Word Word
Raymond S. Wise
the following, from *The Oxford Companion to the English Language,* by Tom
McArthur, (C) 1992:
http://www.xrefer.com/entry/444485
[quote]
Word Word
[1982: coined by the US writer Paul Dickson]. A non-technical,
tongue-in-cheek term for a word repeated in contrastive statements and
questions: 'Are you talking about an American Indian or an _Indian Indian_?'
'It happens in Irish English as well as _English English._' [Word]. T.McA.
[end quote]
--
Raymond S. Wise
Minneapolis, Minnesota USA
E-mail: mplsray @ yahoo . com
Mark Wallace
> While researching xrefer.com for the term "English English" I
> came across the following, from *The Oxford Companion to the
> English Language,* by Tom McArthur, (C) 1992:
>
> http://www.xrefer.com/entry/444485
>
>
> [quote]
>
> Word Word
>
> [1982: coined by the US writer Paul Dickson]. A non-technical,
> tongue-in-cheek term for a word repeated in contrastive
> statements and questions: 'Are you talking about an American
> Indian or an _Indian Indian_?' 'It happens in Irish English as
> well as _English English._' [Word]. T.McA.
>
> [end quote]
If we were discussing postings to the newsgroup, I suppose we would
be posting posting postings.
--
Mark Wallace
-----------------------------------------------------
For the intelligent approach to nasty humour, visit:
The Anglo-American Humour (humor) Site
http://humorpages.virtualave.net/mainmenu.htm
-----------------------------------------------------
jan_...@hotmail.com
<illinoi...@mninter.net> wrote:
>
>Word Word
>
>[1982: coined by the US writer Paul Dickson]. A non-technical,
>tongue-in-cheek term for a word repeated in contrastive statements and
>questions: 'Are you talking about an American Indian or an _Indian Indian_?'
>'It happens in Irish English as well as _English English._' [Word]. T.McA.
It depends upon what is is.
Jan Sand
R H Draney
news:3cfc7dbf....@east.usenetserver.com:
Thanks...now I know what to call it when I take apart my watch to see
how the works works....r
B Briggs
"Raymond S. Wise" <illinoi...@mninter.net> wrote in message
news:ufop96c...@corp.supernews.com...
> While researching xrefer.com for the term "English English" I came across
> the following, from *The Oxford Companion to the English Language,* by Tom
> McArthur, (C) 1992:
>
> http://www.xrefer.com/entry/444485
>
>
> [quote]
>
> Word Word
>
> [1982: coined by the US writer Paul Dickson]. A non-technical,
> tongue-in-cheek term for a word repeated in contrastive statements and
> questions: 'Are you talking about an American Indian or an _Indian
Indian_?'
> 'It happens in Irish English as well as _English English._' [Word]. T.McA.
>
final final. Meaning this really is the final drink I am ordering from the
bar, as apposed to the final drink I ordered last time.
Barbara
psi
"R H Draney" <dado...@earthlink.net> wrote in message
news:Xns922346937...@207.217.77.23...
<snip>
> > It depends upon what is is.
>
> Thanks...now I know what to call it when I take apart my watch to see
> how the works works....r
Aren't these missing the point? I understood the original post meant that a
word word was a contrast - e.g. English English as against other varieties
of the language - rather than just the repetition of a word.
Maybe I misunderstood.
psi
Harvey V
><snip>
I don't think you did. The original posted definition of "word word"
seemed to me to imply that it was differentiating between the
contrastive structure and simple repetition.
--
Cheers,
Harvey
R H Draney
news:Xns922477F4...@194.168.4.92:
I can't find it now (Google groups is being less than helpful this
morning), but I seem to recall one of the threads going on when I
first came to aue concerned the phrase "coffee coffee" that had
appeared in a subtitled film...*that* would be more to the original
point....
Anybody better at working the advanced search parameters that can turn
up the thread?...r
Ben Zimmer
It was actually over in alt.folklore.urban:
----------------
http://groups.google.com/groups?selm=39EE78FE.5D09FF50%40addr.com
From: Tony Sweeney (swe...@addr.com)
Subject: Re: Many German words not real
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.urban
Date: 2000-10-18 21:30:04 PST
Charles Wm. Dimmick wrote:
>
>
> Reminds me of a movie I saw once supposedly set in
> World War II Italy. The dialogue was in German, but
> with English subtitles. My favorite line was when one
> person was offered coffee. He said "Kaffee Kaffee?",
> which the _unnecessary_ subtitle rendered as
> "real coffee?".
This isn't as silly as it sounds, Charles. The distinction is between
real and ersatz coffee. Ersatz (i.e. "replacement") coffee was
ubiquitous in wartime Germany, being offered the real thing would have
been quite a treat.
----------------
We might think of this phenomenon in terms of what linguists call
"markedness". Terms like "English" or "coffee" can have an "unmarked"
sense (all varieties of English, all varieties of coffee), or a more
restricted, "marked" sense (English as spoken in England, real as
opposed to ersatz coffee). Thus in the doubled form, the first word
"marks" or restricts the sense of the unmarked second word.
--Ben
R H Draney
news:3CFE3671...@midway.uchicago.edu:
> We might think of this phenomenon in terms of what linguists call
> "markedness". Terms like "English" or "coffee" can have an
> "unmarked" sense (all varieties of English, all varieties of
> coffee), or a more restricted, "marked" sense (English as spoken
> in England, real as opposed to ersatz coffee). Thus in the
> doubled form, the first word "marks" or restricts the sense of the
> unmarked second word.
That was the post...does the concept of "markedness" also apply to the
situation where the same word is used to mean both a whole thing and
some important part of that thing?...examples:
"day" - means both "a 24-hour period" and "the daylight part of a 24-
hour period"...if someone at work says "this program will require most
of a day to write", my first assumption is that it will take nearly
eight hours...if he says instead "this program will run for most of a
day", I read that as "nearly twenty-four hours"....
"classical" - this comes up a lot when we're listening to long-hair
music...someone will say "Ives (or Chopin, or Vivaldi) is my favorite
classical composer" and someone else will object that the composer
named belongs to some other era...but there's no unambiguous term for
the Beethoven-centered period that also excludes Bach and
Tchaikovsky....
I'm not asking for a solution here, but it'd be nice to have a name
for the phenomenon....r
psi
<snip>
> "classical" - this comes up a lot when we're listening to long-hair
> music...someone will say "Ives (or Chopin, or Vivaldi) is my favorite
> classical composer" and someone else will object that the composer
> named belongs to some other era...but there's no unambiguous term for
> the Beethoven-centered period that also excludes Bach and
> Tchaikovsky....
I'm being a bit picky here, but the Classical period was not
Beethoven-centred. Beethoven certainly began composing in the classical
period, but it was he who led the way into the Romantics. It was Haydn and
Mozart who should be regarded as the centre of Classicism.
psi
Donna Richoux
Funny you should mention it, I've been keeping notes that problem for
five years, since I began to see it as the root of many circular
arguments in Usenet. I myself call it the "Subset/Whole" problem, or the
"Subset/Class" problem, because it occurs when the same word is used to
represent the whole class as well as a subset of that class.
Examples where the term is used for a part of the group as well as the
whole group:
man (males vs. people)
America (USA vs. New World)
dishes (bowls vs. all crockery)
Europe (mainland vs. mainland+UK; also now EU vs entire)
cat (domestic vs. cat family)
English (of England proper or of all speakers)
Dutch (of Netherlands or Dutch+Flemish)
PC (as in personal computer -- IBM-compatible of all of size)
dog (males vs. all, cf. bitch)
Chinese (Mandarin vs. all main languages of China)
day (daylight hours vs. 24 hours)
Christian (fundamentalist Protestants only vs. all)
apes (hairy apes vs all primates)
concentration camp (death camps vs all relocation camps)
musician (players of instruments vs musical people)
actor (male actors vs all actors)
sausage (certain kinds vs. all kinds)
water (liquid vs. all states)
cake (layer cake vs. many cakelike things)
(Caution: this is *not* an invitation to reopen discussion on any
individual topic listed above. Don't make me regret this.)
This is similar to, but different than, the overlapping terminology that
turns up with "turtle, tortoise" and "fruit, vegetable." It also differs
from the robin/robin sort of confusion (English vs. American robin).
No, I've never heard anyone else name this or discuss this. I'd be
delighted to learn it was a category in Greek rhetoric or something.
As to whether it relates to "markedness" -- do people say, "I mean a
*cat* cat" when they mean to say "I mean a housecat, not the tigers and
things?" I'm not so sure that they do. But they might.
--
Best -- Donna Richoux
rzed
"psi" <p...@btconnect.com> wrote in message
news:adn5ql$47l$1...@helle.btinternet.com...
I believe RH's point was that there is no overarching term for music of a
type that might be performed by a symphony orchestra, for instance, but that
people often call it "classical" as though that were such a term. They may
be referring to symphonic or orchestral music, but those terms would leave
out much of Bach and Chopin. There's not a good term that covers Cole
Porter, Hank Williams, The Sex Pistols, and Wu-Tang Clan either, for that
matter. At one time the term "longhair music" could be applied to the
Bach/Ives type, but then the Beatles had to wreck that....
