ATTN: Copyeditors and Grammar Fiends

ugly house

sad tidings

conrad haha yep. wasn't watching but mr kinder picked up on it.

I had the same reaction

on the basis of the verb, 'to wife':

do you think it should be 'wifing' or 'wifeing'?

Wifing. Would you write "knifeing" or "knifing"?

(Though I would be tempted by "wiving." We've come to wive it wealthily in Padua.)

To splice = splicing. To drive = driving. To brine = brining.

just don't make being a wife into a verb

^^

i am not opposed to verbing nouns in general but this one is:
* problematic
* not a natural fit for neologism since no 1 clear verb form emerges as the logical (comprehensible) one
* the variations listed above are incomprehensible and if no one knows what it means, don't try to force-invent a word that didn't ask to be invented

I was busy wifing (using wifi?)
I was busy wiving (dwiving?)
I was busy wifeing (wifeing = ???)

Good points LL.

Pro tip: husbandry and husbanding are different things.

(cf. Tom Lehrer: "he majored in animal husbandry... until they caught him at it one day."

Is "wifing" meant to be like "adulting"? Was not aware.

purely on the spelling question, i thiiiiiiiiink the only exceptions* to the rule that you drop the e for -ing are words where the e modifies a vowel: viz you don't drop the e with seeing or shoeing or -- treating y as a vowel -- eyeing

when adding e.g. -able you always need the e if it's modifying a consonant: viz changeable -- the a doesn't soften the g so you need the e

compare forcible: since the i softens the c you don;t need the e as well

*tbh this is always a risky thing to claim w/english, as it's an unusually irregular language but i certainly can't think of any

fwiw SOED has wifish (for "having the characteristics of a wife", 1616) rather than wivish

Anyways wiving means marrying a woman, not being a wife, of course

http://www.dictionary.com/browse/wifed

and more importantly:
https://www.anagrammer.com/scrabble/wifed

lol but also:
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/wive

and:
https://www.anagrammer.com/scrabble/wived

SOED also agrees with YMP on the verb form: to wive, meaning to be a wife (rare), to become a wife (obs. or arch.), furnish with a wife (obs. or arch.), or to take as a wife (presumably not obs. or arch. or even rare, tho it seems p rare to me)

don't try to force-invent a word that didn't ask to be invented

too late, done been did, we're just looking to mind the drift therefrom

ye m p otm

ymp otm. wiving is pretty ancient now, replaced by "taking to wife", which is also quite archaic and disused. nb: "swiving" was much more fun.

Motherfuckers be like "but what type of niggas will wife you?"

My type of niggas will wife me! The type of niggas that like bitches that pop off and suck dick all day motherfucking long bitch

Thanks to all my followers that always defended me, y'all my God brothers and God sisters, I would dare jump in your fight, I would dare jump in your fight. Now what's poppin?

i'm finally reading The Last Samurai and jesus does that book make me feel dumb. i mean it's about geniuses and i am not one of those but i really don't know much about much. is it too late in life to learn grammar rules or learn latin?

i am never using proper punctuation on this thread.

ALSO i love the lack of punctuation in that book! what a cool book.

i mean CASE ENDINGS i think i knew what that was but i looked it up and that just starts me on a rocky road through terminology i have no idea about.

THE VOCATIVE CASE. i dunno maybe its too late for me.

get yr head round finnish cases and the rest is easy: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Finnish_noun_cases#Finnish_cases

They passed on their message with(using) the houses they built.

finns don't see gender. the language of the future!

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DRNAOBsXkAA4EP6.jpg

otm

are there any good reasons to use he's got rather than he has?

stylistically, it lends a colloquial informality to whatever is being written.

