ATTN: Copyeditors and Grammar Fiends

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My mother taught me that it's 'different from'. But is it 'compared with' or 'compared to'?

Also, going back to the stupid statistics thing, am I being dumb for not understanding what people mean when they say "It increased by 120%"? If something's increasing, you take the existing 100% for granted, right? So in this case the increased figure would be 220% of the first one?

― Not the real Village People, Thursday, 17 May 2007 20:25 (sixteen years ago) link

Better than, different from.

Yeah, I think people get confused about the percentage thing because when you actually DO the calculation you multiply X by 1.20 to get the 20% increase...but grammatically it's only 20% more, not 120% more.

― Laurel, Thursday, 17 May 2007 20:27 (sixteen years ago) link

But is it 'compared with' or 'compared to'?

"Compared with" when it's comparing different things within the same class, e.g., "Toyota sales are up 30% in 2006, compared with last year's data" or "Compared with most message boards, ILX is fucking awesome." Whereas "compared to" is used for metaphors, such as "Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?"

― jaymc, Thursday, 17 May 2007 20:38 (sixteen years ago) link

fuck. i genuinely forgot all about different to/from. and now i'm not in work again till monday. someone bump the thread then and remind me, and i'll check to see what i can find :)

Line-end breaks. Talk me through them. US style = by syllable, British style = by etymology? Is that right?

nooooo! what jaymc says is equally applicable to the UK (although anyone who broke chick-en over a line would feel the pointy end of my pointy boot). i'm not going to go into more detail because i can't be fucking arsed, but basically: the syllable is king.

that said: if you can keep your stem on one line, eg bugger-ing as opposed to bug-gering, it's a lot easier to parse at a glance.

It increased by 120% etc

this is actually a really interesting point that makes me wonder if a lot of people actually don't have a clue what they really mean when they use this construction. i'm gonna take a back seat and watch this one pan out.

She had been day- (and night-) dreaming about Hank, her handsome flying doctor

i know this one's done and dusted, but FUCK ME. how does someone even start to write something as bad as that? another shout for the tracer OTMery.

― grimly fiendish, Thursday, 17 May 2007 21:59 (sixteen years ago) link

I found this when I was googling "take a decision" (spit):
http://www.bbctraining.com/styleguideArticle.asp?articleID=20

It reminded me of some idiot who did a feature in 'Student Direct' (Manc student paper) calling a bunch of people "Pre-Madonnas".

― Not the real Village People, Thursday, 17 May 2007 22:16 (sixteen years ago) link

If something increases by 100% it doubles. Right?

― Tracer Hand, Thursday, 17 May 2007 22:35 (sixteen years ago) link

that's exactly what i've always thought. so i'd have thought that 10 increasing by 120% would be 22 (ie itself plus 20%). but my calculator disagrees, as does the google calculator.

caveat: i got a U at A/S-level maths. i hate this shit.

― grimly fiendish, Thursday, 17 May 2007 22:39 (sixteen years ago) link

grimly, increasing BY 120% is different FROM n*120%. I think.
Anyway this is something I've noticed a lot recently, although I've not seen anything as bad as "The survey found companies' paper costs had increased by an average of up to 7%" (upthread)

― Not the real Village People, Thursday, 17 May 2007 22:43 (sixteen years ago) link

is there a thread on the actual business end of copywriting and the industry? i'd like to get into it, maybe even freelance but i don't really know where to get started.

― the next grozart, Thursday, 17 May 2007 22:51 (sixteen years ago) link

If you have 100 apples and you increase the apples by 120, you have 220 apples.

But 120 apples is 120% of 100 apples.

Right?

― Madchen, Friday, 18 May 2007 11:33 (sixteen years ago) link

Ronan's thread about good books for subs might help, Grozart, but I can't find it.

― Madchen, Friday, 18 May 2007 11:36 (sixteen years ago) link

(xpost)Those are two different issues. If you have 100 apples, and 90% of them are green, then that means 0.9*100=90 of them are green. This isn't an increase, it's making a statement about what you've got. If you said "120% of my apples are green" this would imply 1.2*100=120 of them are green, but obviously this is nonsense.

If you increase your apples by 90% you have 1.9*100=190 apples (i.e. your 100 original apples plus 90 new ones). Similarly if you increase your apples by 120% you have 2.2*100=220 apples.

