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A tyrant must put on the appearance of uncommon devotion to religion. Subjects are less apprehensive of illegal treatment from a ruler whom they consider god-fearing and pious. On the other hand, they do less easily move against him, believing that he has the gods on his side.
— Aristotle
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Blog Statistics
Dates
First entry - 6/27/2003
Most recent entry - 8/26/2010
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Update every 30 minutes. Last: 2:25 PM Pacific
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posted at
04:23 PM
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So, when will this be available? Well, ok, so it's not Christmas 2010. This one's easy -- Christmas seems to have become something of a charged term. Let's, uh, not use that one.
What about Holidays 2010? Dunno, seems ok to me. Is it perhaps not specific enough? Maybe Holiday Season 2010? Maybe that's too long?
So the solution is ... Holiday 2010? Which holiday? Are they maybe leaving themselves lots of room to release during some holiday in 2010? Halloween-Thanksgiving-Christmas-whatever?
The thing is, that's distracting me so much that I haven't actually read the ad copy.
[categories]
language
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posted at
10:44 AM
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So I always find it a bit surprising to see evidence that German seems to be so hospitable to English. This is so well known that it has a name (Denglish = Deutsch + English). Where it surprises me the most is when an English word pops up in a context in which, to the best of my (imperfect) understanding, a suitable German word exists.
This weekend I had cause to get some "thermal paste," which is goo that you smear between your computer's CPU chip and the big ol' heat sink (thing with fins) that sits on top of the chip. The packaging for this goo came in, like, five languages. The English section said this:
Heat is the enemy.
Here's your silver bullet.
Which alluded to the product's name, "Formula 5 Silver Thermal Compound."
In German, this was rendered as:
Das Problem: Hitze.
Die Lösung: Cool bleiben.
("The problem: heat. The solution: stay cool.")
There's a German word kühl that means cool. Wouldn't that have been a suitable usage here? It's hard to imagine that the concept being put across here was so subtle, anyway, that a German term could not have fit the bill. But what do I know.
It's not as if the Germans are completely relaxed about all this. There is fretting and the occasional effort to revert to German terminology, although with nowhere near the intensity that their neighbors bring to the resistance.
Me, I have no stake, just interest. I'm generally skeptical that people can legislate linguisic trends (including in the US), but it's not my fight, so I officially have no opinion about what happens along these lines in other countries. In the meantime, it's just that much easier to read German. :-)
[categories]
language
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posted at
10:35 PM
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I know better than to spot three occurences of an editorial issue and declare enemy action (generally expressed as "the language, it's going to hell"). But I do find these odd. Draw your own conclusions.
- Cars starting at $8999 or less. (Sign at car dealer in Renton WA)
- Maximum capacity: up to 250 lbs. (Costco catalog)
- An extensive On Demand library, now approaching more than 20,000 choices. (xfinity brochure[1])
[categories]
language
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posted at
11:36 AM
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 If you're wondering about the fireworks and the parade and about why your editor has brought a selection of festive and tasty treats to the office today[1], it's because it's National Grammar Day. (National Grammar Day!! What's next, National Punctuation Day?!? Yes.) National Grammar Day commemorates a famous battle in which the forces who were determined to stamp out "hopefully" as a sentence modifier were defeated by a valiant and plucky band of descriptive linguists and progressive editors.
Haha, not really.
In general, I cringe at anything that purports to "raise people's awareness" of grammar, because that generally devolves into the self-annointed experts whinging at length about how people's sloppy ways are ruining English. (Yawn.) Thus I was pleased to read two very good posts about NGD which seem, imo, to emphasize the good side of raising one's grammar awareness. The first post is by John McIntyre (who else), who notes that ...
One way to make [National Gramamr Day] substantial — no, not by acting as an officious prig and peever — is to practice the craft to produce more effective writing. A laudable call to arms. Which he follows up with suggestions like getting yourself some decent writing advice, and of course, hiring an editor.
Then there is a post by Gabe Doyle that says everything I ever wanted to say about what it really means to study grammar:
My problem with National Grammar Day (and most popular grammarians in general) is that it suggests that the best part of studying language is the heady rush of telling people that they shouldn’t say something. But if you really study language, you know that there’s so much more to it than that. As a bonus, Gabe includes a "Ten More Common Grammar Myths, Debunked" list, which includes items like:
- Singular they is standard English.
