Rain Forest? Rainforest?
Richard D. Clark
Hello. Nice group you have here. <g>
Most sources spell it "rain forest." Fine. A few (like Microsoft in
the title of one of their educational CD-ROMs) spell it "rainforest,"
and because it's Microsoft I'll assume that's incorrect.
But it's not the spelling when the term is used as a noun that I
question.
It's in this sort of usage -- "We looked up at the rain forest canopy"
-- that I'm bothered by the space. "We looked up at the rain..."
There's nothing to prompt the reader's inner voice to stitch the words
"rain" and "forest" together, and so the flow of text stumbles.
I want to spell it "rainforest" when I'm using it as a modifier.
"Butterfly farming is a successful rainforest industry."
Sure, I know we can write around the problem. But I don't want to.
This being a natural science museum, this question arises frequently.
I'd like to add this one to our style book.
I find no dictionary that supports the spelling "rainforest" under any
circumstances. Is there a grammatical precedent? ("We saw white
water when we went whitewater rafting."?)
Thanks for any insights.
RichC
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Truly Donovan
On Wed, 31 Dec 1997 21:21:24 GMT, rdc...@SPAMTRAPacnatsci.org
(Richard D. Clark) wrote:
>Hello. Nice group you have here. <g>
>
>Most sources spell it "rain forest." Fine. A few (like Microsoft in
>the title of one of their educational CD-ROMs) spell it "rainforest,"
>and because it's Microsoft I'll assume that's incorrect.
>
>But it's not the spelling when the term is used as a noun that I
>question.
>
>It's in this sort of usage -- "We looked up at the rain forest canopy"
>-- that I'm bothered by the space. "We looked up at the rain..."
>There's nothing to prompt the reader's inner voice to stitch the words
>"rain" and "forest" together, and so the flow of text stumbles.
>
>I want to spell it "rainforest" when I'm using it as a modifier.
>"Butterfly farming is a successful rainforest industry."
...
>I find no dictionary that supports the spelling "rainforest" under any
>circumstances. Is there a grammatical precedent? ("We saw white
>water when we went whitewater rafting."?)
I'd say go for it. Dictionaries do not lead language development,
they trail it.
--
Truly Donovan
reply to truly at lunemere dot com
N.Mitchum
Richard D. Clark wrote:
-----
> Most sources spell it "rain forest." Fine. [...]
>
> It's in this sort of usage -- "We looked up at the rain forest canopy"
> -- that I'm bothered by the space. "We looked up at the rain..."
> There's nothing to prompt the reader's inner voice to stitch the words
> "rain" and "forest" together, and so the flow of text stumbles.
>
> I want to spell it "rainforest" when I'm using it as a modifier.
> "Butterfly farming is a successful rainforest industry."
>
> I'd like to add this one to our style book.
>
> circumstances. Is there a grammatical precedent? ("We saw white
> water when we went whitewater rafting."?)
Well, you could hyphenate the two words where appropriate.
If your usage problem arises in a work of any length (and not
simply in brief captions on museum display plaques), it seems to
be enough for you to establish that you are describing a rain
forest. Once you make that clear, there should be no need to go
on repeating yourself.
Then again, if you're in charge and if you're not worried about
leading others astray, you might add it to your style sheet
without having to fear raging grammarians.
--- NM
Mailed copies of replies always appreciated. (Mailers: drop HINTS.)
Thomas Schenk
From the Encyclopedia Britanica:
rainforest,
also spelled RAIN FOREST, luxuriant forest, generally
composed of tall, broad-leaved trees and usually found
in wet
tropical uplands and lowlands around the Equator.
Richard D. Clark wrote:
> Hello. Nice group you have here. <g>
>
> Most sources spell it "rain forest." Fine. A few (like Microsoft in
> the title of one of their educational CD-ROMs) spell it "rainforest,"
> and because it's Microsoft I'll assume that's incorrect.
>
--
*******************
Dr Thomas M Schenk
Laguna Beach, California
AnWinEsp
>I want to spell it "rainforest" when I'm using it as a modifier.
>"Butterfly farming is a successful rainforest industry."
>
>
>I'd like to add this one to our style book.
>
>I find no dictionary that supports the spelling "rainforest" under any
>circumstances. Is there a grammatical precedent?
How about taking the middle road and hyphenating? (When I read your post, I
found "rainforest" as one word hard to read.) Hyphenating compound adjectives
is perfectly acceptable by any standard: rain-forest canopy.
On the other hand, industry leads. When I worked for a baby magazine, we
spelled both bottlefeeding and breastfeeding as one word, dictionaries be
damned. This kept us fair to parents who did either and prevented all kinds of
hyphenation problems.
Anne
Vicki Parslow-Stafford
Hardly definitive advice, I know, but in this part of the world
(Queensland, Australia), where rainforest is a significant habitat type,
I've never seen it spelled any other way. I just did a quick flick
through my wildlife reference books, and the spelling is consistently
"rainforest". Sources for this spelling include Queensland Museum,
National Parks and Wildlife Service, Royal Australian Ornithologists'
Union etc. I would think a natural science museum should have few qualms
about adopting this spelling, or difficulties in seeking confirmation
from similar organisations.