--
rzed
USAGE ends with AGE
Jerry Friedman
I like it, but it's not quite apposite, as the original post is
talking about the opposite: contrastive repetition, not repetition
repetition.
By the way, repetition repetition ("first first" for "very first",
"too too much" for "really too much") is common here in northern New
Mexico. Cf. Mexican Spanish "luego" (then) and "luego luego" (right
then, right away).
--
Jerry Friedman
R H Draney
news:1fdcqwd.36ktvu1kw5ls0N%tr...@euronet.nl:
> Examples where the term is used for a part of the group as well as
> the whole group:
>
> man (males vs. people)
> America (USA vs. New World)
> dishes (bowls vs. all crockery)
> Europe (mainland vs. mainland+UK; also now EU vs entire)
> cat (domestic vs. cat family)
> English (of England proper or of all speakers)
> Dutch (of Netherlands or Dutch+Flemish)
> PC (as in personal computer -- IBM-compatible of all of size)
> dog (males vs. all, cf. bitch)
> Chinese (Mandarin vs. all main languages of China)
> day (daylight hours vs. 24 hours)
> Christian (fundamentalist Protestants only vs. all)
> apes (hairy apes vs all primates)
> concentration camp (death camps vs all relocation camps)
> musician (players of instruments vs musical people)
> actor (male actors vs all actors)
> sausage (certain kinds vs. all kinds)
> water (liquid vs. all states)
> cake (layer cake vs. many cakelike things)
>
> As to whether it relates to "markedness" -- do people say, "I mean
> a *cat* cat" when they mean to say "I mean a housecat, not the
> tigers and things?" I'm not so sure that they do. But they might.
It works with some of the items on your list (now augmented, I hope,
by "classical")...I've heard "English English" and "dishes dishes",
and can easily imagine "sausage sausage" and "classical classical"....
"Day day" for the period from sunup to sundown doesn't seem to
work, though....r
Ben Zimmer
Many of Donna's examples (e.g., man, dog, actor) are used when linguists
talk about markedness. Here's a useful text I found online (notes for a
class on lexical semantics):
-------------------
amor.rz.hu-berlin.de/~h2816i3x/LexSemantik1.pdf
An expression A is a HYPONYM (i.e. an "undername") of an expression B
iff everything that falls under B also falls under A. In this case, B is
called a HYPERONYM (i.e. an "overname"). Examples are 'dog' and
'mammal', 'apple' and 'fruit', 'refrigerator' and 'appliance', 'king'
and 'monarch', 'scarlet' and 'red', 'walk' and 'go'. [...]
It is a frequent situation that one expression can serve as its own
hyponym (so-called AUTOHYPONYMS). We often find this with names of
biological kinds, when gender is a factor. For example, 'dog' is a term
for dogs in general, but can also be used for male dogs and is then
contrasted with 'bitch'. The noun 'cow' is used for female cattle, but
also for cattle in general, whereas 'bull' is used for male cattle only.
In structuralist terms, 'dog' and 'cow' are UNMARKED, and 'bitch' and
'bull' are MARKED. The marked or unmarked status sometimes is reflected
in morphological complexity; cf. 'lion' as the unmarked expression and
'lioness' as the marked expression.
The autohyponym is often the expression that denotes the thing or
concept that is considered more typical or more frequent.
-------------------
'Day', on the other hand, is a different case, since we're not dealing
with "hyponymy" but rather what linguists call "meronymy" or "partonymy"
(a part-whole relation between two terms). A "meronym" is a word that
names a part of another word-- so on the analogy of "autohyponym" we
could call 'day' an "automeronym".
--Ben
Gary Williams
> As to whether it relates to "markedness" -- do people say, "I mean a
> *cat* cat" when they mean to say "I mean a housecat, not the tigers and
> things?" I'm not so sure that they do. But they might.
Or to personalize this: yeah, I _might_, but thinking about it has
contaminated the results. I can picture saying "cow cow" to
differentiate a mature female of the species from cattle generally. I
think I can picture saying "classical classical" to distinguish music
of the Haydn-Mozart period from other serious concert works. But I
can't picture "actor actor"; there "male actor" works better for me.
On the other hand, I can't think of any way other than "English
English" to describe in two words the English language as spoken in
England. I'd probably say "liquid water", but I can imagine, if
presented with an ice cube upon asking for water, saying "No, I meant
water water." Especially if I were a child.
I haven't been able to detect the pattern in this, unless it's that
whether there is a single-word adjective that will define the subset
adequately is part of it.
Gary Williams
Aaron Davies
I remember a children's book on the history of music that divided music
into "popular" and "art" music (and folk, I suppose, but that's not
under consideration here). Art music is basically the
Beethoven/Bach/Chopin type stuff that orchestras play, and popular music
is anything aimed at the general public, from Stephen Foster (generally
regarded as the founder of the genre) to Eminem.
A quick rule of thumb: if you're supposed to put on a tux to hear it
performed, it's art music.
--
Aaron Davies
Save a cow, eat a vegan.
<http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,51494,00.html>
Donna Richoux
Be careful what you wish for, R H, or Ben will find it for you. Should
we really start calling these hyponyms, hyperonyms, autohyponyms,
meronyms, and automeronyms?
I am glad to know that at least one person has sorted and labeled these,
though. "Autohyponym," "self-under-name", is the one that interests me
most. Maybe I can remember that. Autohyponym.
Mason Barge
wrote:
I thought that was when you called your Jaguar a "Jag".
--
Mason Barge
"People who like this sort of thing will find this the sort of thing they like."
-- Abraham Lincoln
Mason Barge
I have heard people call 18th century music "music of the classical
period". The term "classical music", meaning orchestral music and its
kin, is simply too well-established to stomach a pompous purist
saying, "Well, you know, it is not really classical".
Barbara
"Ben Zimmer" <bgzi...@midway.uchicago.edu> wrote in message
news:3CFF8B42...@midway.uchicago.edu...
Now wouldn't Venn Diagrams come in handy here?
Babz
going around in circles
R H Draney
news:1fddb9t.6a34tf15nndqlN%aa...@avalon.pascal-central.com:
> I remember a children's book on the history of music that divided
> music into "popular" and "art" music (and folk, I suppose, but
> that's not under consideration here). Art music is basically the
> Beethoven/Bach/Chopin type stuff that orchestras play, and popular
> music is anything aimed at the general public, from Stephen Foster
> (generally regarded as the founder of the genre) to Eminem.
>
> A quick rule of thumb: if you're supposed to put on a tux to hear
> it performed, it's art music.
That would include KC and the Sunshine Band...all the guys wore tuxes
at my senior prom back in '75....r
Raymond S. Wise
> > > > Examples where the term is used for a part of the group as well as
> > > > the whole group:
> > > >
> > > > man (males vs. people)
> > > > America (USA vs. New World)
> > > > dishes (bowls vs. all crockery)
"Bowls" here struck me as odd. For "bowls" here I would have
substituted "dishes," meaning "flat, circular crockery."
> > > > Europe (mainland vs. mainland+UK; also now EU vs entire)
> > > > cat (domestic vs. cat family)
[...]
> > > > apes (hairy apes vs all primates)
This I don't get. "All primates" is a category which includes animals
which I have never heard called "apes," such as lemurs.
How about:
monkeys (monkeys vs. monkeys plus apes). Yes, I don't care for it, and
even Merriam-Webster Collegiate doesn't recognize it, but people do
use the words this way. (Example, "Monkey Planet," the first title
given to the English translation of the French book "La Plančte des
Singes." And don't forget David Letterman's delight at the video of
what he calls "a monkey washing a cat," which is actually a video of a
chimpanzee washing a cat.)
And from fiction:
the great apes (mangani vs. the biological category "the great apes").
Edgar Rice Burroughs in the Tarzan novels confusingly referred to--and
had Tarzan on occasion refer to--the apes which raised Tarzan as the
"great apes." He made it clear that they were "great apes" in the
wider sense by saying that they were related to the gorilla, but more
intelligent. The apes' name for themselves was "mangani." The mangani
considered humans to be a variation on themselves, naming black people
"gomangani" and white people "tarmangani," where "go" and "tar" meant
"black" and "white," respectively. (Baboons were "tongani" and
gorillas were "bolgani.)
Donna Richoux
> "Ben Zimmer" <bgzi...@midway.uchicago.edu> wrote in message
[snip]
> >
> > 'Day', on the other hand, is a different case, since we're not dealing
> > with "hyponymy" but rather what linguists call "meronymy" or "partonymy"
> > (a part-whole relation between two terms). A "meronym" is a word that
> > names a part of another word-- so on the analogy of "autohyponym" we
> > could call 'day' an "automeronym".
> >
> > --Ben
>
> Now wouldn't Venn Diagrams come in handy here?
My thought, too. You can make 'em with ASCII art, if you have the
patience. Space-space-space-space-space-space-space-line...
meirman
(Raymond S. Wise) posted:
>And don't forget David Letterman's delight at the video of
>what he calls "a monkey washing a cat," which is actually a video of a
>chimpanzee washing a cat.)
Monkey is a lot funnier than chimpanzee. David Letterman knows this.
And that's why so few chimpanzees make it as stand-up comics.
Compare with monkey business and monkey shines.
s/ meirman If you are emailing me please
say if you are posting the same response.
