ATTN: Copyeditors and Grammar Fiends

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it sounds clunkier to say (about a baseball player, for instance) "he played badly" than "he played poorly."

like OH why does it seem to me to be IMPORTANT that the dude in last crusade say "he choose... poorly," instead of "...badly"?

― 69, Friday, 20 April 2007 18:40 (seventeen years ago) link

Some of the books I'm reading for this hellish essay I'm doing cap up the words Dada and Futurism but then don't cap up the word Modernism. Should I cap up modernism? I checked over my lecturers emails to see what she did. She did both Modernism and modernism. Maybe she was typing quickly or something.

― Zoe Espera, Monday, 23 April 2007 11:15 (seventeen years ago) link

i don't think you should.

others would disagree, and have good cause to do so.

you should check with yr tutors as to what they expect.

― grimly fiendish, Monday, 23 April 2007 11:27 (seventeen years ago) link

ie this is style, not grammar. next!

― grimly fiendish, Monday, 23 April 2007 11:29 (seventeen years ago) link

I think that deliberating over modernism vs Modernism is a way of delaying writing your hellish essay. I suggest you at least pick a more productive avoidance tactic, like doing the washing up.

― Alba, Monday, 23 April 2007 11:30 (seventeen years ago) link

I can't do the washing up. I am in Egham. The washing is in Hounslow.

I'm going for Modernism.

But that leaves me wondering what to do about modernity.

I'm going to get some chocolate.

― Zoe Espera, Monday, 23 April 2007 11:38 (seventeen years ago) link

okay, picky pedants. hanging hyphens. how do we feel about them?

eg "a range of two-, three- and four-bedroom properties" or "two, three and four-bedroom properties"?

the former is certainly more precise (and, i'd argue, gramatically correct); the latter, however, is still clear and is more aesthetically appealing.

comments welcome.

xpost: surely modernism (see why i don't post using caps?) is a movement and modernity isn't? so you can cap one and not the other without too much grief.

― grimly fiendish, Monday, 23 April 2007 11:38 (seventeen years ago) link

a more pedantic detail there is not. i use them with pride :)

― mitya, Monday, 23 April 2007 11:42 (seventeen years ago) link

yes, grimly, I agree it should be Modernism and modernity. I will now have to (pretend to be) pondering something else as I go for chocolate.

two-, three-, and four-bedroom properties looks AWFUL! So awful it's worth not being quite so precise in order to PROTECT THE PAGE from the awful -, -, -, -, -, and - making the place look untidy.

― Zoe Espera, Monday, 23 April 2007 11:43 (seventeen years ago) link

Gah. I mean I will now have to be (pretending to be) pondering something else.

― Zoe Espera, Monday, 23 April 2007 11:45 (seventeen years ago) link

I agree with Ms Espera, though I don't think my mistress does. The sentence reads more clearly. It's not as if the reader is sitting there thinking: "Huh? Are they talking about twos and threes and four-bedroom houses?" - one's eye can naturally groups the "one", "two" and "three".

Related problem: what if your style is not hyphenate the prefixes "pre" and "post" but you have a phrase like "His budgets, both pre and postwar..." Can prefixes just become words on their own?

― Alba, Monday, 23 April 2007 11:54 (seventeen years ago) link

Typos and spazzed-out missing words on this thread - oops.

― Alba, Monday, 23 April 2007 11:56 (seventeen years ago) link

Surely it would be even odder if your style was to hyphenate the prefixes. To me, 'pre- and postwar' looks odder than 'pre and postwar'. Dunno, the hyphens just slow the flow of the reading, man.

― Zoe Espera, Monday, 23 April 2007 12:13 (seventeen years ago) link

(Also, I'm going loads of work.)

― Zoe Espera, Monday, 23 April 2007 12:14 (seventeen years ago) link

doing

blimey

― Zoe Espera, Monday, 23 April 2007 12:16 (seventeen years ago) link

I'm doing to Morrisons.

― Alba, Monday, 23 April 2007 12:19 (seventeen years ago) link

You do go that.

― Zoe Espera, Monday, 23 April 2007 12:29 (seventeen years ago) link

pronunciation pedants: "mah-DERN-ity" or "moe-DARE-nity" ?