Truly's comment is very apt.
Vicki PS
--
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Vicki Parslow Stafford | "Oh, many a Cup of this
Ipswich, Qld, Australia | forbidden Wine must drown
Email vl...@gil.com.au | the memory of that
Ph/fax +61 7 3281 5010 | insolence!"
N.Mitchum <HINTS...@mail.lafn.org> wrote in article
<34AAF3...@mail.lafn.org>...
> Richard D. Clark wrote:
> -----
> > Most sources spell it "rain forest." Fine. [...]
> >
> > It's in this sort of usage -- "We looked up at the rain forest
canopy"
> > -- that I'm bothered by the space. "We looked up at the rain..."
> > There's nothing to prompt the reader's inner voice to stitch the
words
> > "rain" and "forest" together, and so the flow of text stumbles.
> >
> > I want to spell it "rainforest" when I'm using it as a modifier.
> > "Butterfly farming is a successful rainforest industry."
> >
> > This being a natural science museum, this question arises frequently.
> > I'd like to add this one to our style book.
> >
> > I find no dictionary that supports the spelling "rainforest" under
any
Bun Mui
Just use jungle.
>
> Re: Rain Forest? Rainforest?
>
> From: "Vicki Parslow-Stafford" <vl...@gil.com.au>
> Reply to: [1]"Vicki Parslow-Stafford"
> Date: 1 Jan 1998 09:54:01 GMT
> Organization: Global Info-Links News Server
> Newsgroups:
> [2]alt.usage.english
> Followup to: [3]newsgroup(s)
> References:
> [4]<34aab36c....@sapphire.acnatsci.org>
> [5]<34AAF3...@mail.lafn.org>
Rich Clark
Interestingly, UK and Australian sources seem to support "rainforest,"
while U.S. sources support "rain forest."
My initial research included mostly U.S. sources. This group is more
diverse.
We are a U.S. museum, of course.
So here's a variant on my original question (but one which gets to the
heart of what I was asking):
Is there *any* support, in use or canon, for spelling the word (or any
compound word) one way when used as a noun and a different way when
used as a modifier?
BTW, while various references -- Grolier's, Encarta, Compton's,
several Webster's -- of U.S. origin all offered only "rain forest," I
did find this in Random House:
<< rainÇ forêest a tropical forest, usually of tall, densely
growing, broad-leaved evergreen trees in an area of high annual
rainfall. Also, rainÇforêest.[1900ñ05] >>
If the punctuation didn't survive that transmission, they're offering
"rainforest" as an alternate spelling.
Thanks for your interest.
RichC
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Gregory
My (Oxford) dictionary has the noun "rainforest", and its use as a modifier
will be the same anyway.
You're absolutely right about the reader's inner voice - where the
elements of the modifiers need to be "stitched together", you should do so,
e.g. "natural-science museum".
Richard D. Clark wrote in message
<34aab36c....@sapphire.acnatsci.org>...
>Hello. Nice group you have here. <g>
>
>Most sources spell it "rain forest." Fine. A few (like Microsoft in
>the title of one of their educational CD-ROMs) spell it "rainforest,"
>and because it's Microsoft I'll assume that's incorrect.
>
>But it's not the spelling when the term is used as a noun that I
>question.
>
>It's in this sort of usage -- "We looked up at the rain forest canopy"
>-- that I'm bothered by the space. "We looked up at the rain..."
>There's nothing to prompt the reader's inner voice to stitch the words
>"rain" and "forest" together, and so the flow of text stumbles.
>
>I want to spell it "rainforest" when I'm using it as a modifier.
>"Butterfly farming is a successful rainforest industry."
>
>Sure, I know we can write around the problem. But I don't want to.
>
>This being a natural science museum, this question arises frequently.
>I'd like to add this one to our style book.
>
>I find no dictionary that supports the spelling "rainforest" under any
>circumstances. Is there a grammatical precedent? ("We saw white
>water when we went whitewater rafting."?)
>
Joseph C Fineman
rdc...@SPAMTRAPacnatsci.org (Richard D. Clark) writes:
>Most sources spell it "rain forest." Fine. A few (like Microsoft in
>the title of one of their educational CD-ROMs) spell it "rainforest,"
>and because it's Microsoft I'll assume that's incorrect.
Not a good assumption, as other contributors to this thread have
noted. When noun phrases of the form noun+noun or adjective+noun
acquire a specialized sense or become recognized terms for some other
reason, they often get written solid, but it usually takes them a
while, and variations in usage have persisted over long periods.
(Hyphenating them used to be a possible compromise, but in America, at
any rate, the publishers have almost done away with hyphens in such
compounds.) Sometimes I find the persistence of the two-word form
hard to explain (we write highway, so why not highschool?). If you
are not being dictated to, you can nudge usage one way or the other by
your own example.
>But it's not the spelling when the term is used as a noun that I
>question.