Born west of Pittsburgh Pa. 10 years
Indianapolis, 7 years
Chicago, 6 years
Brooklyn NY 12 years
Baltimore 17 years
meirman
Wise" <illinoi...@mninter.net> posted:
>While researching xrefer.com for the term "English English" I came across
>the following, from *The Oxford Companion to the English Language,* by Tom
>McArthur, (C) 1992:
>
>http://www.xrefer.com/entry/444485
>
>
>[quote]
>
>Word Word
>
>[1982: coined by the US writer Paul Dickson]. A non-technical,
>tongue-in-cheek term for a word repeated in contrastive statements and
>questions: 'Are you talking about an American Indian or an _Indian Indian_?'
>'It happens in Irish English as well as _English English._' [Word]. T.McA.
>
>[end quote]
Cute. I wonder if "like him like him" would count. I see that in tv
shows about teenage girls.
meirman
<rza...@ntelos.net> posted:
>
>"psi" <p...@btconnect.com> wrote in message
>news:adn5ql$47l$1...@helle.btinternet.com...
>> "R H Draney" <dado...@earthlink.net> wrote in message
>> news:Xns9224E3AEA...@207.217.77.24...
>> <snip>
>> > "classical" - this comes up a lot when we're listening to long-hair
>> > music...someone will say "Ives (or Chopin, or Vivaldi) is my favorite
>> > classical composer" and someone else will object that the composer
>> > named belongs to some other era...but there's no unambiguous term for
>> > the Beethoven-centered period that also excludes Bach and
>> > Tchaikovsky....
>> <etc>
>>
>> I'm being a bit picky here, but the Classical period was not
>> Beethoven-centred. Beethoven certainly began composing in the classical
>> period, but it was he who led the way into the Romantics. It was Haydn and
>> Mozart who should be regarded as the centre of Classicism.
>>
>
>
>I believe RH's point was that there is no overarching term for music of a
>type that might be performed by a symphony orchestra, for instance, but that
>people often call it "classical" as though that were such a term. They may
>be referring to symphonic or orchestral music, but those terms would leave
>out much of Bach and Chopin. There's not a good term that covers Cole
>Porter, Hank Williams, The Sex Pistols, and Wu-Tang Clan either, for that
Oh that's all right.
>matter. At one time the term "longhair music" could be applied to the
>Bach/Ives type, but then the Beatles had to wreck that....
I thought long hair referred to those who listen rather than those who
perform.
How about serious music, high-brow music ( ;) )
Aaron Davies
> In alt.english.usage on Tue, 4 Jun 2002 01:59:43 -0500 "Raymond S.
> Wise" <illinoi...@mninter.net> posted:
>
> >While researching xrefer.com for the term "English English" I came across
> >the following, from *The Oxford Companion to the English Language,* by Tom
> >McArthur, (C) 1992:
> >
> >http://www.xrefer.com/entry/444485
> >
> >
> >[quote]
> >
> >Word Word
> >
> >[1982: coined by the US writer Paul Dickson]. A non-technical,
> >tongue-in-cheek term for a word repeated in contrastive statements and
> >questions: 'Are you talking about an American Indian or an _Indian Indian_?'
> >'It happens in Irish English as well as _English English._' [Word]. T.McA.
> >
> >[end quote]
>
> Cute. I wonder if "like him like him" would count. I see that in tv
> shows about teenage girls.
Often abreviated to "like, or like-like?" Of course, in valley-girl,
that would be "like, like, or like, like-like?" BTW, I think I would
tend to hyphenate these word-words if I were transcribing them.
Dr Robin Bignall
wrote:
>In alt.english.usage on 7 Jun 2002 00:18:39 -0700 mpl...@my-deja.com
>(Raymond S. Wise) posted:
>
>>And don't forget David Letterman's delight at the video of
>>what he calls "a monkey washing a cat," which is actually a video of a
>>chimpanzee washing a cat.)
>
>Monkey is a lot funnier than chimpanzee. David Letterman knows this.
>And that's why so few chimpanzees make it as stand-up comics.
>
>Compare with monkey business and monkey shines.
>
Chimps have 98.5% of their genes in common with humans.
I just read that a new study shows that mice have 1% less -- 97.5% --
of their genes in common with us.
Next time a person of the female gender asks me if I'm a man or a
mouse, I'll just point to the 2.5% that's different.
--
wrmst rgrds
RB...(docrobi...@ntlworld.com)
Robert Bannister
I think you should keep it covered up. Mind you, 2.5% - that's a big one!
--
Rob Bannister
Richard Maurer
Word Word
[1982: coined by the US writer Paul Dickson]. A non-technical,
tongue-in-cheek term for a word repeated in contrastive statements and
questions: 'Are you talking about an American Indian or an _Indian Indian_?'
'It happens in Irish English as well as _English English._' [Word]. T.McA.
[end quote] >>
<< ["meirman"]
Cute. I wonder if "like him like him" would count. I see that in tv
shows about teenage girls. >>
<< [Aaron Davies]
Often abreviated to "like, or like-like?" Of course, in valley-girl,
that would be "like, like, or like, like-like?" >>
And that valley-girl grew up to become an accountant
who took her client out for a tennis match. At the start of the match
she announced the score "love-love", then after the match they
discussed "win-win" situations and the "net-net".
Does she count count?
-- ---------------------------------------------
Richard Maurer To reply, remove half
Sunnyvale, California of a homonym of a synonym for also.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Charles Riggs
<docr...@red.sylvania> wrote:
>Chimps have 98.5% of their genes in common with humans.
>I just read that a new study shows that mice have 1% less -- 97.5% --
>of their genes in common with us.
Same old, same old -- it means as little now as when we learned this a
dozen years ago. A book by Daniele Steele uses 100 percent of the
letters used in a play by William Shakespeare. A painting by a two-
year-old may well contain the exact same colours Monet used. A house
in the slums of Watts has 99% of the features of my house on Clew Bay.
All the notes Handel used in the Messiah are contained in a CD by the
Pogues.
Und so weider.
>Next time a person of the female gender asks me if I'm a man or a
>mouse, I'll just point to the 2.5% that's different.
That 2.5% might make her very happy, if gainfully employed.
--
Charles Riggs
Dr Robin Bignall
Dr Robin Bignall
<rcpb1_...@yahoo.com> wrote:
><< [Tom McArthur, via Raymond S. Wise]
>
>Word Word
>
>[1982: coined by the US writer Paul Dickson]. A non-technical,
>tongue-in-cheek term for a word repeated in contrastive statements and
>questions: 'Are you talking about an American Indian or an _Indian Indian_?'
>'It happens in Irish English as well as _English English._' [Word]. T.McA.
>
>[end quote] >>
>
>
>
><< ["meirman"]
>Cute. I wonder if "like him like him" would count. I see that in tv
>shows about teenage girls. >>
>
>
><< [Aaron Davies]
>Often abreviated to "like, or like-like?" Of course, in valley-girl,
>that would be "like, like, or like, like-like?" >>
>
>
>
>And that valley-girl grew up to become an accountant
>who took her client out for a tennis match. At the start of the match
>she announced the score "love-love", then after the match they
>discussed "win-win" situations and the "net-net".
>Does she count count?
>
One that I've heard in Britain, from children, when told that a pet is
dead, is "Yes, but is it really dead dead?"
--
wrmst rgrds
RB...(docrobi...@ntlworld.com)
Evan Kirshenbaum
> On Mon, 10 Jun 2002 13:07:51 +0100, Dr Robin Bignall
> <docr...@red.sylvania> wrote:
>
>
> >Chimps have 98.5% of their genes in common with humans. I just
> >read that a new study shows that mice have 1% less -- 97.5% -- of
> >their genes in common with us.
>
> Same old, same old -- it means as little now as when we learned this
> a dozen years ago. A book by Daniele Steele uses 100 percent of the
> letters used in a play by William Shakespeare. A painting by a two-
> year-old may well contain the exact same colours Monet used. A house
> in the slums of Watts has 99% of the features of my house on Clew
> Bay. All the notes Handel used in the Messiah are contained in a CD
> by the Pogues.
Wrong level of abstraction. It's not letters, but sentences, or
probably better, paragraphs. It's like a copy of _Hamlet_, identical
to the original, except that in an early scene we find out that it was
really Hamlet who killed his father and has repressed the memory,
blaming his uncle and imagining the ghost of his father to corroborate
his confabulation. All the rest is precisely the same, but it becomes
a very different play.
--
Evan Kirshenbaum +------------------------------------
HP Laboratories |Yesterday I washed a single sock.
1501 Page Mill Road, 1U, MS 1141 |When I opened the door, the machine
Palo Alto, CA 94304 |was empty.
| Peter Moylan
kirsh...@hpl.hp.com
(650)857-7572
Aaron Davies
> While researching xrefer.com for the term "English English" I came across
> the following, from *The Oxford Companion to the English Language,* by Tom
> McArthur, (C) 1992:
>
> http://www.xrefer.com/entry/444485
>
>
> [quote]
>
> Word Word
>
> [1982: coined by the US writer Paul Dickson]. A non-technical,
> tongue-in-cheek term for a word repeated in contrastive statements and
> questions: 'Are you talking about an American Indian or an _Indian Indian_?'
> 'It happens in Irish English as well as _English English._' [Word]. T.McA.