― Tracer Hand, Monday, 23 April 2007 12:54 (seventeen years ago) link

I think either pronunciation is acceptable.

― Nathan, Monday, 23 April 2007 12:56 (seventeen years ago) link

"mah-DERN-ity" or "moe-DARE-nity"

Why do I hear Loyd Grossman speaking when I read this?

― Madchen, Monday, 23 April 2007 13:37 (seventeen years ago) link

Whichever's right, I think Grossman would say both.

― Zoe Espera, Monday, 23 April 2007 13:38 (seventeen years ago) link

okay, picky pedants. hanging hyphens. how do we feel about them?

great! because they are right.

― CharlieNo4, Monday, 23 April 2007 13:42 (seventeen years ago) link

I would hang the hyphens

― RJG, Monday, 23 April 2007 13:43 (seventeen years ago) link

I would have hangs with all these hyphens

"pre and postwar" reads awful

― bernard snowy, Monday, 23 April 2007 13:48 (seventeen years ago) link

Note: it's perfectly okay to use a hanging hyphen like that on a non-hyphenated word like "prewar"; it doesn't necessarily suggest hyphenation of the word, any more than (say) hyphenating a line break does.

Concessions to "looking better" on the bedroom one are reasonable enough, I guess. But I'd probably use them anyway, just because I get that lame pedant's thrill out of making sure everything goes together right. The words meant, after all, are "two-bedroom," "three-bedroom," and "four-bedroom."

― nabisco, Monday, 23 April 2007 15:00 (seventeen years ago) link

So, if your publications house style is for "prewar" and "postwar", would you have "pre- and postwar" or "pre- and post-war" in that instance?

― Alba, Monday, 23 April 2007 15:03 (seventeen years ago) link

I would have "pre- and postwar."

― jaymc, Monday, 23 April 2007 17:27 (seventeen years ago) link

Yeah, like Jaymc says -- the hyphen isn't saying "this is a hyphenated word," it's saying "the rest of this word appears elsewhere." (Just like hyphenated line breaks!) It's like the typographical equivalent of the little jagged-line icon.

― nabisco, Monday, 23 April 2007 17:31 (seventeen years ago) link

Since Michael has more than one sister, it should be "Michael's sister Janet showed her boob", but if he had only one, then it should be "Michael's sister, Janet, showed her boob", right? I don't think many people follow this rule, but it makes sense to me. Only problem is, it's not always worthwhile finding out if someone has more than one sister or whatever just for the sake of getting the commas right.

― Alba, Monday, 23 April 2007 17:37 (seventeen years ago) link

Grrr you mean BRITISH people don't follow that rule. It bugs all hell out of me, since it's about the simplest of all the restrictive vs non-restrictive issues in the world, and yet I'm still constantly reading about "the English band, New Order" or something.

― nabisco, Monday, 23 April 2007 17:57 (seventeen years ago) link

Only problem is, it's not always worthwhile finding out if someone has more than one sister or whatever just for the sake of getting the commas right.

Ha, I end up having to do this at work all the time.

― jaymc, Monday, 23 April 2007 18:00 (seventeen years ago) link

P.S. there are contexts where you might use either of those Jackson examples, depending on how you've set up the field of people you're talking about. But for the most part I'm amazed by people's missing the nuances of these, because everyone's 100% clear on them when speaking. E.g., if there were two hammers sitting next to one another, you'd say "the hammer on the left is mine," and if there were a hammer and a watermelon sitting next to one another, and you were talking to someone who'd never seen a hammer before, you'd say "the hammer PAUSE on the left PAUSE is mine."

― nabisco, Monday, 23 April 2007 18:01 (seventeen years ago) link

And they would say "why are you yelling 'PAUSE' at me?"
And you would say "COMMAS."

― nabisco, Monday, 23 April 2007 18:02 (seventeen years ago) link

Jaymc - wll, OK, deadlines mean there's often not time to do so, let's put it that way...

― Alba, Monday, 23 April 2007 18:04 (seventeen years ago) link

But modernist, being an adjective, would be lower case, right?