>It's in this sort of usage -- "We looked up at the rain forest
>canopy" -- that I'm bothered by the space. "We looked up at the
>rain..." There's nothing to prompt the reader's inner voice to
>stitch the words "rain" and "forest" together, and so the flow of
>text stumbles.
The use of a hyphen for that purpose -- to unify a noun phrase when it
is used attributively -- has long been standard, tho it is not so
common as it used to be. If you use "rain forest" for the plain noun,
then you have the blessing of many publishers & most writers of style
books (stylebooks?) in writing "rain-forest canopy" for the
attributive use.
--- Joe Fineman j...@world.std.com
||: A man is only a woman's way of inseminating another woman. :||
Steve Barnard
> rdc...@SPAMTRAPacnatsci.org (Richard D. Clark) writes:
>
> >Most sources spell it "rain forest." Fine. A few (like Microsoft in
> >the title of one of their educational CD-ROMs) spell it "rainforest,"
> >and because it's Microsoft I'll assume that's incorrect.
If you'll forgive a cliche, even a broken clock is right twice a day.
Steve Barnard
Markus Laker
rdclark...@erols.com (Rich Clark):
> Is there *any* support, in use or canon, for spelling the word (or any
> compound word) one way when used as a noun and a different way when
> used as a modifier?
Absolutely. Hyphens are used to remove ambiguity and the danger of
momentary confusion, both with adjectives and with compound nouns used
attributively.
With adjectives:
A small business grant
A small-business grant
With compound nouns:
The floor of the rain forest
The rain-forest floor
They're also used when the word order is inverted:
Man eating spider (the man eats the spider)
Man-eating spider (the spider eats the man)
Of course, if you decide to write 'rainforest' rather than 'rain
forest', you can forget about hyphenating it.
Markus Laker
--
My real address doesn't include a Christian name.
Charles A. Lee
Dear Richard,
On Wed, 31 Dec 1997 21:21:24 GMT, rdc...@SPAMTRAPacnatsci.org
(Richard D. Clark) wrote:
. . . .
>Most sources spell it "rain forest." . . . .
>But it's not the spelling when the term is used as a noun that I
>question.
>. . . .
>Thanks for any insights.
Many word, through popular usage over time, change from multiple words
to hyphenated terms or single words.
overtime.
butterfly.
rainbow.
mintmark
screwdriver.
and many others. I believe this happens as the multi-word concept
grows into a unified concept or item (like screwdriver). Over time,
we think of the rain forest as something unique, not just as a forest
that happens to get very wet a lot. RHUD2 reflects this spelling
transition, listing "rain forest" as the primary entry, but listing
"also rainforest" and the end of the entry.
Time will tell; don't work overtime on it.
Charles A. Lee
http://www.concentric.net/~azcal
================================
= "Nobody goes there anymore; =
= it's too crowded. =
= - Yogi Berra =
================================
Mark Baker
In article <34aab36c....@sapphire.acnatsci.org>,
rdc...@SPAMTRAPacnatsci.org (Richard D. Clark) writes:
> I find no dictionary that supports the spelling "rainforest" under any
> circumstances.
My dictionary (COD9) only allows `rainforest'. Anything else looks wrong to
me. Is this another US/UK difference?
Truly Donovan
It may be a dictionary difference but it certainly isn't a usage
difference -- "rainforest" as both noun and adjective appears all over
the place in the popular publications of the natural science world in
the USA -- "National Wildlife" and "International Wildlife," to name
two.
Markus Laker
mba...@iee.org (Mark Baker):
> In article <34aab36c....@sapphire.acnatsci.org>,
> rdc...@SPAMTRAPacnatsci.org (Richard D. Clark) writes:
>
> > I find no dictionary that supports the spelling "rainforest" under any
> > circumstances.
>
> My dictionary (COD9) only allows `rainforest'. Anything else looks wrong to
> me. Is this another US/UK difference?
The older OED2 has an entry for 'rain forest' and adds: 'also with
hyphen'. We thus see all three forms in two dictionaries from the same
publisher.
The difference arises from chronology, not geography. What usually
happens is that a pair of words, such as 'rain forest', is used for
conveying a single idea. After a while, the words are run together with
a hyphen -- 'rain-forest' -- as a tacit acknowledgment that the two
words are more closely connected than, say, 'dark forest' or 'huge
forest'. Once everyone is comfortable with the two words representing a
single lexical unit, the hyphen is abolished and the two words truly
become one: 'rainforest'.
This doesn't always happen. It depends in part on how often the term is
used and how readable it would be if presented as a single word: hence
'newsreader' but 'news server'. There are no fixed rules to tell you
whether compound nouns should be run together and, if so, whether to use
a hyphen: you just have to find one or more up-to-date and trustworthy
dictionaries and follow their advice. If you're working in a specialist
field that runs together a compound noun that other people write as two
words, write it as your audience would expect to see it.
Bob Cunningham
On Sat, 03 Jan 1998 17:47:36 GMT, fredd...@tcp.co.uk (Markus Laker)
said:
>> In article <34aab36c....@sapphire.acnatsci.org>,
>> rdc...@SPAMTRAPacnatsci.org (Richard D. Clark) writes:
>>
>> > I find no dictionary that supports the spelling "rainforest" under any
>> > circumstances.