>
> [end quote]
I just remembered another one I used once. I was talking to a friend
about a movie that was about to come out, and I said it had
premiered(sp?) last Friday. My friend said he didn't think it came out
until next Friday, and I said "no, the premiere-premiere", meaning the
Hollywood one with the red carpet and so on. He knew exactly what I
meant.
meirman
Bignall <docr...@red.sylvania> posted:
>>
>>And that valley-girl grew up to become an accountant
>>who took her client out for a tennis match. At the start of the match
>>she announced the score "love-love", then after the match they
>>discussed "win-win" situations and the "net-net".
>>Does she count count?
>>
>One that I've heard in Britain, from children, when told that a pet is
>dead, is "Yes, but is it really dead dead?"
What is the alternative wrt pets?
This came up with regard to car batteries on the chysler group. It
shouldn't have, but one guy insisted that a dead battery was one that
could never be recharged again. Everyone else said it just meant
fully discharged. I ended up using dead dead to refer to what the
other guy meant, solely for clarity. (even though he was wrong and
stubborn. :) ).
Dr Robin Bignall
wrote:
>In alt.english.usage on Tue, 11 Jun 2002 15:41:29 +0100 Dr Robin
>Bignall <docr...@red.sylvania> posted:
>
>>>
>>>And that valley-girl grew up to become an accountant
>>>who took her client out for a tennis match. At the start of the match
>>>she announced the score "love-love", then after the match they
>>>discussed "win-win" situations and the "net-net".
>>>Does she count count?
>>>
>>One that I've heard in Britain, from children, when told that a pet is
>>dead, is "Yes, but is it really dead dead?"
>
>What is the alternative wrt pets?
>
When my first son was very young we had a tortoise that hibernated the
first winter we had it in a box in the garage. We tried to explain,
but he couldn't understand and thought it was dead when he wasn't
allowed to look at it. It survived that winter but didn't make it
through the second winter. I've read similar stories about very young
children who have their first brush with the finality of death. We
talk about pets being 'put to sleep' by the veterinarian, and maybe
that gives them a false impression.
--
wrmst rgrds
RB...(docrobi...@ntlworld.com)
Robert Bannister
> On Mon, 10 Jun 2002 13:07:51 +0100, Dr Robin Bignall
> <docr...@red.sylvania> wrote:
>
> >Chimps have 98.5% of their genes in common with humans.
> >I just read that a new study shows that mice have 1% less -- 97.5% --
> >of their genes in common with us.
>
> Same old, same old -- it means as little now as when we learned this a
> dozen years ago. A book by Daniele Steele uses 100 percent of the
> letters used in a play by William Shakespeare. A painting by a two-
> year-old may well contain the exact same colours Monet used. A house
> in the slums of Watts has 99% of the features of my house on Clew Bay.
> All the notes Handel used in the Messiah are contained in a CD by the
> Pogues.
>
> Und so weider.
Please - if you must use German, spell it correctly, or use English:
wieder = again; weiter = further. 'And so on' is 'und so weiter'.
--
Rob Bannister
Mark Wallace
> Charles Riggs wrote:
>
>> Und so weider.
>
> Please - if you must use German, spell it correctly, or use
> English: wieder = again; weiter = further. 'And so on' is 'und so
> weiter'.
<Michael Bentine potty>
Ja-WHOL, mein kommandant!
</Michael Bentine potty>
Hey, we can't even get English right, around here. Don't expect too
many miracles.
--
Mark Wallace
____________________________________________
Ever been stuck on a word, or a point of grammar?
You need to visit the APIHNA World Dictionary
http://humorpages.virtualave.net/m-pages/apihna-0.htm
____________________________________________
psi
news:vtrcgu4ch52f60u57...@4ax.com...
> In alt.english.usage on Tue, 11 Jun 2002 15:41:29 +0100 Dr Robin
> Bignall <docr...@red.sylvania> posted:
>
> >dead, is "Yes, but is it really dead dead?"
>
> What is the alternative wrt pets?
It means it's not worth hooking the hamster up to the battery charger.
psi
Charles Riggs
Danka shurn, but what have the Germans done for me lately that I
should be so finicky about the spelling of their words? Who shook your
tree, anyway? I hope I never misspel an English word or you may come
down on me like a ton of bricks. Smart ass.
Charles Riggs
Robert Bannister
Not at all. English misspellings, in this ng at least, are quite acceptable
unless the result produces an ambiguity that can produce (a) puns (b)
comments on food or sheep or (c) discussions of whether the cot or caught
vowel is used. There is absolutely no need for any English speaker to use
expressions in a foreign language (unless, like "e.g.", they are part of
English anyway).
Therefore, if you or I or anyone wishes to use a foreign expression, it is
preferable to get it right. After all, using foreign expressions in the
first place is more a sign of smart-assery than commenting on their
correctness.
--
Rob Bannister
Ann
<rob...@it.net.au> wrote:
Except of course that they should have said 'smart arse' and not
'smart ass'. Apart from that it's fine ;-)
Ann
Padraig Breathnach
>Not at all. English misspellings, in this ng at least, are quite acceptable
>unless the result produces an ambiguity that can produce (a) puns (b)
>comments on food or sheep or (c) discussions of whether the cot or caught
>vowel is used. There is absolutely no need for any English speaker to use
>expressions in a foreign language (unless, like "e.g.", they are part of
>English anyway).
>
>Therefore, if you or I or anyone wishes to use a foreign expression, it is
>preferable to get it right. After all, using foreign expressions in the
>first place is more a sign of smart-assery than commenting on their
>correctness.
Just bear in mind, Robert, that for many in this group English is a
foreign language. Subject to that caveat, je suis d'accord avec toi.
le mór-mheas,
PB
meirman
<p...@btconnect.com> posted:
CLEAR!!
>psi
Robert Bannister
Touché - I am touched.
--
Rob Bannister
Aaron Davies
Tony Cooper
news:1fdov69.xjazupkf9kjrN%aa...@avalon.pascal-central.com...
He was showing Charles the use of a fada.
--
Tony Cooper aka: Tony_Co...@Yahoo.com
Provider of Jots & Tittles
Neville X. Elliven
> There is absolutely no need for any English speaker to use
> expressions in a foreign language
That reminds me of a list called "rules for writing",
in which I saw the following:
* Foreign words and phrases, in lieu of English, are not apropos.
Mark Wallace
> Charles Riggs wrote:
>> On Wed, 12 Jun 2002 07:58:37 +0800, Robert Bannister
>> <rob...@it.net.au> wrote:
>>> Charles Riggs wrote:
>>>> Und so weider.
>>>
>>> Please - if you must use German, spell it correctly, or use
>>> English: wieder = again; weiter = further. 'And so on' is 'und
>>> so weiter'.
>>
>> Danka shurn, but what have the Germans done for me lately that I
>> should be so finicky about the spelling of their words? Who
>> shook your tree, anyway? I hope I never misspel an English word
>> or you may come down on me like a ton of bricks. Smart ass.
>
> Not at all. English misspellings, in this ng at least, are quite
> acceptable unless the result produces an ambiguity that can
> produce (a) puns (b) comments on food or sheep or (c) discussions
> of whether the cot or caught vowel is used. There is absolutely
> no need for any English speaker to use expressions in a foreign
> language (unless, like "e.g.", they are part of English anyway).
Quite right too!
Bluddy forringers, coming to our green and pleasant language and
adding things that will be useful to us!
It shouldn't be allowed!
> Therefore, if you or I or anyone wishes to use a foreign
> expression, it is preferable to get it right. After all, using
> foreign expressions in the first place is more a sign of smart-
> assery than commenting on their correctness.
Fair enough, but I reserve the right to misspell, misuse, or
mis-anything-else any words, phrases, or clauses in French.
--
Mark Wallace
____________________________
Little girl lost?
http://humorpages.virtualave.net/m-pages/mother.htm
____________________________
Donna Richoux
>
> That reminds me of a list called "rules for writing",
> in which I saw the following:
>
> * Foreign words and phrases, in lieu of English, are not apropos.
I've seen those lists -- "About those sentence fragments." Actually the
ones I turned up on this search today did not include your line. I'm
sure people keep inventing more examples. [*See comment at end.]
The AUE FAQ calls these "Fumblerules":
Fumblerules ("Don't use no double negatives", etc.)
---------------------------------------------------
_Fumblerules_ was the title of a 1990 book by William Safire
containing such rules, but it seems these rules should actually be
credited to George L. Trigg. For the rules and their provenance,
see <http://www.amherst.edu/~writing/tips.html>.
This kind of humor gets passed around and reprinted so wildly, I wonder
whether George L. Trigg is any more the actual originator than anyone
else... Searching on his name shows that he is the editor of such
publications as _The Encyclopedia of Applied Physics_. Ah, here is a
page that quotes his article about the writing rules:
http://www.neystadt.org/moshkow/win/ANEKDOTY/orfograf.txt
[Snip general remarks about the importance of good writing]
One fairly effective way is to provide examples of what not to
do; it is particularly helpful if the examples are humorous. We
have recently seen several lists of grammatical examples of this
type. A few weeks ago we found taped to a colleague's office door
the most complete one we have seen. (He tells us it was passed
out in a class of Darthmouth - not in English - at the time a term
paper was assigned). We reproduce it here in the hope that it will
have some effect.