- Slow is an adverb.
- Strunk & White’s The Elements of Style isn’t a good grammar reference book.
He's posted about these things before, so if you don't believe him, you can click the links and go read his exegeses on each of the debunked myths.
And now I return to my day job as an editor, which consists of -- haha -- telling people that they shouldn't say something. Over and out.
[categories]
language
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Sunday, 27 December 2009
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"But we invented English!"
posted at
07:48 AM
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 This is, needless to say, a specious argument. Except apparently it is needful to say, because I keep running across this argument. (#, #, #, #, #, #, ...) Herewith, therefore, a short guide to just why the argument "But we invented English" is nonsense.
1. No one invented English. What, you did? You and your sisters, and your cousins, and your aunts? Not quite. English has been in development, via many fascinating historical and linguistic turns, since before the Saxons and Danes established themselves in the British Isles in pre-Medieval times. Since that time, this once purely Germanic language has taken on a heavy dose of Old French, a healthy helping of Latin and Greek, and some tang from practically every other language it's ever come into contact with. This was not exactly a guided enterprise.
2. We invented English, too. If your ancestors invented English (which they didn't, see previous point), so did mine. British and American English began their split around 1600. That's still about 800 years of common Anglo-Saxon history and 500 years of common Anglo-Norman history before the split. Many people (maybe more) in the New World share that linguistic ancestry with everyone living in Engelond.
3. American English is more conservative than British English. American English preserves older grammatical and vocabulary and pronunciation (!) features, hence by some additional specious logic, is more "authentic" to the "original" version of English. The list of ways in which American English is "purer" than British English is too long to recount here. But as a good summary, try the first chapter of Origins of the Specious by Patricia O'Conner and Stewart Kellerman.
4. Conversely, British English is more "corrupted". British English has changed more with respect to "original" English than other dialects. Notably American, of course. See point #3: if you are British and speak English in some other way than Shakespeare did, how is it you're not speaking a "corrupted" English?
5. The English themselves don't even speak one version of English. From Newcastle to Norwich to Eastbourne to Penzance, England alone has more ways to speak English than the rest of the world. I exaggerate, but not much. The English, they invented English, and Scouse, and Geordie, and Brummie, and, what, a hundred other ways to not speak English the way it was invented by the English.
6. So what? Even if the English "invented" English -- but see points 1 through 5 -- why does that matter? Consider an analogy. The style of music known as rock-and-roll originated in the United States. (Note that I did not say "was invented" in the U.S.[1]) So Americans were the first to play rock-and-roll. Does this mean that a) the only way to play rock-and-roll correctly is the way that Americans do (whatever that might be), and b) Americans can run around the world telling people that they don't play rock-and-roll right? I'm trying to imagine how well that would go over. Especially in England.
Then again, I might be off base (<--Americanism) here. Perhaps English is like Szechuan cuisine, and the only way to get the authentic thing is to go to the source. Feel free to explain to me how this inventing-English thing works.
[categories]
language
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Friday, 9 October 2009
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Softening the blow
posted at
09:05 AM
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- We do not accept coupons at this location. Mahalo.
- No refills. Mahalo.
- This counter is closed. Mahalo.
As he suggests, mahalo might officially mean "thank you," but ...
Of course, we see this a lot:
Restrooms for customers only. Thank you.
Or, as I amuse myself to imagine:
Restrooms for customers only. Thank's!
And in these cases one might need to pause for a moment to sort out exactly what we're being thanked for.
There are variants on this technique. One of the commenters on the thread observes a particularly bureaucratic version of this:- In order to serve you better, we do not accept coupons at this location.
- In order to serve you better, no refills.
And another commenter has a great one that is vaguely antiquated-souding, but oh, my:[1]
She is such a hussy, bless her heart.
You can prepend a softener as well:
IMHO, this entire discussion is lame.
What other variations are there?
[categories]
language
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posted at
09:38 AM
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Correct
You will need to supply information about applications that you want to run with Windows.
Incorrect
You will need to supply information about applications which you want to run with Windows.
Correct
Your package contains the subsidiary information card, which you can use to obtain device drivers or local technical support.
No professional linguist takes this seriously. There's no evidence from actual English usage, contemporary or historical, that which is not suitable for introducing restrictive clauses. (You can find recent talk about this on the Langauge Log here.)