>>
>> My dictionary (COD9) only allows `rainforest'. Anything else looks wrong to
>> me. Is this another US/UK difference?
>
>The older OED2
'The older OED2'? Has there more than one? I'll assume you meant 'the
older OED'. Anyway, I wouldn't give much weight to anything I found in
either OED père or OED2 as far as UK vs US differences are concerned,
because the OED scholars cite usages from both and I'm usually not sure
which side of the Atlantic a usage is from.
>has an entry for 'rain forest' and adds: 'also with
>hyphen'. We thus see all three forms in two dictionaries from the same
>publisher.
>The difference arises from chronology, not geography.
But there does seem to be a tendency for British dictionaries to prefer
'rainforest' while American dictionary publishers and other American
publishers seem to lean toward 'rain forest'.
I find particularly interesting that the _Random House Webster's College
Dictionary_ had 'rain forest or rainforest' in the 1995 edition, but has
'rain forest' only in the 1997. Did they notice that other American
dictionaries eschewed 'rainforest' and decide to fall into line?
I've recently looked through a number of books from American Publishers
for 'rain forest' or 'rainforest'. I found that publications from the
National Geographic Society (_Our Threatened Inheritance_), The
Reader's Digest Association, Inc. (_Treasures of America_), and Houghton
Mifflin Company (Al Gore's _Earth in the Balance_) all have 'rain
forest'. _The Encyclopedia Britannica_ has 'rain forest'.
I haven't found any American publication that spells it 'rainforest'.
Taking that along with the absence of 'rainforest' from three popular
American dictionaries, AHD3, MWCD, and RHWCD/97, and its presence in
NSOED/93, COD9, and _The Chambers Dictionary_ (1993) leads me to think
that, at least for the present, the British prefer 'rainforest' and the
Americans prefer 'rain forest'.
--
Bob Cunningham, Southern California, USofA
To send e-mail, delete an 'r', an 'i', and an 'o' from
the lefthand part of my address.
E-mail is welcome, but copies of postings aren't necessary.
Joseph C Fineman
fredd...@tcp.co.uk (Markus Laker) writes:
>The difference arises from chronology, not geography. What usually
>happens is that a pair of words, such as 'rain forest', is used for
>conveying a single idea. After a while, the words are run together
>with a hyphen -- 'rain-forest' -- as a tacit acknowledgment that the
>two words are more closely connected than, say, 'dark forest' or
>'huge forest'.
This stage is now almost always skipped -- _in print_ -- in the U.S.
It still corresponds to a lot of people's instincts, but the
publishers have set their faces against it.
>Once everyone is comfortable with the two words representing a single
>lexical unit, the hyphen is abolished and the two words truly become
>one: 'rainforest'.
In print, the choice these days is always betwewen rain forest &
rainforest, shoe box & shoebox, end point & endpoint, data base &
database, etc., etc. As has been extensively observed on this thread
& elsewhere, a dictionary is unlikely to be helpful unless you have
only one & it happens to list the phrase you are interested in.
Incidentally, IMO, nonfaddish people can almost do without
"rain[ ]forest". It is properly a covering word, useful when one
wants to include _temperate_ rainforests. In perhaps 90% of the
contexts where the word is used these days, a _tropical_ rainforest is
meant, and "jungle" would be shorter, more precise, and plainer
English.
--- Joe Fineman j...@world.std.com
||: The higher the monkey climbs, the more he shows his rear. :||
Tony Pritchard
In article <34abe10d...@news.erols.com>,
Rich Clark <rdclark...@erols.com> wrote:
> Interestingly, UK and Australian sources seem to support "rainforest,"
> while U.S. sources support "rain forest."
>
> My initial research included mostly U.S. sources. This group is more
> diverse.
>
> We are a U.S. museum, of course.
>
It seems logical to me that the spelling best adopted should be that used
in countries that have the largest expanses of rainforest.
Tony Pritchard
Lower Hutt, New Zealand
(ex-botanist, and writing this a short distance from a subtropical lowland
rainforest that is particularly nice to be inside in this lovely summer
weather)
Ross Howard
On 1 Jan 1998 09:54:01 GMT, "Vicki Parslow-Stafford" <vl...@gil.com.au>
wrote:
>Hardly definitive advice, I know, but in this part of the world
>(Queensland, Australia), where rainforest is a significant habitat type,
>I've never seen it spelled any other way. I just did a quick flick
>through my wildlife reference books, and the spelling is consistently
>"rainforest". Sources for this spelling include Queensland Museum,
>National Parks and Wildlife Service, Royal Australian Ornithologists'
>Union etc. I would think a natural science museum should have few qualms
>about adopting this spelling, or difficulties in seeking confirmation
>from similar organisations.
>
>Truly's comment is very apt.
Indeed it is, but if vegetation is being discussed in detail, the
problem refuses to go away. No sooner have you taken a deep breath and
written "rainforest" than you come across "cloud forest", and decide
that "cloudforest" looks iffy, so you go back and re-split every
"rainforest" back to "rain forest".
