty, bald, pregnant. level.

yeah you're right. level. thanks guys.

I can easily assign a meaning to "more level", and I can't think of a better way to express that meaning (I'm ignoring the "playing field" part of the idiom here). I'm sure I say things like "more linear" all the time, even if some people would consider that infelicitous.

ok "flatter" conveys a similar meaning but pplains would presumably argue that a field is either flat or not flat and we're back where we started

http://www.hum.uu.nl/medewerkers/a.toledo/papers/Absolute_Relative_Variance.pdf

"Flat" doesn't necessarily mean "horizontal," does it?

second option, and no there's nothing wrong with the concept of a more level playing field

Late to this party. I would encourage the construction "more nearly level", because level is a state more than a quality. To my mind, either something is 'level' or it is 'not level'.