I didn't know about the hammer/watermelon thing. But it makes total sense. Wow, some of my sentences are going to change.

― Zoe Espera, Tuesday, 24 April 2007 08:30 (seventeen years ago) link

is the use of "an" instead of "a", before words like "hotel" and "horrific", anachronistic? i prefer it but many will point and laugh.

― CharlieNo4, Tuesday, 24 April 2007 10:23 (seventeen years ago) link

Do you make decisions or take them? I personally hate the phrase 'to take a decision' although I did read an interesting article years ago about how it was an odd turn of phrase (at the time) and was used to 'track' who had really written certain political speeches etc.

― Not the real Village People, Tuesday, 24 April 2007 10:29 (seventeen years ago) link

decisions are made. action is taken.

― CharlieNo4, Tuesday, 24 April 2007 10:36 (seventeen years ago) link

But modernist, being an adjective, would be lower case, right?

not if you're talking about someone who was part of your capitalised modernist movement. i mean: "german" is an adjective too, and you'd cap that :)

it's like the problem we have at work with "nationalist" (one sympathetic to scottish nationalism) and "Nationalist" (one affiliated to the SNP).

charlie: i think it's not just anachronistic but plain wrong. however, i'm interested to see if anyone's got a convincing argument in favour. (i don't actually have a good grammatical one against; i'm sure there is one, but i don't have time to find it).

xpost: that sounds sensible, too.

― grimly fiendish, Tuesday, 24 April 2007 10:44 (seventeen years ago) link

Might just write the essay in grimly ilx post style. No capital letters at all.

Ta, grimlers.

― Zoe Espera, Tuesday, 24 April 2007 10:56 (seventeen years ago) link

Hmmm. Askoxford.com is inconclusive:

The form an for the indefinite article is used before a spoken vowel sound, regardless of how the written word is spelt. If you say 'an otel' when speaking (which is now often regarded as distinctly old-fashioned), then it may be appropriate for you to write 'an hotel'; but most people say 'hotel' with a sounded 'h', and should write 'a hotel'.

By contrast, words such as 'honour', 'heir' or 'hour' in which the 'h' sound is dropped are written with 'an'.

― CharlieNo4, Tuesday, 24 April 2007 11:03 (seventeen years ago) link

I think the BBC decided that it's "An Hotel", weirdly.

― the next grozart, Tuesday, 24 April 2007 11:12 (seventeen years ago) link

There was another recent thread all about ans and as (what is the best way to write that, by the way, "an"s and "a"s?) and aspirated hs, Charlie. Can't rememeber what it was called.

I think "an historical" etc is widely deprecated, yes, though it seems to be one of those hypercorrective things that people do to try to sound right. I can't believe you really want to write "an hotel". Why?

― Alba, Tuesday, 24 April 2007 11:39 (seventeen years ago) link

in the same way an American might write "an herb" i suppose; or indeed in the same way i'd write "an honour".

― CharlieNo4, Tuesday, 24 April 2007 11:43 (seventeen years ago) link

another one:

for goodness's sake

for goodness sake

for goodness' sake

argh. i'm leaning towards the first one.

― CharlieNo4, Tuesday, 24 April 2007 14:00 (seventeen years ago) link

goodness's sake? nobody says that!

― the next grozart, Tuesday, 24 April 2007 14:02 (seventeen years ago) link

they don't but it's the only correct one of the bunch. GAZUMPED BY GRAMMAR.

― Tracer Hand, Tuesday, 24 April 2007 14:14 (seventeen years ago) link

I don't see what's wrong with "for goodness' sake".

― ledge, Tuesday, 24 April 2007 14:20 (seventeen years ago) link

I see we touched on this above where "if it's a plural, add an 's'" seemed to be the rule. Nonsense! If no extra 's' is pronounced, don't add one!

― ledge, Tuesday, 24 April 2007 14:24 (seventeen years ago) link

I see we touched on this above where "if it's a plural, add an 's'" seemed to be the rule.

nono, if it's a plural, DON'T add another s - just the apostrophe will do. But goodness is single and this needs another s (i think), odd as it may look.

― CharlieNo4, Tuesday, 24 April 2007 14:27 (seventeen years ago) link

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