After a treacle-thick coffee, you decide to apply the
"Moorland/Farmland Principle" and change every "wet land" and "scrub
land" to "wetland" and "scrubland".
Then you come across "flood plain"...and decide it's time to
play Solitaire for a while.
Ross Howard
****************************************************
There's a number in my e-mail address. Subtract four
from it to reply.
****************************************************
Markus Laker
I'm swayed by your evidence, Bob, but let me drop a couple of flies in
the ointment:
radi...@lafn.org (Bob Cunningham):
> I've recently looked through a number of books from American Publishers
> for 'rain forest' or 'rainforest'. I found that publications from the
> National Geographic Society (_Our Threatened Inheritance_), The
> Reader's Digest Association, Inc. (_Treasures of America_), and Houghton
> Mifflin Company (Al Gore's _Earth in the Balance_) all have 'rain
> forest'. _The Encyclopedia Britannica_ has 'rain forest'.
Do you mean the 1997 Britannica CD? Although Britannica is now the
property of an American publisher, the manual warns American users that
British spellings are used and search patterns should be modified
accordingly.
Unless I care to re-read Ben Elton's _Stark_ -- which I don't -- I can
only locate two British books on my bookshelf that use 'rain( )forest',
and those are from the respected _Trials of Life_ trilogy by David
Attenborough. They write 'rain forest' as two words.
Vicki Parslow-Stafford
Ross Howard <rho...@mx7.redestb.es> wrote in article
<34af7be4...@news.redestb.es>...
> On 1 Jan 1998 09:54:01 GMT, "Vicki Parslow-Stafford" <vl...@gil.com.au>
> wrote:
>
> >Hardly definitive advice, I know, but in this part of the world
> >(Queensland, Australia), where rainforest is a significant habitat
type,
> >I've never seen it spelled any other way. <snip>.
>
> Indeed it is, but if vegetation is being discussed in detail, the
> problem refuses to go away. No sooner have you taken a deep breath and
> written "rainforest" than you come across "cloud forest", and decide
> that "cloudforest" looks iffy, so you go back and re-split every
> "rainforest" back to "rain forest". <etcetera>
I acknowledge the dilemma, but good golly gosh, where is it written that
all formations must be the same? For example, I refer to the "Complete
Book of Australian Birds". The list of vegetation habitats is:
- rainforest
- wet sclerophyll forest
- dry sclerophyll forest
- brigalow forest
- woodland
- shrub steppe
- mallee scrub
- mulga scrub
- saltbush
- spinifex grassland
- Mitchell and other grassland
- heath
Why "saltbush" and "woodland"? My point (albeit a clumsy one) is: where
is it written that grammatically identical word formations must be used
to describe habitat types? Just go with the accepted useage, and stop
the nit-picking!
Robert M. Wilson
In article <EM8CH...@world.std.com>,
j...@world.std.com (Joseph C Fineman) wrote:
>
>Incidentally, IMO, nonfaddish people can almost do without
>"rain[ ]forest". It is properly a covering word, useful when one
>wants to include _temperate_ rainforests. In perhaps 90% of the
>contexts where the word is used these days, a _tropical_ rainforest is
>meant, and "jungle" would be shorter, more precise, and plainer
>English.
I live in a temperate rainforest, but it is never referred to as a jungle. I
think your figure of 90% is way out. The majority of the world's pulp and
paper products are made from the softwoods of the temperate climates, though
the use of tropical woods from "jungles" or tropical rainforests is
increasing.
Gwen Lenker
Markus Laker <fredd...@tcp.co.uk> wrote in article
<34b27e0f...@news.tcp.co.uk>...
>
> Do you mean the 1997 Britannica CD? Although Britannica is now the
> property of an American publisher, the manual warns American users
that
> British spellings are used and search patterns should be modified
> accordingly.
Markus, could you elaborate on your statement that "Britannica is now
the property of an American publisher"? It came as quite a surprise
to me. I know that Britannica divested itself of several of its
subsidiaries a few years ago, but the Big Book itself?
Ross Howard
On Sat, 3 Jan 1998 22:44:18 GMT, j...@world.std.com (Joseph C Fineman)
wrote:
>Incidentally, IMO, nonfaddish people can almost do without
>"rain[ ]forest". It is properly a covering word, useful when one
>wants to include _temperate_ rainforests. In perhaps 90% of the
>contexts where the word is used these days, a _tropical_ rainforest is
>meant, and "jungle" would be shorter, more precise, and plainer
>English.
More precise for common or garden machete-weilders, perhaps, but not
for botanists. If we accept the popular meaning of "jungle" to be
"dense tropical vegetation", then a lot of rainforests -- including
parts of the Amazon Basin -- would fail to qualify, since the
vegetation at ground level is thinner and easier to walk through than
a lot of woodlands in temperate zones (e.g., Hampstead Heath in
London).
Equally, many "jungles" aren't rainforests -- gallery forests
(i.e., vegetation that grows along the banks of rivers and streams) in
otherwise arid tropical areas, for example.