1.Make sure each pronoun agrees with their antecedent.
2.Just between you and I, the case of pronoun is important.
3.Watch out for irregular verbs which have crope into English.
4.Verbs has to agree in number with their subjects.
5.Don't use no double negatives.
6.Being bad grammar, a writer should not use dangling modifiers.
7.Join clauses good like a conjunction should.
8.A writer must be not shift your point of view.
9.About sentence fragments.
10.Don't use run-on sentences you got to punctuate them.
11.In letters essays and reports use commas to separate items
in series.
12.Don't use commas, which are not necessary.
13.Parenthetical words however should be enclosed in commas.
14.Its important to use apostrophes right in everybodys writing.
15.Don't abbrev.
16.Check to see if you any words out.
17.In the case of a report, check to see that jargonwise, it's
A-OK.
18.As far as incomplete constructions, they are wrong.
19.About repetition, the repetition of a word might be real
effective repetition - take, for instance the repetition of Abraham
Lincoln.
20.In my opinion, I think that an author when he is writing
should definitely not get into the habit of making use of too
many unnecessary words that he does not really need in order to
put his message across.
21.Use parallel construction not only to be concise but also
clarify.
22.It behooves us all to avoid archaic expressions.
23.Mixed metaphors are a pain in the neck and ought to be weeded
out.
24.Consult the dictionery to avoid mispelings.
25.To ignorantly split an infinitive is a practice to
religiously avoid.
26.Last but not least, lay off cliches.
---------------------------------------------------------------
George L. Trigg
Phys.Rev.Lett., 42, 12, 748 (1979).
Another site, <http://www.tcd.ie/Student/Publications/guide/sub.html>,
spells that out as:
reprinted from Physical Review Letters Vol. 42, No.
12, March 1979, p748, George L. Trigg
So that pushes the list back to being reprinted in a scientific journal
in 1979, by an editor who states clearly that he found the list
somewhere else. Can anyone else push it back farther?
I wonder if "Physical Review Letters" is really the name of a
publication; perhaps it was the "Letters" section of something called
"Physical Review"?... No, it really was an separate publication,
according to the American Physical Society, spun off from "Physical
Review" in 1957.
(For those who are too young to remember the days before computers:
there was something the a.f.u group cals "xeroxlore," humorous and
inspirational pieces that office workers photocopied and mailed to each
other. Just like e-mail does now, but a little more laborious. What
happened before photocopy machines? That was really the dark ages.)
[*] It occurred to me search for Neville's example. Actually what I
searched on was <"don't use no double" lieu> in hopes of turning up a
combined list. What I found was a completely separate, but parallel,
list. For example:
http://www.ncte.org/lists/ncte-talk/dec99/msg01029.html
The Rules Of Writing
1. Verbs HAS to agree with their subjects.
2. Prepositions are not words to end sentences with.
3. And don't start a sentence with a conjunction.
4. It is wrong to ever split an infinitive.
5. Avoid cliches like the plague. (They're old hat)
[remainder snipped]
So multiple versions are circulating, who knows for how many years.
--
Best wishes -- Donna Richoux
Padraig Breathnach
>Padraig Breathnach <padr...@iol.ie> wrote:
>
>> le mór-mheas
>
>?
with great esteem
PB
Charles Riggs
<rob...@it.net.au> wrote:
>Not at all. English misspellings, in this ng at least, are quite acceptable
>unless the result produces an ambiguity that can produce (a) puns (b)
>comments on food or sheep or (c) discussions of whether the cot or caught
>vowel is used. There is absolutely no need for any English speaker to use
>expressions in a foreign language (unless, like "e.g.", they are part of
>English anyway).
You'd have gotten along well with President Eisenhower.
>Therefore, if you or I or anyone wishes to use a foreign expression, it is
>preferable to get it right. After all, using foreign expressions in the
>first place is more a sign of smart-assery than commenting on their
>correctness.
Okay, we're both smart asses. I can accept that.
Charles Riggs
John Dawkins
tr...@euronet.nl (Donna Richoux) wrote:
---------------------------------------------------------------
> George L. Trigg
> Phys.Rev.Lett., 42, 12, 748 (1979).
>
> Another site, <http://www.tcd.ie/Student/Publications/guide/sub.html>,
> spells that out as:
>
> reprinted from Physical Review Letters Vol. 42, No.
> 12, March 1979, p748, George L. Trigg
>
> So that pushes the list back to being reprinted in a scientific journal
> in 1979, by an editor who states clearly that he found the list
> somewhere else. Can anyone else push it back farther?
>
> I wonder if "Physical Review Letters" is really the name of a
> publication; perhaps it was the "Letters" section of something called
> "Physical Review"?... No, it really was an separate publication,
> according to the American Physical Society, spun off from "Physical
> Review" in 1957.
It has its own website; here's the URL for the number containing the
article you cite:
<http://prola.aps.org/toc/PRL/v42/i12>
It is likely that your provider needs to subscribe for you to download
the pdf of the article.
--
J.
Aaron Davies
> "Aaron Davies" <aa...@avalon.pascal-central.com> wrote in message
> news:1fdov69.xjazupkf9kjrN%aa...@avalon.pascal-central.com...
> > Padraig Breathnach <padr...@iol.ie> wrote:
> >
> > > le mór-mheas
>
> He was showing Charles the use of a fada.
^^^^
?
Explaining one incomprensible expression with another is not
particularly helpful. The only fada I know is da Godfada.
Padraig Breathnach
>Tony Cooper <tony_co...@yahoo.com> wrote:
>
>> "Aaron Davies" <aa...@avalon.pascal-central.com> wrote in message
>> news:1fdov69.xjazupkf9kjrN%aa...@avalon.pascal-central.com...
>> > Padraig Breathnach <padr...@iol.ie> wrote:
>> >
>> > > le mór-mheas
>>
>> He was showing Charles the use of a fada.
> ^^^^
>?
>
>Explaining one incomprensible expression with another is not
>particularly helpful. The only fada I know is da Godfada.
Neither expression is incomprehensible (or even incomprensible).
Perhaps uncomprehended.
Literally, "fada" means "long" in Gaelic. When a vowel has a long
sound, as in "mór" above, an accent character is used to indicate
that; the accent is also known as a "fada".
PB
Tony Cooper
> Tony Cooper <tony_co...@yahoo.com> wrote:
>
> > "Aaron Davies" <aa...@avalon.pascal-central.com> wrote in message
> > news:1fdov69.xjazupkf9kjrN%aa...@avalon.pascal-central.com...
> > > Padraig Breathnach <padr...@iol.ie> wrote:
> > >
> > > > le mór-mheas
> >
> > He was showing Charles the use of a fada.
> ^^^^
> ?
>
> Explaining one incomprensible expression with another is not
> particularly helpful. The only fada I know is da Godfada.
You must have just popped in, Aaron. Within the last 24 hours or so
there was an explanation of the Gaelic fada - a diacritical mark over a
letter to show the sound of the letter is pronounced long - in an
exchange I had with Charles. The hidden fada is over the "ó" above. If
you are going to just pop in and pop out reading only selected posts you
will just have to expect to be mystified at times.
Speaking of the Godfada, I hear Mayor Bloomberg [1] saying "with the
press looking over your shoulder" and pronouncing it "sholl-da".
[1] In case this, too, is incomprehensible, Bloomberg is Mayor of New
York [1a]
--
Tony Cooper aka: Tony_Co...@Yahoo.com
Provider of Jots & Tittles
[1a] Just in case, New York is a city in this context and not a state.
Robert Bannister
We'd better not submit proof to the aue photo section.
--
Rob Bannister
Aaron Davies
Sorry, sorry. I don't read every post in here anymore, I'd never have
time to anything else. I get the joke now, thanx.
Donna Richoux
> In article <1fdprzb.i8rlfb17q2zymN%tr...@euronet.nl>,
> tr...@euronet.nl (Donna Richoux) wrote:
> ---------------------------------------------------------------
> > George L. Trigg
> > Phys.Rev.Lett., 42, 12, 748 (1979).
> >
> > Another site, <http://www.tcd.ie/Student/Publications/guide/sub.html>,
> > spells that out as:
> >
> > reprinted from Physical Review Letters Vol. 42, No.
> > 12, March 1979, p748, George L. Trigg
To repeat, the above says where a particular version of the humorous
rules for writing was published in 1979. That one starts:
1.Make sure each pronoun agrees with their antecedent.
2.Just between you and I, the case of pronoun is important.
3.Watch out for irregular verbs which have crope into English.
4.Verbs has to agree in number with their subjects.
> >
> > So that pushes the list back to being reprinted in a scientific journal
> > in 1979, by an editor who states clearly that he found the list
> > somewhere else. Can anyone else push it back farther?
> >
> > I wonder if "Physical Review Letters" is really the name of a
> > publication; perhaps it was the "Letters" section of something called
> > "Physical Review"?... No, it really was an separate publication,
> > according to the American Physical Society, spun off from "Physical
> > Review" in 1957.
>
> It has its own website; here's the URL for the number containing the
> article you cite:
>
> <http://prola.aps.org/toc/PRL/v42/i12>
>
> It is likely that your provider needs to subscribe for you to download
> the pdf of the article.