"she has the look" - prince

you know this is the first time I've read the opening post in this thread and it's a real doozy

you mean its a real doozy

it's a well established usage: shakespeare used it, johnson approves it, fowler quotes someone i haven't heard of calling it "not a real error but a counterfeit invented by schoolmasters"

which last i think paradoxically explains and perhaps validates the sense that it's more informal or colloquial

the other reason for choosing one over the other is, not rhythm exactly, since they're interchangeable in terms of syllables, but the sense of flow or of choppiness you need at that point

(either is fine, in other words: it's up to you)

sorry: xps to got vs have

fair. it's a tic of an otherwise terrible writer of my acquaintance and i wanted to hate it as well

tracer hand's recasting cracking me up

i am possibly going to take an editing test in the next couple of weeks for a special publications dept of a local newspaper

i have freelanced for years but haven’t written for Legit outlet like this before

can anyone recommend any websites or books to help me bone up on my editing/grammar etc. i’ve got functional skills but my knowledge feels v flabby

disclaimer: I am not a newspaper employee or journalism major

I expect you won't be required to parse grammar in detail just to demonstrate a technical knowledge nearly so much as to show the ability to edit for clarity and brevity, correct writers' incorrect spelling or improper homophones (to, too, two, etc.), and show some familiarity with whichever style guide the newspaper favors. Ask them ahead of time what style guide they use so you can figure out how they want you to do stuff like capitalize, hyphenate, and a few other arcane details along those lines.

If I were hiring you, I'd mainly want to know you can recognize bad, awkward, or flagrantly ungrammatical writing and can clean it up to a minimum level of readability, and since this is for a newspaper, how to make the article fit the space allotted to it without ruining its sense.

If they think they want someone who can call a gerund a gerund with consummate ease, or can name-drop the subjunctive case in casual conversation, they are probably just confused or wrong-headed. Or horribly snobby about grammar.

Good luck. Oh, and "special publications" might be code for paid advertising inserts.

it is - that’s kinda where my background is, hence why i’m going for that gig & not tryna be a stringer in the oughts or something :)

I keep a copy of the AP's Guide to Punctuation on my my nightstand. It's not the stylebook, which obviously can change from place to place, but does illustrate things like why the Oakland A's have had multiple MVPs.

Not bad for a book with only 93 pages, but maybe you can find something from this decade though.

https://www.amazon.com/Associated-Press-Guide-Punctuation/dp/0738207853

The style guide for Chicago is pretty compressed and good. It's sort of like a shortened version of Garland's Oxford guide to American English usage.

I hit the AP Stylebook online often. I don't agree with everything they come up with (though I do have to abide by their rules), but it is interesting to see at least why they write the rules they write.

thanks everyone, this is all v helpful <3

Just read my posts

then delete them

:o

this is an amaaaazing book on editing. it's about academic rather than newspaper editing, but there's so much helpful stuff

https://sites.duke.edu/niou/files/2014/07/WilliamsJosephM1990StyleTowardClarityandGrace.pdf

When I was active as a copyeditor (USian term, sorry), the standard book to follow was Karen Judd's Copyediting: A Practical Guide. If I chance to leaf through it nowadays it seems dated, and very focused on practical aspects of paper-based work.

Speaking as an ex-newspaper employee and ex-journalism major, I agree with Aimless's post. It's more important to show you can make murky things clear (and correct the most howlingly egregious errors) than to master every nuance of using em dashes, en dashes, hyphens, etc. Most of those are issues of style rather than right/wrong.

I hire editors from time to time, and I like to look for a basically chill, audience-centric philosophy of editing. Vastly prefer that over dogmatic rigidity or encyclopedic memorized technical knowledge.

Consider one or more books by Bill Walsh, whose irreverent, pragmatic attitude is very much simpatico with my own. Look for The Elephants of Style if you can.

speaking as someone currently employed as a proofreader and someone who has taken (and passed) a lot of editing tests, you are almost definitely overthinking it. virtually every copy editing test I've taken has focused on basic grammar, punctuation and usage errors, possibly some AP/Chicago style points (for a newspaper, you're probably going to deal with AP). editing for clarity/brevity generally doesn't show up, probably because those things are A) subjective and B) harder to deliberately insert into a story than a misspelling. as far as style, I've taken a surprising amount of editing tests where they just give you a style guide and dictionary during the test.

so if I were to brush up on anything before an editing test for a print publication, it'd actually be proofreading marks.

katherine speaks wisdom

thank you!!!

it’s def prob just paranoia/overthinking. i just worry that i’m underqualified. i’ve been writing for a very small publication & i am not sure if my skills measure up, even tho i really want the job.