>
>--- Joe Fineman j...@world.std.com
>
>||: The higher the monkey climbs, the more he shows his rear. :||
Ross Howard
Ross Howard
On Sun, 04 Jan 1998 12:57:12 GMT, fredd...@tcp.co.uk (Markus Laker)
wrote:
>I'm swayed by your evidence, Bob, but let me drop a couple of flies in
>the ointment:
>
>radi...@lafn.org (Bob Cunningham):
>
>> I've recently looked through a number of books from American Publishers
>> for 'rain forest' or 'rainforest'. I found that publications from the
>> National Geographic Society (_Our Threatened Inheritance_), The
>> Reader's Digest Association, Inc. (_Treasures of America_), and Houghton
>> Mifflin Company (Al Gore's _Earth in the Balance_) all have 'rain
>> forest'. _The Encyclopedia Britannica_ has 'rain forest'.
>
>Do you mean the 1997 Britannica CD? Although Britannica is now the
>property of an American publisher, the manual warns American users that
>British spellings are used and search patterns should be modified
>accordingly.
>
>Unless I care to re-read Ben Elton's _Stark_ -- which I don't -- I can
>only locate two British books on my bookshelf that use 'rain( )forest',
>and those are from the respected _Trials of Life_ trilogy by David
>Attenborough. They write 'rain forest' as two words.
David Attenborough is certainly a respected communicator, granted, but
I think you'd agree that Ghillean T. Prance, the Director of Kew, is a
somewhat more respected botanist. He, together with the vast majority
of the people who earn their living researching what goes on in the
things, write it as "rainforest".
Brian J Goggin
On 4 Jan 1998 20:14:33 GMT, "Gwen Lenker" <gale...@worldnet.att.net>
wrote:
>Markus Laker <fredd...@tcp.co.uk> wrote in article
><34b27e0f...@news.tcp.co.uk>...
>>
>> Do you mean the 1997 Britannica CD? Although Britannica is now the
>> property of an American publisher, the manual warns American users
>that
>> British spellings are used and search patterns should be modified
>> accordingly.
>
>Markus, could you elaborate on your statement that "Britannica is now
>the property of an American publisher"? It came as quite a surprise
>to me. I know that Britannica divested itself of several of its
>subsidiaries a few years ago, but the Big Book itself?
The EB has been in American ownership since 1901, although it has
passed through many hands since then. Some extracts from its own
account:
===begins=====
Ninth edition.
The 24 volumes and index volume of the ninth edition--one of the
greatest--appeared one by one between 1875 and 1889. [...] The work's
list of about 1,100 contributors includes more than 70 American
scholars and about 60 scholars from the countries of continental
Europe. Ownership of the Encyclopædia Britannica passed permanently to
the United States when the American publisher Horace E. Hooper, along
with another publisher, Walter M. Jackson, purchased the Britannica
outright from Adam and Charles Black in 1901.
10th edition.
The 10th edition (1902-03) was published under the sponsorship of The
Times of London. It added 11 supplementary volumes to those of the
ninth, updating much of the material, especially in history. The
editors of the 10th edition were Sir Donald Mackenzie Wallace, Hugh
Chisholm, Arthur T. Hadley, and Franklin H. Hooper, the brother of
Horace Hooper.
11th edition.
[...] In 1920 Britannica was bought by the Chicago mail-order house of
Sears, Roebuck and Company, with Horace Hooper serving as its
publisher until his death in 1922.
12th and 13th editions.
[...] During this period (1923-28) ownership shifted from Sears,
Roebuck to Hooper's widow and his brother-in-law, William J. Cox.
14th edition.
In 1928 Sears, Roebuck bought back the Britannica, retaining Cox as
publisher to put out a revised edition of the now badly out-of-date
11th edition. [...]
Late in 1941 William Benton, a former advertising executive and then
a vice president of the University of Chicago, obtained from Sears,
Roebuck and Company the offer of all rights to the Encyclopædia
Britannica as a gift to the university. When the trustees of the
university decided not to undertake the financial risks, Benton
supplied the working capital and became chairman of the board of
directors of Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc., and majority stockholder.
Robert M. Hutchins, then president of the university, was named
chairman of the board of editors. Headquarters were established in
Chicago. [...]
===ends=====
Later material shows changes of officers but not of owners.
bjg
Mark Baker
In article <34b27e0f...@news.tcp.co.uk>,
fredd...@tcp.co.uk (Markus Laker) writes:
> Do you mean the 1997 Britannica CD? Although Britannica is now the
> property of an American publisher, the manual warns American users that
> British spellings are used and search patterns should be modified
> accordingly.
It doesn't---at least in the ten year old paper version I last used---seem
to use any consistent set of spellings (or at least, not one established on
US/British lines)
Bob Cunningham
>Markus Laker <fredd...@tcp.co.uk> wrote in article
><34b27e0f...@news.tcp.co.uk>...
>>
>> Do you mean the 1997 Britannica CD? Although Britannica is now the
>> property of an American publisher, the manual warns American users
>that
>> British spellings are used and search patterns should be modified
>> accordingly.
