ATTN: Copyeditors and Grammar Fiends

Yes, I believe you have made this impactful point several times about this “nonsense” regarding people’s folk opinions as to usage, but are sure that is the right thread to banish it to? Maybe it should more properly be on Noize Board thread about Britishes vs. US(age).

no, it is not fine as a transitive verb. If I were a copy-editor I would cross it out and replace it with "launch"

xp

i am a copy editor

whether i replaced it would of course depend on context but it's fine

'Debuted' as a word in English is odd because you wouldn't pronounce the last letters - or, if you like, you'd pronounce it 'Debu'd' ie: omit the te.

I don't say that this makes it invalid or that other English words don't have silent letters.

I just reflect that this fact about 'Debuted' might add to people's resistance to it if they see it as a new word. It's perhaps a bit awkward.

On reflection I don't think I would use it, but I'm also not going to complain if others use it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZwyTrWJ7Djw

Your debutante just knows what you need etc iirc

this is a weird exchange to read as an American

Your debutante just knows what you need but your arsenal, well that’s a horse of a different color.

Xp: because?

Debut as a transitive verb is completely normal here, and I had no idea it wasn't in the UK. So the idea that "it is not fine as a transitive verb" or it's "odd" and people might struggle with guessing how to pronounce it is itself odd to me. nbd, just a little funny, like americans losing their minds in a roundabout or something

It’s completely normal in the UK too. Funnily enough I just edited a piece containing it.

Maybe this thread should be restyled as

TS Copyeditors vs. Grammar Fiends FITE!

where "fiend" is in the sense of
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lae8FewbnuU

HOW DU I SHOT Capitalization Rules for Headlines

(or titles obv.)

Apart from the initial cap (or yes, for names etc) I would say avoid wherever possible - I feel like upper case in headlines always 'snags' the eye.

I work on a magazine for a big heritage organisation and they've just decided to stop using the Gill font in all their publications, posters etc. First instance I know of a cancelled font.

Capitalization is a good example of why picking 1 style guide and obeying it no matter what can be a kindness to yourself, though even there Chicago, e.g., has rules for headline-style (Brazen Disregard for Ward Fowler's Sensitive Little Eyes) and sentence-style (This is the future Ward Fowlers want)

There are no quality newspapers in the UK that do anything other than sentence case for headlines (and with the tabloids, it's just that they put SOME words, or whole headlines, in all caps).

Bit more a mix in the US, right?

i like no caps in all circumstances

u and xhuxk0r both

Title case would be decidedly easier to implement if everyone agreed on the exceptions.

The way I learned it was that you cap everything except the little eensy-weensy words and conjunctions, but where things start to get weird is longer words that are still technically supposed to be downstyle.

People generally agree about having "a," "an," "the," and "of" lowercase. Most people seem to agree on "with."

Then you get to the nore debatable words like "among" and "without," and then the fisticuffs begin.

Personally I try to find ways to avoid such disputes. It's usually unproductive and it's not reader-centric to spend more than 30 seconds on an issue like this. Make a choice and stick to it; I don't care which. For me, the only audience that has final say is the person who decides to pay me.

When doing title case (for titles of books and films) on my publication, the one that people always want to cap down when house style says they shouldn’t is “is”. We stick to prepositions.

Personally I like an italicized title in running text as without it, the lowercase prepositions can make the unit of the titles hard to discern. I used to work somewhere where house style was to cap every word of book and film titles with no exceptions, which avoided this problem without the need for italics.

Xp

Yeah "Is" is a verb, and it is often the main verb. To me, that is not controversial. But I am sure there are people out there arguing the point.

My inclination is to embrace (a) house style if there is one, (b) the preference of whoever is paying me, then (c) my best guess about the preference of the target audience that I wish to persuade.

After 35 years of this shit, I am at the point where my own preferences are a distant fourth.

Friend of mine just told me the exact same thing about “is.”

xps

Feel like people want to downcase “is” because it looks like “in.”

I remember long ago receiving an email from a friend of mine who works at Film Forum with the titles of films in all caps which made perfect sense to me for various reasons.

Which Alba just mentioned a few posts ago, still catching up sorry.

Oh no, that’s not quite what he said,

I've noticed that the designers of CD inserts almost always finesse the problem by using small block caps for all song titles.

What are these CDs you speak of, Mr. Aimless?

CDs nuts

CDs? Try to imagine them as shiny, thin plastic coasters full of super-sized MP3s that haven't been filtered through highly lossy algorithms.

TS Have you got vs. Have you gotten. Is it yet another GBS US/UK divide?

Friend of mine just told me the exact same thing about “is.”

Oh wait, no, he didn’t, my brane downcased it whilst reading.

TS Have you got vs. Have you gotten

do you have?

have you

Not talking about the sense of possession, more like “have you got(ten) to the part about…?”

are you at

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aCwMFwvwieo

have you any wool?

What matter have you against me?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KxO0jo7U4d4

british people don't consider "gotten" a word iirc

That’s changed a lot recently.

You could say they’ve gotten wise to the hip US lingo

ill-gotten is very ordinary present-day uk english (when used of gains, riches, wealth etc)

etymonline.com dates its hip modernity to the 14c: https://www.etymonline.com/search?q=gotten

(ie like many US variants it's older not newer)

Best word there is sooterkin.

it is a good word definitely

I was making a bad joke fwiw

I'm not at all keen on 'gotten'. But for that matter I'm not keen on 'got' - a very overused, almost ubiquitous word which I don't find at all pretty. As Mark S has already indicated above, it's often not at all necessary to use this word. In James Redd's example, I would say 'Have you reached ... ?'