Yes, you are right that I couldn't see the actual article. It was good
to see the table of contents, though, and to see that the title of the
article was indeed "Grammar" as the other sites reprinting it had said.
Sometimes those titles of humorous pieces change faster than any other
part.
I got curious as to how similar this list was to the "Fumblerules" that
William Safire published. I couldn't find a really reliable source
on-line, but this page looked pretty careful:
Found in an old issue of "Readers Digest"
(1991):
How to Write Good
In his new book FUMBLERULES, William Safire gives a lighthearted
look at grammar and good usage. The following are "fumblerules" -
mistakes that call attention to the rule:
Avoid run-on sentences they are hard to read.
No sentence fragments.
It behooves us to avoid archaisms.
Also, avoid awkward or affected alliteration.
Don't use no double negatives.
If I've told you once, I've told you a thousand
times: resist hyperbole.
Avoid commas, that are not necessary.
Verbs has to agree with their subjects.
Avoid trendy locutions that sound flaky.
Writing carefully, dangling participles should not be used.
Kill all exclamation points!!!
Never use a long word when a diminutive one will do.
Proofread carefully to see if you any words outs.
Take the bull by the hand, and don't mix metaphors.
Don't verb nouns.
Never, ever use repetitive redundancies.
Last but not least, avoid clichés like the plague.
I found other versions of the list that started with the same opening
rule, "Avoid run-on sentences they are hard to read." I assume these are
all taken from Safire, although everyone seems to add more rules from
everywhere.
Safire wrote a separate book called "Fumblerules" as well as including
them in one of his larger collections. Anybody here own either of those?
Two more bits of information I found:
A language page by someone named Quagga <qua...@spamcop.net> listed 37
such rules and this note:
I added this page after seeing various versions, both on paper and
on the web. I never suspected there was a definitive source, until
I received an abusive email citing William Safire's "Fumblerules of
Grammar" which appeared in the New York Times, 4 November 1979.
Now, as it happens, many of the web versions clearly derive from
Safire's collection, which was later later reprinted in "On
Language". Lest we forget, English teachers had been circulating
lists of fumblerules for years. The search continues for earlier
sources, but it is clear that the Internet - including this page -
owes a lot to Mr. Safire; Thanks!
http://www.weirdity.com/language/grammar.shtml
It's interesting that that says the original Safire piece was the same
year as the Trigg piece. Maybe it was madly circulating around campuses
and offices that year. If anyone (Ben Z?) can look up the New York Times
for 1979, I would love to know if it's in there.
Lastly, someone printed what *starts off* looking like original Safire,
whether in the 1979 piece or later, but some of the writing in the
header leaves me doubtful ("a bunch of"?) as well as the length of the
list. Whoever it is, Safire or not, he, like Trigg, credits others for
coming up with the rules:
http://dmorgan.web.wesleyan.edu/materials/safire.htm
The Fumblerules of Grammar
by William Safire
(from The New York Times)
Not long ago, I advertised for perverse rules of grammar, along the
lines of "Remember to never split an infinitive" and "The passive
voice should never be used." The notion of making a mistake while
laying down rules ("Thimk," "We Never Make Misteaks") is highly
unoriginal, and it turns out that English teachers have been
circulating lists of fumblerules for years.
As owner of the world's largest collection, and with
thanks to scores of readers, let me pass along a
bunch of these never-say-neverisms:
Avoid run-on sentences they are hard to read.
Don't use no double negatives.
Use the semicolon properly, always use it where it is
appropriate; and never where it isn't.
Reserve the apostrophe for it's proper use and omit it when
its not needed.
Do not put statements in the negative form.
Verbs has to agree with their subjects.
No sentence fragments.
Proofread carefully to see if you any words out.
Avoid commas, that are not necessary.
If you reread your work, you will find on rereading that a
great deal of repetition can be avoided by rereading and editing.
A writer must not shift your point of view.
Eschew dialect, irregardless.
And don't start a sentence with a conjunction.
Don't overuse exclamation marks!!!
Place pronouns as close as possible, especially in long
sentences, as of 10 or more words, to their antecedents.
Writers should always hyphenate between syllables and avoid
un-necessary hyph-
ens.
Write all adverbial forms correct.
Don't use contractions in formal writing.
Writing carefully, dangling participles must be avoided.
It is incumbent on us to avoid archaisms.
If any word is improper at the end of a sentence, a linking
verb is.
Steer clear of incorrect forms of verbs that have snuck in the
language.
Take the bull by the hand and avoid mixed metaphors.
Avoid trendy locutions that sound flaky.
Never, ever use repetitive redundancies.
Everyone should be careful to use a singular pronoun with
singular nouns in their writing.
If I've told you once, I've told you a thousand times, resist
hyperbole.
Also, avoid awkward or affected alliteration.
Don't string too many prepositional phrases together unless
you are walking through the valley of the shadow of death.
Always pick on the correct idiom.
"Avoid overuse of 'quotation "marks."'"
The adverb always follows the verb.
Last but not least, avoid cliches like the plague; seek viable
alternatives.
--
Best --- Donna Richoux
Pat Durkin
"Donna Richoux" <tr...@euronet.nl> wrote in message
news:1fdwbfs.plduugpdxyebN%tr...@euronet.nl...
>
> To repeat, the above says where a particular version of the humorous
> rules for writing was published in 1979. That one starts:
>
> 1.Make sure each pronoun agrees with their antecedent.
> 2.Just between you and I, the case of pronoun is important.
> 3.Watch out for irregular verbs which have crope into English.
> 4.Verbs has to agree in number with their subjects.
>
Thanks, Donna. I enjoyed these. Thank Bill Safire for me, as well.
John Todd
(heavily snipped)
>
> The Fumblerules of Grammar
>
> by William Safire
>
> (from The New York Times)
>
> And don't start a sentence with a conjunction.
I was once moved to write to the replacement Editor of a newspaper
who habitually started not only sentences, but paragraphs with "But".
Marshalling my resources, I referred to Strunk and White, and
found... a paragraph beginning with "But". I gave up, and remain
a bemused but appreciative observer.
Cheers John
--
_______________________________________
John E. Todd <> jt...@island.net
Note: Ensure correct polarity prior to connection.
Mark Wallace
> On Mon, 17 Jun 2002 00:52:41 +0200, Donna Richoux
> <tr...@euronet.nl> wrote:
>
> (heavily snipped)
>>
>> The Fumblerules of Grammar
>>
>> by William Safire
>>
>> (from The New York Times)
>
>>
>> And don't start a sentence with a conjunction.
>
> I was once moved to write to the replacement Editor of a newspaper
> who habitually started not only sentences, but paragraphs with
> "But". Marshalling my resources, I referred to Strunk and White,
> and found... a paragraph beginning with "But". I gave up, and
> remain a bemused but appreciative observer.
But there's nothing illegal about starting
sentences/paragraphs/books with conjunctions.
Why?
Because I say so.
And because any book which declares it 'illegal' is foolish.
So there!
--
Mark Wallace
-----------------------------------------------------
For the intelligent approach to nasty humour, visit:
The Anglo-American Humour (humor) Site
http://humorpages.virtualave.net/mainmenu.htm
-----------------------------------------------------
R H Draney
news:aejtfs$7km72$1...@ID-51325.news.dfncis.de:
> John Todd wrote:
>> On Mon, 17 Jun 2002 00:52:41 +0200, Donna Richoux
>> <tr...@euronet.nl> wrote:
>>
>>> And don't start a sentence with a conjunction.
>>
>> I was once moved to write to the replacement Editor of a newspaper
>> who habitually started not only sentences, but paragraphs with
>> "But". Marshalling my resources, I referred to Strunk and White,
>> and found... a paragraph beginning with "But". I gave up, and
>> remain a bemused but appreciative observer.
>
> But there's nothing illegal about starting
> sentences/paragraphs/books with conjunctions.
> Why?
> Because I say so.
> And because any book which declares it 'illegal' is foolish.
> So there!
It's possible to start a sentence (or a paragraph, or even a whole
novel) with the word "But" and rattle no cages about "what does it
conjunct?"...example:
"But for the faint smile upon her lips, Marguerite appeared
unperturbed."
I welcome the contrivance of similar examples using *other*
conjunctions....r
Mark Wallace
Because you've used a different definition of 'but', that works
fine.
So that's how it's done, eh?
Before complaining about sentences that start with conjunctions,
people should think a little harder.
Yet another example of bad grammar advice, isn't it?
Even if starting a sentence with a conjunction were illegal, I'd
still do it.
Wherever there's a sentence, there's a way of starting it with a
conjunction; that's my motto.
Until someone manages to prove otherwise to me, I'll carry on
believing what I believe.
> I welcome the contrivance of similar examples using *other*
> conjunctions....r
Can't think of one.
Ben Zimmer
Donna Richoux wrote:
>
[...]
>
> Lastly, someone printed what *starts off* looking like original Safire,
> whether in the 1979 piece or later, but some of the writing in the
> header leaves me doubtful ("a bunch of"?) as well as the length of the
> list. Whoever it is, Safire or not, he, like Trigg, credits others for
> coming up with the rules:
>
> http://dmorgan.web.wesleyan.edu/materials/safire.htm
>
> The Fumblerules of Grammar
>
> by William Safire
>
> (from The New York Times)
>
> Not long ago, I advertised for perverse rules of grammar, along the
> lines of "Remember to never split an infinitive" and "The passive
> voice should never be used." The notion of making a mistake while
> laying down rules ("Thimk," "We Never Make Misteaks") is highly
> unoriginal, and it turns out that English teachers have been
> circulating lists of fumblerules for years.