>
>Markus, could you elaborate on your statement that "Britannica is now
>the property of an American publisher"? It came as quite a surprise
>to me. I know that Britannica divested itself of several of its
>subsidiaries a few years ago, but the Big Book itself?
I had remembered that EB was the property of the giant American retailer
Sears, Roebuck for many years and that the University of Chicago had had
something to do with its maintenance.
I now find, in _The Oxford Companion to the English Language_, (OCEL),
s.v. 'Encyclopaedia Britannica' on page 349, that Sears acquired it in
1928 and 'passed' it in 1943 to:
William Benton, an advertising executive who became a
vice-president of the U. of Chicago, which had declined
to take the EB itself. Benton remained owner and
publisher until his death in 1973.
[ . . . ]
Since 1981^, the company has been owned by the William
Benton company of Illinois.
OCEL also says, near the beginning of the same article:
[EB] is published in Chicago with editorial advice
from the faculties of the U. of Chicago and from
committees drawn from the universities of Cambridge,
Edinburgh, Oxford, London, and Sussex in the UK, and
universities in Australia, Canada, Denmark, France,
Germany, Italy, Japan, the Netherlands, and Portugal.
The first American connection with EB apparently began in 1901. OCEL
says:
In 1901, the American businessmen Horace Hooper and
Walter Jackson acquired the encyclopedia from A. & C.
Black, and helped rescue _The Times_ of London from
financial difficulties through a heavily advertised
promotion of a reprinted 9th edition.
The OCEL article has much more to say about the history of EB.
I found it tangentially interesting that OCEL has the spelling
'Encyclopaedia' in the heading of the article, but uses 'encyclopedia'
in a number of places in the body of the article. They have a separate
article headed 'ENCYCLOPAEDIA, encyclopedia, also occasionally
cyclopaedia'.
^ My copy of OCEL was published in 1992.
Bob Cunningham
>I'm swayed by your evidence, Bob, but let me drop a couple of flies in
>the ointment:
>
>radi...@lafn.org (Bob Cunningham):
>
>> I've recently looked through a number of books from American Publishers
>> for 'rain forest' or 'rainforest'. I found that publications from the
>> National Geographic Society (_Our Threatened Inheritance_), The
>> Reader's Digest Association, Inc. (_Treasures of America_), and Houghton
>> Mifflin Company (Al Gore's _Earth in the Balance_) all have 'rain
>> forest'. _The Encyclopedia Britannica_ has 'rain forest'.
>
>Do you mean the 1997 Britannica CD?
I was referring to my 1977 hardcopy. I have the 1997 CD, but I can't
use it because among the many things my antediluvian^ system lacks is a
CD-ROM drive.
> Although Britannica is now the
>property of an American publisher, the manual warns American users that
>British spellings are used and search patterns should be modified
>accordingly.
My print copy has no mention of that in its one-page note in Volume 1
headed 'How to use this volume'.
I see, though, that they have an article headed 'diarrhea, or
diarrhoea', giving preference to the US spelling, while COD8 has an
entry headed 'diarrhoea', with later 'esp[ecially] US diarrhea'.
^ I looked up 'antediluvian' because I wanted to spell it
'antedeluvian', because of 'deluge', but it didn't seem
right. I found that 'antediluvian' is correct, and that
it is descended from Latin 'diluvium'. So why 'deluge',
which is also from Latin 'diluvium'? Answer: 'deluge' is
from Old French 'déluge', which was an 'alt[eration],
after pop[ular] formations in '-uge', of earlier /diluve\'
(NSOED/93).
Bob Cunningham
On 4 Jan 1998 14:44:22 GMT, "Vicki Parslow-Stafford" <vl...@gil.com.au>
said:
[ . . . ]
>Why "saltbush" and "woodland"? My point (albeit a clumsy one) is: where
>is it written that grammatically identical word formations must be used
>to describe habitat types? Just go with the accepted useage, and stop
>the nit-picking!
But the central theme of the thread has been the question of whether the
spellings of 'rain()forest' become different as the Atlantic is crossed.
That's not an earth-shaking question, but I submit it's more interesting
than reading Reinhold Aman extolling the virtues of Mimi Kahn.
Markus Laker
radi...@lafn.org (Bob Cunningham):
> On Sun, 04 Jan 1998 12:57:12 GMT, fredd...@tcp.co.uk (Markus Laker)
> said:
> > Although Britannica is now the
> >property of an American publisher, the manual warns American users that
> >British spellings are used and search patterns should be modified
> >accordingly.
> My print copy has no mention of that in its one-page note in Volume 1
> headed 'How to use this volume'.
Page 22 in the handbook to the CD-ROM encyclopaedia is devoted to the
subject. Actually, I find that the spelling used is a mishmash of
British and American. One article in the CD-ROM encyclopaedia begins
like this:
# Colour
# The psychology of colour
# The most important aspect of colour in daily life is probably the one
# that is least defined and most variable. It
# involves aesthetic and psychological responses to colour and
# influences art, fashion, commerce, and even physical and
# emotional sensations.
Note 'colour' and 'aesthetic'. But another article begins like this:
# esophagus,
# also spelled OESOPHAGUS, relatively straight muscular tube through
# which food passes from the pharynx to the
# stomach.
> I see, though, that they have an article headed 'diarrhea, or
> diarrhoea', giving preference to the US spelling, while COD8 has an
> entry headed 'diarrhoea', with later 'esp[ecially] US diarrhea'.
