ATTN: Copyeditors and Grammar Fiends

If anyone ever wants to make a hypocrite meme about editors, feel free to use the "Please provide copy with files" b/w "This copy is all wrong."

Yikes! Thanks for the help upthread everyone. More complicated than I thought it would be.

I know there are common nouns for inhabitans of large English-speaking cities, such as "New Yorker" or "Londoner", but what noun would you use for someone who lives, say, in Oslo or Prague or Helsinki? Osloer/Praguer/Helsinkier? Or Osloan/Helsinkian/Praguean? Or something else?

Helsinkite? :)

These are in (e.g.) the Wikipedia articles for the cities, under “demonyms”

Or https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_adjectivals_and_demonyms_for_cities

Ah, okay, thanks! Apparently it's "Helsinkian" and "Praguer", but the Olso article has no demonym.

I wonder if there's some logic to these, or whether people just use whatever is easiest to pronounce out of the available suffixes: -er / -ian / -ite?

(xpost)

Ok, the article you linked says "Oslovian".

The list has “Oslovian” which is superb

sorry!

I wonder where the extra "v" comes from in demonyms like Peruvian or Oslovian?

I think it's to do with an implied W at the end.

Some discussion at
https://english.stackexchange.com/questions/310461/why-is-there-a-v-in-peruvian

Wikipedia gives the etymology as Piruw [pɪɾʊw], from Quechua, the Inka language.
That [w] at the end would become a /v/ in Spanish when adding a suffix to produce Peruviano.

Time for a campaign for 'Glagovian' to upset the natives.

spanish word for peruvian is peruano though. could never understand the logic of spanish doing this, in the same vein, americano vs. estadounidense, nicaragüense, etc. why puertorriqueño and not puertorriquense.

Osloid

Christian

did we get this sorted?

Osilator

Oslonaut

Praguer U

demonyms should get their own thread imo

poll demonyms

this one is just...
Aguascalientes Hidrocálido

i mean why change from latin to greek

Search & Destroy: Demonyms

Ozalid

deemsonyms

I'm creating a gif where a quote begins on one screen (I don't really know how you describe gifs) and ends on another. Where do the quote marks go? I am working on the assumption it will work in the same way as in regular prose where a quote extends across two paragraphs, i.e. first para has an initial quote mark but no end quote (to show continuation), while second para has quotes at beginning and end. So like this:

"The quote begins on one screen...

"and ends on another."

Is that right? I suppose I would just follow whatever is standard in subtitling/captioning, but I don't know much about that.

not sure there's a right/wrong here so much as a "how clearly do you feel it reads?"

myself i wd probably go with:

"The quote begins on one screen...

… and ends on another"

(reason i guess bcz the regular-prose usage is abt how the eye reads and travels and reads when things are on the same page, on one line and then the next? but as reasons go this is merely an ex post facto ratioanlisation of my preferred taste really)

if the broken paragraph was many lines long i might not do it this way, but if it's this short yr talking abt the eye taking it in in one blink

Are these captions for people speaking, or is like a silent voiceover kind of deal?

(xpost)

Hmm, I think you're right. I did it the first way without thinking when writing the script in a doc, but it looks fussy in the gif. I'll go with your suggestion, thanks.

Are the ellipsis going to be visible?

It's just a little promotional gif - no sound.

Yeah, either way, I'd have ellipses on screen as written above.

in that case I would have a space after 'screen' (but again I think that's just personal preference).

INVITE as a noun, c/d

there seems to be a history of it, but also i hate it. i mean INVITATION is right there (as is INVITEE, for even more horrifying usages)

asking a colleague if they got an “invitation” to a meeting or a zoom call feels inappropriately festive or momentous to me - “invite” sounds right to me in that situation

Either tbh

^^^canceled and cancelled xp

but maybe you're right

Bet that the aussies call it an invie or something

Theyd call british disgust at same the pommie tsks of invie maybe

the sad bells of invies

it’s a weird area

sometimes i call my work planner my “diary” and sometimes my “calendar”

people who call it their “outlook” are disgusting dogs imo

What if you are....using outlook?

Invite is even pronounced differently than invite.

Yes, it’s evolved like the noun version of embed in that regard. I’m at peace with both. In fact I don’t really see why people get het up about verbs becoming nouns.

Fuck an "invite". I'm not going.

ive probably said this before in this thread but the way words can cheekily step out of their parsed category is one of the excellent things about the english language (and it isn't just nouns and verbs)

my off-the-cuff theory is that it's bcz english doesn't really deploy word-endings as declensions or conjugations but the why of it matters less than the fact that it happens and it's poetry

also poetry: the shift of the accent in invite and invite