ATTN: Copyeditors and Grammar Fiends

pontifex otm, adverbs can also eff off

Seriously I think this may be my favourite ever papal statement about anything, not just because of its high bathos but because HE'S RIGHT

I think you mean HE IS

i do

There are no nouns in Tlön's conjectural Ursprache, from which the "present" languages and the dialects are derived: there are impersonal verbs, modified by monosyllabic suffixes (or prefixes) with an adverbial value. For example: there is no word corresponding to the word "moon,", but there is a verb which in English would be "to moon" or "to moonate." "The moon rose above the river" is hlor u fang axaxaxas mlo, or literally: "upward behind the onstreaming it mooned."

The preceding applies to the languages of the southern hemisphere. In those of the northern hemisphere (on whose Ursprache there is very little data in the Eleventh Volume) the prime unit is not the verb, but the monosyllabic adjective. The noun is formed by an accumulation of adjectives. They do not say "moon," but rather "round airy-light on dark" or "pale-orange-of-the-sky" or any other such combination. In the example selected the mass of adjectives refers to a real object, but this is purely fortuitous. The literature of this hemisphere (like Meinong's subsistent world) abounds in ideal objects, which are convoked and dissolved in a moment, according to poetic needs. At times they are determined by mere simultaneity. There are objects composed of two terms, one of visual and another of auditory character: the color of the rising sun and the faraway cry of a bird. There are objects of many terms: the sun and the water on a swimmer's chest, the vague tremulous rose color we see with our eyes closed, the sensation of being carried along by a river and also by sleep. These second-degree objects can be combined with others; through the use of certain abbreviations, the process is practically infinite. There are famous poems made up of one enormous word. This word forms a poetic object created by the author. The fact that no one believes in the reality of nouns paradoxically causes their number to be unending. The languages of Tlön's northern hemisphere contain all the nouns of the Indo-European languages - and many others as well.

<3

whatever you say LIddle' Pope Francis

Saw this headline in this morning's London Metro, it's wrong, seriously wrong, but I can't get to the bottom of why:

BRAWL BREAKS OUT ON HOL JET AS PASSENGER IS SPAT IN FACE

it needs the preposition 'at' I think, because this form is transitive, but I got lost in the undergrowth. as it is it sounds like some unnamed entity has gobbed a passenger out into some other unnamed entity's face.

'hol jet' is a trying construction

What's a hol jet?

this solves any word-length issue (53 characters to the original's 57):
BRAWL ON HOLIDAY JET AFTER PASSENGER’S FACE SPAT IN

Beautiful scansion and internal assonance though. I'm chanting that headline to the tune of the chorus of "The Human Beings" till somebody makes me stop as PASSenger is SPAT in face

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JipPo-tb5wg

xp You want your face spat in? I've a mind to spit your face in!

SPIT HAPPENS

SPIT SPAT SPARKS JET BRAWL

SPIT SPAT SPARKS FLIGHT FIGHT

A+ the both of yous.

teamwork!

hol jet gob scrap

SKY SALIVA SHENANIGANS

as a verb spit can be transitive and intransitive, so i think the issue is simply that the object of the transitive form is what gets spat (the ejecta if you will) rather than the target of the spitting

yes, that makes sense.

SPIT SPAT IN FACE IN FACE SPIT SPAT

The same problem as with "Queen Elizabeth to be evacuated in case of Brexit unrest".

looking all this up i got distracted by the fact that ejecta and object have the same latin root (jaceo, I throw)

ejecta comes from ejicio, also meaning throw or cast (but i think in a more urgent way)
object come from objaceo, which means "i lie at the mercy or "i lie blocking the way" (of whatever, in each case) -- so a object is a thing chucked down in front of you blocking yr way which is at yr mercy, good work everyone

DE SPUTUS DISPUTANDUM EST

de sputo, but yes

Thank you

shuttle spittle battle

fox in socks, my game is done, sir

CABIN JABBIN' AFTER SPEW STEW

this just arrived through our front door and inflicted grievous internal injuries upon me, please send an ambulance

https://i.imgur.com/9yeCgug.jpg

Creasing at the multiple indignities of 15% of for oaps

excuse me, that's oap's

Lol my fucking phone is STILL spelling the piss diamonds as Lib Dem’s but it literally overwrote my authentic spelling

u love 2 see it as we sub-editor's say

Same business, elsewhere on the web. Consistent!

We do jet washing for
Roof's patio's lock block drive's Concrete drive's wall's

there's at least one thing wrong with literally every line, it's almost too completely incorrect to be real

Hmmmm... Something tells me this positive feedback on bark.com could be an inside job:

KevIn weir
3 December 2019

Great bunch of lads that alway’s do a first class job at the right price, thank’s again boy’s 👍

big 'leaving your wallet at the scene of the crime' energy

"alway's" is radical and indeed breakway stuff in this context tbf

(esp. just two words after "lads") 👍

lad's

so a colleague asked me to read through a customer email she was sending and I queried the fact that she'd put a timeframe as 6a - 10a. My query consisted of me saying er shouldn't this be 'am'?

Response:

"I’ve increasingly seen it called it “6a” instead of “6am” in the US (to be efficient? no idea). Anyway, that’s how they referred to it on our call the other day so I thought I’d play along."

US ilxors - is this actually a thing?

no

in the my adventures developing similar shortcuts i moved to "6-10am", based on the assumption that (contextually) as nothing routinely being promoted was going to be "6pm-10am" no muddle was likely. (if/when "6pm-10am" was need then put that in full, till then no need).

so i can't complain that someone has invented a new compacting on a similar principle! what else is it going to be before or after except midday?

but i highly favour the compact in these circs so

to answer the question tho, i've not seen it but i don't read to proof off the clock so may have skimmed it w/o noticing

6-10am is good I think. 'a' by itself seems like an unhelpful letter to increase the frequency of its use in isolation. More, I was just surprised, as I hadn't come across it at all.

I was thinking "that looks familiar" but I've realised it's just similar enough to the way fount size is expressed when you buy a small amount of type: the size of a small fount (not point size but number of actual separate letters) is expressed in a number of a or A, and then the other letters are in set ratios to that. So you might buy a fount that's 5A-13a or whatever.

Since your colleague admits to knowing no reason why this construction would be more useful or helpful, it seems safe to err on the side of adding back one fucking letter to make one's communication more universally clear. btw, I've never seen "a" used to denote "a.m." by anyone. if it's a thing, it's a very limited thing.

well my colleague is great, so i perhaps wouldn’t do it with the same level of vituperation, but would be v happy to say “no one(*) in the USA has heard of this, in your face, colleague” to her, as she would take it in the right spirit.

(*by which i mean the totally authoritative aimless of ilx.com, no i will not be taking questions at this time)