Yes. It's a bit of a jumble, isn't it?
Brian J Goggin
On Mon, 05 Jan 1998 19:15:03 GMT, fredd...@tcp.co.uk (Markus Laker)
wrote:
[of Encyclopaedia Britannica]
Is it true that the 1998 version uses Internet Explorer rather than
Netscape?
bjg
Joseph C Fineman
r...@island.net (Robert M. Wilson) writes:
>In article <EM8CH...@world.std.com>,
> j...@world.std.com (Joseph C Fineman) wrote:
>>Incidentally, IMO, nonfaddish people can almost do without
>>"rain[ ]forest". It is properly a covering word, useful when one
>>wants to include _temperate_ rainforests. In perhaps 90% of the
>>contexts where the word is used these days, a _tropical_ rainforest
>>is meant, and "jungle" would be shorter, more precise, and plainer
>>English.
>I live in a temperate rainforest, but it is never referred to as a
>jungle.
I should hope not!
>I think your figure of 90% is way out. The majority of the world's
>pulp and paper products are made from the softwoods of the temperate
>climates, though the use of tropical woods from "jungles" or tropical
>rainforests is increasing.
I was not talking about the uses of the trees, but about the uses of
the word. What I was trying to say is that if you see the word(s)
"rain( )forest" in (say) a newspaper or magazine these days, the odds
are that the reference is specifically to a tropical rainforest, and
the inclusiveness of the longer expression is pointless.
--- Joe Fineman j...@world.std.com
||: He knew what's what, and that's as high :||
||: As metaphysic wit can fly. :||
Joseph C Fineman
rho...@mx7.redestb.es (Ross Howard) writes:
>On Sat, 3 Jan 1998 22:44:18 GMT, j...@world.std.com (Joseph C Fineman)
>wrote:
>>Incidentally, IMO, nonfaddish people can almost do without
>>"rain[ ]forest". It is properly a covering word, useful when one
>>wants to include _temperate_ rainforests. In perhaps 90% of the
>>contexts where the word is used these days, a _tropical_ rainforest
>>is meant, and "jungle" would be shorter, more precise, and plainer
>>English.
>More precise for common or garden machete-weilders, perhaps, but not
>for botanists. If we accept the popular meaning of "jungle" to be
>"dense tropical vegetation", then a lot of rainforests -- including
>parts of the Amazon Basin -- would fail to qualify, since the
>vegetation at ground level is thinner and easier to walk through than
>a lot of woodlands in temperate zones (e.g., Hampstead Heath in
>London).
Live & learn. Somehow, I escaped learning the popular meaning of
"jungle" as expressed by you & Webster's 10th. To me, "jungle" has
always connoted luxuriance but not necessarily impenetrability.
> Equally, many "jungles" aren't rainforests -- gallery forests
>(i.e., vegetation that grows along the banks of rivers and streams)
>in otherwise arid tropical areas, for example.
Well, I guess we're stuck with it, then. Since the meaning is
specialized, I vote for the one-word spelling.
--- Joe Fineman j...@world.std.com
||: Life is too small a fish to be caught in the law's coarse :||
||: meshes. :||
Reinhold Aman
Bob Cunningham wrote:
(snip)
> But the central theme of the thread has been the question of whether the
> spellings of 'rain()forest' become different as the Atlantic is crossed.
> That's not an earth-shaking question, but I submit it's more interesting
> than reading Reinhold Aman extolling the virtues of Mimi Kahn.
Bob, my main man, may I extrapolate from your last sentence that
reading Mimi Kahn extolling the virtues of Reinhold Aman *is*
interesting?
Man, you're one uncool dude, dude!
--
Reinhold Aman
Santa Rosa, CA 95402-6123, USA
http://www.sonic.net/maledicta/
Mirror site in Dublin, Ireland, at:
http://www.ucd.ie/~artspgs/mal/
Bob Cunningham
On Mon, 05 Jan 1998 22:27:41 GMT, b...@wordwrights.ie (Brian J Goggin)
said:
I just called the EB 800 number. It is true that the presently
available new version uses Internet Explorer, not Netscape. It's also
true that it's presently available for Windows 95 and NT only, and not
Macintosh.
If you own the earlier version you can get the update for US$50. It's
called CD98.
The lady said there will be a 1998 version for Windows 3.1 that will be
available sometime in March.
To order the update or to get further information, call 1-800-747-4072.
Ross Howard
>On Mon, 05 Jan 1998 19:15:03 GMT, fredd...@tcp.co.uk (Markus Laker)
>wrote:
>
>[of Encyclopaedia Britannica]
>
>Is it true that the 1998 version uses Internet Explorer rather than
>Netscape?
If so, they should rename it *Encartapaedia Monopolica*.