>
> As owner of the world's largest collection, and with
> thanks to scores of readers, let me pass along a
> bunch of these never-say-neverisms:
>
> Avoid run-on sentences they are hard to read.
Just checked the Proquest database and this is indeed (more or less) the
text of Safire's On Language column from Nov 4, 1979. Skimming through
both versions, I see only one slight difference. The original has:
"Hyphenate between sy-
llables and avoid un-necessary
hyphens."
while the online version has:
"Writers should always hyphenate between syllables and avoid
un-necessary hyph-
ens."
Looks like the writer of the online version just padded out the line to
create the appropriate line break to illustrate hyphenation.
--Ben
Robert Bannister
Surely the only possible objection can be to co-ordinating
conjunctions, and even then, it is only a question of stylistic taste,
not a rule. Clearly subordinating conjunctions like 'because', 'since',
'before, etc. can begin sentences quite tastefully.
--
Rob Bannister
Neville X. Elliven
>John Todd wrote:
>
>> I was once moved to write to the replacement Editor of a newspaper
>> who habitually started not only sentences, but paragraphs with
>> "But". Marshalling my resources, I referred to Strunk and White,
>> and found... a paragraph beginning with "But". I gave up, and
>> remain a bemused but appreciative observer.
>
>But there's nothing illegal about starting
>sentences/paragraphs/books with conjunctions.
There's nothing illegal about wearing a dunce-cap, either; and it
would have approximately the same effect upon many viewers.
Mark Wallace
And there's nothing stupid or ridiculous about starting
sentences/paragraphs/books with conjunctions, either.
It's perfectly good English.
What is stupid and ridiculous is that your 'many viewers' could
believe such things to be 'errors'.
Bilbo Baggins
Bilbo
--
Reality is an illusion brought about by lack of alcohol.
Mark Wallace
> And never end a sentence with a proposition!!!
Nor split an infinitive!
Dr Robin Bignall
<mwallace...@dse.nl> wrote:
>Bilbo Baggins wrote:
>
>> And never end a sentence with a proposition!!!
>
>Nor split an infinitive!
.... nor start a sentence with dots in some sycophantic manner of
carrying on the thoughts of the last speaker.
--
wrmst rgrds
RB...(docrobi...@ntlworld.com)
Mark Wallace
> On Wed, 19 Jun 2002 23:55:05 +0200, "Mark Wallace"
> <mwallace...@dse.nl> wrote:
>
>> Bilbo Baggins wrote:
>>
>>> And never end a sentence with a proposition!!!
>>
>> Nor split an infinitive!
>
> .... nor start a sentence with dots in some sycophantic manner of
> carrying on the thoughts of the last speaker.
And never end a sentence with multiple punctuation points!!!
Richard Chambers
Winston Churchill used the same humour, but with an interesting
reversed logic, to rebut the criticisms of a tiresome female pedant
who had chided him for ending a sentence with a preposition. "Ending a
sentence with a preposition is a grammatical atrocity, up with which
we should not put".
Dick Chambers Leeds UK
Donna Richoux
> tr...@euronet.nl (Donna Richoux) wrote
> > I got curious as to how similar this list was to the "Fumblerules" that
> > William Safire published. I couldn't find a really reliable source
> > on-line, but this page looked pretty careful:
> >
> > Found in an old issue of "Readers Digest"
> > (1991):
> >
> > How to Write Good
> >
> > In his new book FUMBLERULES, William Safire gives a lighthearted
> > look at grammar and good usage. The following are "fumblerules" -
> > mistakes that call attention to the rule:
> >
> > Avoid run-on sentences they are hard to read.
> > No sentence fragments.
> > It behooves us to avoid archaisms.
[snip]
> >
> -------------------------------------------------------------
> Winston Churchill used the same humour, but with an interesting
> reversed logic, to rebut the criticisms of a tiresome female pedant
> who had chided him for ending a sentence with a preposition. "Ending a
> sentence with a preposition is a grammatical atrocity, up with which
> we should not put".
Yes, it does have a resemblance, but there's still a key difference in
there somewhere: Churchill makes his point by demonstrating that it
sounds unnatural *to* follow the advice, and so the advice is worthless.
Safire & others show that it looks stupid, in their view, *not* to
follow the bits of advice, and disobey them merely as a temporary device
to be interesting and memorable. Churchill is scoffing at the rule, and
Safire is illustrating the rule.
The AUE FAQ points out that the Churchill story has many variations and
no single identifiable source:
(1) Winston Churchill was editing a proof of one of his books, when
he noticed that an editor had clumsily rearranged one of
Churchill's sentences so that it wouldn't end with a preposition.
Churchill scribbled in the margin, "This is the sort of English up
with which I will not put." (This is often quoted with "arrant
nonsense" substituted for "English", or with other variations. The
Oxford Dictionary of Quotations cites Sir Ernest Gowers' _Plain
Words_ (1948), where the anecdote begins, "It is said that
Churchill..."; so we don't know exactly what Churchill wrote.
According to the Oxford Companion to the English Language,
Churchill's words were "bloody nonsense" and the variants are
euphemisms.)
(By the way, some people here would say that the "up" and "with" in "to
put up with" are "adverbs," not "prepositions," but we don't need to go
down that road again, do we?)
Mark Wallace
> (By the way, some people here would say that the "up" and "with"
> in "to put up with" are "adverbs," not "prepositions," but we
> don't need to go down that road again, do we?)
I'd call them particles of a phrasal verb, but it's best we let the
discussion go west.
Neville X. Elliven
>>> But there's nothing illegal about starting
>>> sentences/paragraphs/books with conjunctions.
>>
>> There's nothing illegal about wearing a dunce-cap, either; and it
>> would have approximately the same effect upon many viewers.
>
> What is stupid and ridiculous is that your 'many viewers'
> could believe such things to be 'errors'.
Interesting that you seem to know what they believe; but in my opinion,
such things [as the but-headed sentence, or the wearing of a dunce-cap]
are not errors, especially when they are a good fit. For example, from a
recent column by David Broder of the Washington Post:
> But governors' victories hardly ever are noted outside
> their home states -- and not always there.
> [new paragraph]
> But there are differences between senators and governors
> that may well explain the pattern.
> ...
> [new paragraph]
> But there are two other differences that are probably more telling.
Broder could not for any amount of money purchase a dunce-cap that
would better fit his bald, empty pate than this tripe.
Mark Wallace
> Mark Wallace wrote:
>
>>>> But there's nothing illegal about starting
>>>> sentences/paragraphs/books with conjunctions.
>>>
>>> There's nothing illegal about wearing a dunce-cap, either; and
>>> it would have approximately the same effect upon many viewers.
>>
>> What is stupid and ridiculous is that your 'many viewers'
>> could believe such things to be 'errors'.
>
> Interesting that you seem to know what they believe;
How, in the name of God Almighty, did you manage to extract that
from what I wrote?
The only 'knowledge of what people think/believe', stated with any
certainty, above, is in your declaration that:
-- "starting sentences/paragraphs/books with conjunctions ~~ would
have approximately the same effect upon many viewers" as would the
sight of seeing someone wearing a dunce-cap.
My comment was much more carefully and accurately worded.
> but in my
> opinion, such things [as the but-headed sentence, or the wearing
> of a dunce-cap] are not errors, especially when they are a good
> fit. For example, from a recent column by David Broder of the
> Washington Post:
>
>> But governors' victories hardly ever are noted outside
>> their home states -- and not always there.
>> [new paragraph]
>> But there are differences between senators and governors
>> that may well explain the pattern.
>> ...
>> [new paragraph]
>> But there are two other differences that are probably more
>> telling.
>
> Broder could not for any amount of money purchase a dunce-cap that
> would better fit his bald, empty pate than this tripe.
A handful of quotations from one newspaper wallah do not a good
foundation for the construction of a rule of grammar make.
There is not, has never been, and *could not be* a rule of grammar
which states that a sentence may not start with a conjunction.
Jerry Friedman
"And" is a conjunction, and you can start a sentence with it.
If you classify "if" as a conjunction, as MWCD10 does, then using it
as an example is easy.
Or ever she spake to me, I loved her.
--
Jerry Friedman
Ben Zimmer
Donna Richoux wrote:
>
> The AUE FAQ points out that the Churchill story has many variations and
> no single identifiable source:
>
> (1) Winston Churchill was editing a proof of one of his books, when
> he noticed that an editor had clumsily rearranged one of
> Churchill's sentences so that it wouldn't end with a preposition.
> Churchill scribbled in the margin, "This is the sort of English up
> with which I will not put." (This is often quoted with "arrant
> nonsense" substituted for "English", or with other variations. The
> Oxford Dictionary of Quotations cites Sir Ernest Gowers' _Plain
> Words_ (1948), where the anecdote begins, "It is said that
> Churchill..."; so we don't know exactly what Churchill wrote.
> According to the Oxford Companion to the English Language,
> Churchill's words were "bloody nonsense" and the variants are
> euphemisms.)