Why am I blathering on this? Because I have yet again found something amusing on Facebook. This time it's a description of one of the innumerable games that you can play via Facebook. (As if FB just by itself were not already a yawning time suck.) This particular game appears to be a typing type of game, which is described thusly:
Typing maniac is a game which measures the typing skills and the ability to think fast that features multiple power ups! There is editorial gold here, including a capitalization error (Typing Maniac). But more to the point, it's a rare instance where that and which appear in the same sentence and either both introduce restrictive clauses or (perhaps arguable) are used "backward" per the style-guide rule. Examine:
Typing maniac is a game which measures the typing skills and the ability to think fast that features multiple power ups! It seems clear to me that which is restrictive -- you would not write this:
*Typing maniac is a game, which measures the typing skills. The that, in turn, could be either of these:
Typing maniac is a game which measures the typing skills and the ability to think fast and that features multiple power ups!
Typing maniac is a game which measures the typing skills and the ability to think fast, which features multiple power ups! The larger point, as noted, is that whatever the style guides say, actual people who speak (or write) English have no notion of this artificial distinction between that and which. (Of course, actual people who write English also need editors, but altho that is amply shown here, we'll leave that discussion till later.)
And we'll not even talk about what multiple power ups could possibly mean, or whether you can pluralize a preposition (ups).
[categories]
writing, language
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posted at
11:13 AM
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English has a variety of ways to form a word that means "resident of," which the infallible Wikipedia lists as a demonym:
-ite: Seattleite, Manhattanite
-er: New Yorker, Dubliners
-an: Baltemorean, San Franciscan, Glaswegian
other: (Los) Angeleno (borrowed from Spanish, obviously)
I haven't investigated, but I suspect that any systematic set of rules for how to create a demonym is going to be complex at best and full of exceptions. Yet there must be rules, because it is possible to get it wrong. We're not Seattlers, for example, we just aren't.
So, here's your challenge: what do you call a resident of King County? The problem is that none of the normal rules result in a particularly satisfying name. What can we do about that?
[categories]
language
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posted at
08:44 AM
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All I can say is that if they're going to cop out and use only that effete British English, forget it -- I'll take my business elsewhere.
Hahaha.
[categories]
language
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posted at
11:20 PM
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On the more utilitarian side, we at work have a prescribed list of reference works. For our dictionary, we use the American Heritage Dictionary. Even knowning that the AHD was designed to counter the "permissiveness" of the infamous Webster's Third, I like the AHD a lot.
 But as much as I like dictionaries, in the context of work, I hardly ever open one. In fact, I cannot recall when I last used a dictionary at work to ascertain the definition of a term that came up in documentation that we were writing.
Does this seem odd? Well, consider. My writing colleagues and I are (almost) all native speakers of English, all educated to college level. Which is to say, we have a pretty decent mastery of the basic vocabulary of English. Sure, there are many words that we don't know, and I'm sure that between us all, we can find many words that we think we know the definitions of but don't.
So here's the thing: if well-educated native speakers aren't 100% clear on the definition of a word, should we be putting that word into the documentation? It's not whether we, the writing team, can figure out the word -- it's whether our readers know it. And while the majority of our readers are also probably college-educated native speakers, we are also writing for people who read English as a second language.
We're not doing anyone any favors if we use terms that send ESL readers, let alone native speakers, off to the dictionary. People already don't want to read documentation. If we throw terms at them that they have to go look up, is this helping anyone?
Now and again our corporate style guide indirectly acknowledges this. Take the example of to comprise, a term that people often get confused. Sure, you could look it up in the dictionary. Here's what MSTP says:comprise
Avoid in general, mostly because its meaning is often confused. It means "include" or "contain." Depending on your meaning, use those terms or consist of or make up as appropriate. Do not use comprised of. In other words, it's not a matter of being technically, dictionary-says-so corrrect. It's a matter of writing to avoid confusion.
Of course, we use a ton of technical vocabulary. But for the most part, we take responsibility for that: if we throw around terms like manifest or boxing or common language runtime (CLR), we'll define the term and give you a glossary that you can use to look things up.[1]
But what we don't do is use the dictionary to verify some fine shade of meaning, or to justify our use of an obscure term, or even to see whether some highly technical term happens to appear in AHD. In any of these situations, if we have to go to the dictionary, so will users. And if they have to, we lose.
[categories]
language, writing, editing
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