ATTN: Copyeditors and Grammar Fiends

It should be "am I not?" Is that usually looked upon as being grammatically correct?

distri-bute, she says is wrong; distrib-ute is right

where the hell is she coming up with this stuff?

I don't know of any hard and fast rules, but it seems like Webster's generally avoids having hyphens come after a short vowel. So in the example you cite, "funeral pro-cession" is OK because the O in "pro" is a long vowel, but "pro-cessed the claims" is not OK because the first syllable there sounds like "prah."

That sounds crazy, Abbs.

PP yeah but i guess my question is more why does "aren't i" even SOUND right? it shouldn't at all!!

However! My Webster's does break it as "pro-cess," presumably because no one actually pronounces "proc" as a single syllable. Like I said, there are no hard and fast rules. In the case of "distribute," however, Webster's does go with your editor, and I'm inclined to agree.

("Proc-ess" might also suggest that the C is to be pronounced as a hard C, so yeah, all around I think "pro-cess" is better.)

Ok good to know, I am just tired of re-hyphenating all these random words at her behest every week.

FYI, I went with "or"; this came back to me changed back to "and."

That's why you should have gone with "at least"!

I know. :/

on another subject, why is it "i'm fabulous aren't i?" when "are" does not agree with "i".

my guess: we started using it as a sonic substitute as amn't fell out of favor

my recommendation: tell people you're part Scottish and say amnae

Can't seem to find an answer to this by googling...when you are talking about U.S. administrations -- e.g. the Bush administration, the Reagan administration etc., does administration have a capital A? I seem to remember being told that you talk about a government but the Government, but I don't know if the principle is the same.

I would say yes.

I would say no, and I wouldn't capitalize "the Government," either. But house styles may vary.

AP says lower case for "administration".

usage question: do you think the phrase "rest assured" requires an object (e.g., "rest assured that we're working on it"), or do you think one can rest assured in the abstract? (like, just resting, feeling assured. of nothing in particular.)

i'd say the latter. merriam-webster may say differently, but i think it's perfectly OK to use "assured" to mean a state of mind, so it'd be just like writing "rest happy"

m-w links assured² (noun) to "insured", but fuck that imo

Re the winning margin in a horse race: "two and three-quarters lengths" or "two and three-quarter lengths"? Converting to numerals is not an option, alas.

Latter is more popular on Google, but the former feels more correct, since it's basically "two lengths and three-quarters of a length," right?

or three fourths, yes.

Maybe it just looks jarring to people because of the two plurals right next to each other.

Oh wait, new alternative:

Results 1 - 10 of about 3,050 for "two and three-quarters lengths". (0.12 seconds)
Results 1 - 10 of about 66,300 for "two and three-quarter lengths". (0.15 seconds)
Results 1 - 10 of about 249,000 for "two and three-quarters of a length". (0.14 seconds)

three quarter-lengths

the only thing I can think of is that horse racing may have special conventions for stuff like that ...but on the other hand ... would you say three-quarters pound burger or three-quarter pound burger?

xxp Never mind, that's Google up to its old tricks, where it says "249,000 results" and then you click to the second page and find out that it's "omitted" some "similar" entries and that there are really only 17 hits.

xp Neither, I'm a pescatarian.

Quick question on US style re: quote marks and punctuation (that old chestnut). Does the "punctuation inside" rule apply even with things that aren't direct quotations, as in:

The film tells the story of the "People's Princess".

or

The film tells the story of the "People's Princess."

?

Yes.

I know it's hard to believe but in American English I don't really think there are any exceptions to putting periods and commas inside quotation marks.

Thanks.

Someone who is not my friend but whose comments I can see on facecase just wrote: "I was in main and got to see the wales to." It's like a perfect shitstorm of eye-stabbing.

I would friend that person just to berate them, then unfriend.

Corduroy wales, surely.

"to" is Welsh for "roof" and "main" is Welsh for "lean" -- maybe it's a complicated pun

facecase!

facecase.

Supposed to edit the questions for a multiple choice test. For the answer choices, complete sentences end with a period, fragments/numbers/etc. don't end with punctuation. What about choices such as "Yes" and "No"?

Have any of you ever heard or used the word "timeously"?

Not until just now. Seeing as it's just about universally defined as the exact same as "timely," perhaps you can be one of the last speakers of English to help euthanize it.

I just came across it in a translation. "Timely" has the problem of being an awkward adverb. I always end up using "in a timely fashion" (in contracts and official documents).

oh right, that's completely true -- that's a big point of utility for it. (and makes defining it as just "timely" sort of ... bad, actually.)

I thought it was even more wussy than "timorously."

so you know how everyone has that one grammar thing that they can't ever get right? your/you're, who/who, it's/its etc. well mine is effect/affect. can someone help me 2 understand :-/?

ha - who/that**

WHO THAT

affect is usually a verb, ie "[x] affects [y]"
effect is usually a noun, ie "[x] has an effect on [y]"

that's the simplified version i guess

Copyeditors and Grammar Fiends, we that

thank u kev

it gets really fun when you realize that "to effect" can be a transitive verb meaning "to bring about" ie "obama hopes to effect change..."

also forms of "affect" can refer to emotions, ie someone's "affective state"