I know this has come up over and over here (as in this recent thread:
http://groups.google.com/groups?hl=en&th=7c501489efdf4c9e), but I
thought I'd add some more background, from ProQuest's Historical
Newspaper database (which so far includes the New York Times and the
Wall St Journal). Here's the earliest citation in the database:
----------
Wall St Journal, 30 Sep 1942 ("Pepper and Salt"):
When a memorandum passed round a certain Government department, one
young pedant scribbled a postscript drawing attention to the fact that
the sentence ended with a preposition, which caused the original writer
to circulate another memorandum complaining that the anonymous
postscript was "offensive impertinence, up with which I will not
put."--Strand Magazine.
----------
Note that this anecdote, quoted from London's Strand Magazine (to which
Churchill himself often contributed), only refers to a "certain
Government department" and does not identify the writer of the
memorandum. If it was indeed Churchill, then why wouldn't the Strand
identify him? The database has no versions of the anecdote featuring
Churchill until 1948, the same year that Gowers' _Plain Words_ was
published. Here is the first citation with Churchill:
----------
Wall St Journal, 9 Dec 1948 ("Pepper and Salt"):
The carping critic who can criticize the inartistic angle of the
firemen's hose while they are attempting to put out the fire, has his
counterpart in a nameless individual in the British Foreign Office who
once found fault with a projected speech by Winston Churchill.
It was in the most tragic days of World War II, when the life of
Britain, nay, of all Europe, hung in the balance. Churchill prepared a
highly important speech to deliver in Parliament, and, as a matter of
custom, submitted an advanced draft to the Foreign Office for comment.
Back came the speech with no word save a notation that one of the
sentences ended with a preposition, and an indication where the error
should be eliminated.
To this suggestion, the Prime Minister replied with the following note:
"This is the type of arrant pedantry up with which I will not put."
----------
Over the following years, other variations circulated in the newspapers,
all featuring Churchill. (By the time a reader inquired after the
Churchill anecdote in the New York Times' "Queries and Answers" section
in 1951, "countless readers" sent in versions of the story, but none had
an authoritative citation.)
Unless an earlier citation turns up, it appears that the anecdote was
only linked to Churchill in 1948 by Gowers and others. Gowers shouldn't
get all the credit for popularizing the anecdote as his version skimps
on details. He merely states:
----------
http://www.ourcivilisation.com/smartboard/shop/gowerse/chap9.htm
It is said that Mr. Winston Churchill once made this marginal comment
against a sentence that clumsily avoided a prepositional ending: "This
is the sort of English up with which I will not put".
----------
The second Wall St Journal quote shows that the more full-fledged
version (with oft-repeated details like the wartime speech and the
Foreign Office proofreader) was already circulating in 1948, no thanks
to Gowers.
--Ben
Neville X. Elliven
>>> What is stupid and ridiculous is that your 'many viewers'
>>> could believe such things to be 'errors'.
>>
>> Interesting that you seem to know what they believe
>
> How, in the name of God Almighty, did you manage to extract
> that from what I wrote?
I read, "your 'many viewers' could believe", and drew the obvious
conclusion, though I should have written, "interesting that you seem to
know what they *could* believe".
> A handful of quotations from one newspaper wallah do not
> a good foundation for the construction of a rule of grammar make.
I heartily agree; but his article is an excellent example of how to go
back and forth over a topic with but-headed sentences, to an extent that
requires a flow-chart to unravel the resulting mess. Have a look:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A26390-2002Jun21.html
Mark Wallace
> Mark Wallace asked:
>
>>>> What is stupid and ridiculous is that your 'many viewers'
>>>> could believe such things to be 'errors'.
>>>
>>> Interesting that you seem to know what they believe
>>
>> How, in the name of God Almighty, did you manage to extract
>> that from what I wrote?
>
> I read, "your 'many viewers' could believe", and drew the obvious
> conclusion, though I should have written, "interesting that you
> seem to know what they *could* believe".
What I wrote was in response to your statement: "There's nothing
illegal about wearing a dunce-cap, either; and it would have
approximately the same effect upon many viewers", which you appear
to have strategically snipped, and which is an example of what you
accused me of.
>> A handful of quotations from one newspaper wallah do not
>> a good foundation for the construction of a rule of grammar make.
>
> I heartily agree; but his article is an excellent example of how
> to go back and forth over a topic with but-headed sentences, to
> an extent that requires a flow-chart to unravel the resulting
> mess. Have a look:
>
> http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A26390-
> 2002Jun21.html
It's badly written by someone who seems not to have organised the
discussion in his head well enough to write it well.
Take out the "but"s, and it's still badly-written.
Don't blame that on semantics; blame it on the writer.
Wes Groleau
> And never end a sentence with multiple punctuation points!!!
Why Not ???
--
Wes Groleau
http://freepages.rootsweb.com/~wgroleau
Robert Lieblich
>
> > And never end a sentence with multiple punctuation points!!!
>
> Why Not ???
Because ..........
rzed
"Robert Lieblich" <Robert....@Verizon.net> wrote in message
news:3D20E55D...@Verizon.net...
I hate it when someone starts a sentence and then they just
Neville X. Elliven
>>>>> What is stupid and ridiculous is that your 'many viewers'
>>>>> could believe such things to be 'errors'.
>>>>
>>>> Interesting that you seem to know what they believe
>>>
>>> How, in the name of God Almighty, did you manage to extract
>>> that from what I wrote?
>>
>> I read, "your 'many viewers' could believe", and drew the obvious
>> conclusion, though I should have written, "interesting that you
>> seem to know what they *could* believe".
>
> What I wrote was in response to your statement:
> "There's nothing illegal about wearing a dunce-cap, either;
> and it would have approximately the same effect upon many viewers",
> which you appear to have strategically snipped, and which is an
> example of what you accused me of.
Nonsense; I accused you of nothing.
I edit for brevity, not for strategy.
Now tell me how you derived "believe" from "effect".
Mark Wallace
Me:
But there's nothing illegal about starting
sentences/paragraphs/books with conjunctions.
(A simple statement of fact)
You:
There's nothing illegal about wearing a dunce-cap, either; and it
would have approximately the same effect upon many viewers.
(Declaring that you know how people will feel/react/think/whatever,
when subjected to the given stimuli)
Me:
What is stupid and ridiculous is that your 'many viewers' could
believe such things to be 'errors'.
(Responding to your declaration -- note the quote marks around "many
viewers", which indicate that I take your declaration to be
erroneous, and that such "many viewers" do not exist).
You:
Interesting that you seem to know what they believe;
(Accusing me of making declarations of the type that you made, but
that I did not).
I'm bored with this, now. Find something interesting to say.
--
Mark Wallace
-----------------------------------------------------
Old Spice -- The Stupidest Story Ever Written
(and the second-best selling e-book in history)
The first volume is now FREE!
http://humorpages.virtualave.net/os/freebie.htm
-----------------------------------------------------
david56
stop and allow somebody else to finish
--
David
I say what it occurs to me to say.
=====
The address is valid today, but I will change it to keep ahead of the
spammers.
Tony Cooper
"david56" <bass.a...@ntlworld.com> wrote in message
news:3D21E0C9...@ntlworld.com...
> rzed wrote:
> >
> > "Robert Lieblich" <Robert....@Verizon.net> wrote in message
> > news:3D20E55D...@Verizon.net...
> > > Wes Groleau wrote:
> > > >
> > > > > And never end a sentence with multiple punctuation points!!!
> > > >
> > > > Why Not ???
> > >
> > > Because ..........
> >
> > I hate it when someone starts a sentence and then they just
>
somebody else to finish
--
Tony Cooper aka: Tony_Co...@Yahoo.com
Provider of Jots & Tittles
david56
>
> "david56" <bass.a...@ntlworld.com> wrote in message
> news:3D21E0C9...@ntlworld.com...
> > rzed wrote:
> > >
> > > "Robert Lieblich" <Robert....@Verizon.net> wrote in message
> > > news:3D20E55D...@Verizon.net...
> > > > Wes Groleau wrote:
> > > > >
> > > > > > And never end a sentence with multiple punctuation points!!!
> > > > >
> > > > > Why Not ???
> > > >
> > > > Because ..........
> > >
> > > I hate it when someone starts a sentence and then they just
> >
> > stop and ......or interupt you before you can finish.....allow
> somebody else to finish
my sentences.
Neville X. Elliven
>>> What I wrote was in response to your statement:
>>> "There's nothing illegal about wearing a dunce-cap, either;
>>> and it would have approximately the same effect upon many
>>> viewers", which you appear to have strategically snipped, and
>>> which is an example of what you accused me of.
>>
>> Nonsense; I accused you of nothing.
>> I edit for brevity, not for strategy.
>> Now tell me how you derived "believe" from "effect".
>
> Me:
> But there's nothing illegal about starting
> sentences/paragraphs/books with conjunctions.
> (A simple statement of fact)
>
> You:
> There's nothing illegal about wearing a dunce-cap, either; and it
> would have approximately the same effect upon many viewers.
> (Declaring that you know how people will feel/react/think/whatever,
> when subjected to the given stimuli)
News Flash:
"feel/react/think/whatever" is not the same as "believe".
As I stated before, I have accused you of nothing.
The above was again edited for brevity, not for strategy.