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Text of the page (random words):
one form in the previous paragraph and another in this one in order to make this very point here s where cmos addresses the meat of my problem in 9 35 the editors explain note that the first decade of any century cannot be treated in the same way as other decades though it commonly appears in journalism and may be clear from the immediate context the 2000s could easily be taken to refer not to a decade but to the whole of the twenty first century they suggest leaving the aughts for casual writing and the same for the teens in formal contexts the editors suggest the clarity of the first decade or the years 2000 2009 which may for some be 2001 to 2010 but i m not discussing that particular knotty issue here the lack of a year 0 not being a grammatical problem in any way the second decade or the years 2010 2019 and so on i will further suggest although it is not an issue of grammar but of historical perspective that the further from a given century the writer is the clearer the use of the xx00s becomes that is if i say chaucer wrote during the 1300s readers are unlikely to think i mean during the first decade of the 14th century however referring to the 1900s or heaven forfend the 2000s in this the year of whoever 2025 invites confusion here s where i admit i m unlikely to write what i gave as an example clarity is paramount for an editor and i would write the 14th century fun fact chaucer died in 1400 does that mean he saw the dawn of a new century or the sunset of an old one discuss amongst yourselves don t me in closing then i assure you that while i was born in the 20th century the years from 1900 to 1999 inclusive 1901 to 2000 if your horological leanings work that way i was not born in the 1900s but rather the 1950s i m old but not that old by grammargeddonangel in editing grammar style usage writing july 7 2025 558 words leave a comment follow me down a cornish rabbit hole in the series i m currently reading we are in 19th century cornwall one of the characters uses cornish words in her normal speech great characterization and i freely admit that i ve looked up more than one term which makes me happy i love bumping into unfamiliar words and learning about them that s why i don t fret if a client uses an uncommon term send the readers to the dictionary once or twice maybe more often than that in a book it s good for their continuing education however in this particular case with this specific word i puzzled a bit more than usual the term is pellar it s a cornish word for a witch sorcerer or wizard and according to some etymologists it comes from expeller for one who casts out evil but not as harsh or religious as an exorcist i gather so it s a noun cool why then does it also appear as pellar witch isn t that somewhat redundant we don t speak of exorcist priests so why would we say pellar witch this is the kind of problem that makes me stop reading and start thinking deeper what would i have done had i been the editor on this book well i certainly would not have said don t use this term it makes absolute sense for this character to use the old language and the one to whom she speaks isn t confused by it so there must be some familiarity there even though the listener isn t cornish that s where i stopped thinking deeply i want to keep reading not re edit the book it s this particular example that bothers me we wouldn t say exorcist priest so why would we say pellar witch earlier in the book the term pellar blood appears and that didn t tweak me in the least witch blood is a common concept in the kinds of literature i enjoy i went in search of this word pellar it s not in merriam webster s 11th collegiate dictionary it might be in the oed but i don t have a paid subscription and the app is limited in scope of course i have dictionary apps on my phone and tablet i m a copy editor it s not in my encarta world english dictionary i cast my net over the unknown waters of the internet as i have no cornish dictionary it s a failing i know this comes from wikipedia i have left the internal links and reference numbers in place the terms cunning man and cunning woman were most widely used in southern england the midlands and in wales 9 such people were also frequently known across england as wizards wise men or wise women 9 or in southern england and wales as conjurers 9 or as dynion hysbys in the welsh language 10 in cornwall they were sometimes referred to as pellars which some etymologists suggest originated from the term expellers referring to the practice of expelling evil spirits 9 nineteenth century folklorists often used the term white witch to refer to cunning folk although this was infrequently used amongst the ordinary people themselves as for them the term witch had general connotations of malevolence and evil 8 did the author research this aspect did the editor why do i care because i would have gone down this rabbit hole if i had been the editor is pellar witch a known term or is it newly minted for this book would the author have said exorcist priest i doubt it now that i ve spent over an hour on this particular niggle i think it s time to let it go editors can do that it s legal i want to be a reader again by grammargeddonangel in editing grammar language style usage word choice writing april 30 2025 602 words 6 comments there s more than one way to write a passive sentence and that s one right up there so s the one preceding this not all passive sentences use passive voice however the common thread is reversal of the expected grammatical order placing the object of the verb as the subject of the sentence it s less visible and somewhat inside out with the expletive construction also called agentless construction but it s still there i ve written about the passive voice before as i have about expletives but it s time to revisit academic and technical writers are fond of the passive voice as in the experiment was performed in our lab over a period of six weeks not only is that in passive voice the grammatical subject is the object of the verb