― Nasty, Brutish & Short, Friday, 18 May 2007 11:40 (sixteen years ago) link

Yes it's the word "increase" that is causing the problems.

― Tracer Hand, Friday, 18 May 2007 11:41 (sixteen years ago) link

yes, exactly. and although in the cold light of day i can see the difference between my two calculations (i was tired, and i'm also shit at sums) i am sure that an awful lot of people fuck this up in print. another one to watch out for.

― grimly fiendish, Friday, 18 May 2007 12:18 (sixteen years ago) link

Sorry, maybe I wasn't being clear. What I meant was that an n% increase is not the same as increasing something by n%. So we agree (I think).

― Madchen, Friday, 18 May 2007 12:28 (sixteen years ago) link

Wait it's not?? ...Augh. If you increase your profits by 100%, you've doubled them. If your profits see a 100% increase, then.. what?

― Tracer Hand, Friday, 18 May 2007 12:35 (sixteen years ago) link

They are the same!

― ledge, Friday, 18 May 2007 12:43 (sixteen years ago) link

Yes! But 2 is not 100% of 1. It's 200% of 1. Yes?

― Tracer Hand, Friday, 18 May 2007 12:44 (sixteen years ago) link

Yes. 200% of 1 is 2. 1 increased by 100% is 2. 1 saw a 100% increase to 2. The last two mean the same thing, just with different phrasing.

― ledge, Friday, 18 May 2007 12:47 (sixteen years ago) link

To add to the confusion,

percentage rises
probably our most common lapse into "mythematics": an increase from 3% to 5% is a 2 percentage point increase or a 2-point increase, not a 2% increase; any sentence saying "such and such rose or fell by x%" should be considered and checked carefully
http://www.guardian.co.uk/styleguide/page/0,,184842,00.html

― Madchen, Friday, 18 May 2007 12:50 (sixteen years ago) link

Hmm I guess technically they're right. "Interest rates rose by 2%" would mean a rise from 3% to 3.06%. I think most people would figure out what they meant though. Not that that's an excuse for sloppiness.

― ledge, Friday, 18 May 2007 12:55 (sixteen years ago) link

If they wrote "Interest rates rose by 66%" you would hear the sound of fair trade coffee being splurted out all over the land.

― ledge, Friday, 18 May 2007 13:05 (sixteen years ago) link

xpost: yes, i know all about this one. i had a fight with an arsehole who called herself a personal finance editor once about that very thing.

still think there's room for SPECTACULAR confusion about +100% increases.

― grimly fiendish, Friday, 18 May 2007 13:07 (sixteen years ago) link

If they wrote "Interest rates rose by 66%" you would hear the sound of fair trade coffee being splurted out all over the land.

haha grimly you totally have to try that one time!

― CharlieNo4, Friday, 18 May 2007 13:19 (sixteen years ago) link

I may not be able to do line-end breaks, but percentage increases are my bread and butter (as I sub for a bit of the economist).

We're really strict about whether we're talking about percentage point increases or percentage increases, and quite rightly so.

The media in general are very sloppy about this, and it has real-world effects. Didn't loads of people come off the pill because it increased the risk of getting cancer by 300% or something? But the difference was actually between a 0.01% chance and a 0.03% chance - I'm making up the figures but you get the point.

With rises of more than 100%, the detail is usually not so important, so I'd often just say "more than doubled" for a 120% rise.

― Jamie T Smith, Friday, 18 May 2007 14:37 (sixteen years ago) link

Thinking about it, in my example, they weren't being sloppy, as the % increase was correct. However, it is just misleading to talk about percentage increases in things that can be expressed as percentages anyway, as you lose the sense of scale. There are two bits of information, the increase and the proportion of the whole in the first place, and you then only get one of them.

― Jamie T Smith, Friday, 18 May 2007 14:54 (sixteen years ago) link

The phantom option Tracer is looking for is something like "profits are now at 200% of last year's levels" -- i.e., we made $2 instead of $1.

― nabisco, Friday, 18 May 2007 16:42 (sixteen years ago) link

There's a key preposition involved in these, too -- increased by vs. increased to.

My $10 locker fee increased by 200% = $30.
My $10 locker fee increased to 200% (of previous fee) = $20.

― nabisco, Friday, 18 May 2007 16:46 (sixteen years ago) link

Yeah, that's right. Again, in our house style the preposition is compulsory.

When I first started here I was always getting picked up on leaving out the "by".

― Jamie T Smith, Friday, 18 May 2007 16:57 (sixteen years ago) link

One of my big annoyances has been popping up more and more often around here -- constructions like:

As a cable subscriber, we'd like to invite you to watch channel 64.

I think I understand the thought processes that lead to them, but they're SO irritating, and sometimes take a bit of work to straighten out in any elegant way.

― nabisco, Friday, 18 May 2007 17:57 (sixteen years ago) link

Oh, I see those ALL the time. A misplaced something-or-other. Hate 'em.

― Laurel, Friday, 18 May 2007 17:58 (sixteen years ago) link

xpost (Not that one, though, obviously: "As a cable subscriber, YOU are invited to watch channel 64. WE can't do stuff as a cable subscriber, because there's more than one of us, and we're the cable COMPANY, and anyway this isn't about us.")

― nabisco, Friday, 18 May 2007 18:00 (sixteen years ago) link

lol at maths panic on this thread.

― Alba, Friday, 18 May 2007 19:26 (sixteen years ago) link

xpost It's a misplaced (or dangling) modifier.

― jaymc, Friday, 18 May 2007 19:30 (sixteen years ago) link

Should sentence starting with "Surely" end with a question mark?

― Alba, Saturday, 19 May 2007 11:29 (sixteen years ago) link

not unless it's a question or you want to use a question mark

― RJG, Saturday, 19 May 2007 11:57 (sixteen years ago) link

Surely sentences of this type usually act as rhetorical questions?

― Alba, Saturday, 19 May 2007 12:40 (sixteen years ago) link

Surely they do.

― Curt1s Stephens, Saturday, 19 May 2007 14:38 (sixteen years ago) link

Surely (ha) that depends on whether you mean "surely" as "certainly" or as "it should certainly be the case that..."?

― ailsa, Saturday, 19 May 2007 15:24 (sixteen years ago) link

Sorry, that last one should be "it should certainly be the case that...shouldn't it?", shouldn't it?

― ailsa, Saturday, 19 May 2007 15:27 (sixteen years ago) link

Yes, indeed. The latter is far more common, though. It's just that sometimes the sentence is long and by the time you get to the end, the question mark might surprise the reader.

― Alba, Saturday, 19 May 2007 15:36 (sixteen years ago) link

Though that could be the case with a real question, too.

― Alba, Saturday, 19 May 2007 15:36 (sixteen years ago) link

i think i read somewhere that questions can be divided into direct and indirect ones, the direct ones need a question mark and with the indirect ones its voluntary, "surely" is mostly used indirectly i would say and thus does not need a question mark.

as for the problem with "he or she", i use "its", works like a charm. "the tavern-keeper must spellbind its customers".

― Jeb, Saturday, 19 May 2007 16:01 (sixteen years ago) link

low income countries or low-income countries?

― Cathy, Saturday, 19 May 2007 17:27 (sixteen years ago) link

depends. are the countries low and ... no, sorry, i can't actually find any occasion when it wouldn't be low-income countries :)

― grimly fiendish, Saturday, 19 May 2007 17:37 (sixteen years ago) link

yeah, I thought so. I just keep seeing it without the hyphen.

― Cathy, Saturday, 19 May 2007 17:42 (sixteen years ago) link

yeh, you will. people be punctuation mooks :(

but as long as some of us keep flying the flag, there is hope for a better dawn.

(christ. that beer has gone straight to my head.)

― grimly fiendish, Saturday, 19 May 2007 17:46 (sixteen years ago) link

What part of speech is "low-income" in that case? It's not a compound adjective, is it, cause that's two adjectives together.

Should there be a question mark at the end of my previous sentence?

― Alba, Saturday, 19 May 2007 17:47 (sixteen years ago) link

The World Bank has two types of member countries: income and target. Income countries pay in, target countries take out. However, it's harder to get money down from the hilly high countries, so they prefer to use low income countries for their banking pleasures. or something

― stet, Saturday, 19 May 2007 17:55 (sixteen years ago) link

C-

― Alba, Saturday, 19 May 2007 18:05 (sixteen years ago) link

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