it s also agentless we aren t told who performed the experiment contrast that with the agentive construction i was struck on the head by a mallet we don t know who struck me but we know they used a mallet the mallet is the agent the thing that performs the action the wielder is presumably unimportant certainly unknown a clearer agentive construction is this one i was struck on the head by my assailant the weapon doesn t matter for whatever reason i could even say i was struck on the head with a mallet by my assailant that s a clunky way of saying my assailant struck my head with a mallet but that s not how we present information in say a victim statement to the police the active voice doesn t serve us well in that situation we put ourselves first usually it really is all about us expletive constructions use phrases like it is or there are to open the sentence adding nothing to the sense or meaning of the sentence all they do is delay the appearance of the subject while that can be effective in some cases it s usually best to recast the sentence be aware though that it is a red coat is not an expletive construction that s a subject and its complement it and coat or red coat it s common knowledge that he s a liar and a cheat though is an expletive construction it s doesn t add any meaning to the sentence without it we d say that he s a liar and a cheat is common knowledge or more likely everyone knows he s a liar and a cheat using the expletive it s feels more natural in there are four lights the word there adds nothing to the sense it s an expletive it doesn t tell us where the lights are it just takes up space in the sentence i m reminded now of that lovely quote from gertrude stein there s no there there i ll leave the pondering up to you by grammargeddonangel in grammar passive voice syntax usage april 9 2025 446 words leave a comment period words words period to use the language of text memes not me leaning toward the television pointing and shouting that hasn t even been said yet it certainly was me while watching an episode of mystery cadfael season 3 episode 3 if you care and hearing the following line you know what they say all it takes for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing trouble is cadfael is set in the late 12th century well before john stuart mill and edmund burke while the saying is commonly attributed to the latter the former wrote something nearly identical why latch on to burke and not mill i have no idea but that s what has happened anyway warning spoilers await you i don t have a copy of ellis peters s book the raven in the foregate peters is the pen name of mary edith pargeter by the by so i can t check the source material for the show however something tells me the author wasn t the one who did this i suspect the screenwriter frankly attempting to use phrasing the audience is familiar with the same thing happened earlier in that episode when the new evil priest called a young woman whose confession he had refused to hear and who subsequently took her own life a doxy that word is dated to the late 17th century about 500 years after this series of books and of shows is set i didn t shout at the tv but i cringed all of this is to prove a point i regularly make with my fiction clients if you re writing historical fiction you must beware of pulling readers out of the story with your word choices do you want someone flinching at phrasing or worse throwing your book across the room granted if it s an ebook they probably won t want to break the device they re reading on but one never knows does one by grammargeddonangel in style word choice writing february 26 2025 february 26 2025 314 words 2 comments is it harris or harris s sibilant mechanics hey folks it s been a minute well okay more like almost a year to the day but i m not counting obviously we re entering a new phase of history one in which it will be necessary to know how to correctly form possessives and plurals of names ending in sibilants ss i follow the chicago manual of style guidelines others will adhere to ap still others may use different guides do what you like just remember my main rule pick one and be consistent all righty then harris the possessive is harris s per chicago style ap would tell you it s harris the guideline for chicago is if you say it write it and since we most of us anyway would voice that possessive s it s spelled out walz the possessive is walz s that z is said like the s in walls so it s not a sibilant it doesn t hiss hear the hiss in sibilant it s voiced harrises except you know kamala s husband is doug emhoff so how often we ll need to know how to pluralize harris is up in the air add the es it s a regular plural as the grammar books call it walzes another regular plural add the es now for the real fun harrises that s the plural possessive just put an apostrophe on the end of the plural that ends in s you re done walzes same deal here put an apostrophe on the end of the plural that ends in s no quiz today but i ll ask you to watch the media reports and notice who gets it right and who doesn t it ll be fun for some of us watching your social media not as fun and i don t suggest poking bears with the you styled that wrong stick those who care care those who don t well by grammargeddonangel in plural forms possessive forms punctuation style august 7 2024 299 words 1 comment untranslatable is anglo centric have you noticed that every writeup about untranslatable words includes translations of them that has annoyed me for years now it s othering to the languages of those words there s nothing worse or better about words that have no one to one translation from their home languages into english english winds up borrowing them most of the time as loanwords anyway because they re so darn useful schadenfreude hygge smorgasbord of course english eschews the swedish diacriticals i won t turn this into a diatribe neither will i be going into great detail about loanwords chances are you already know what they are how we get them and how they re absorbed my point is simple and direct stop saying untranslatable when that isn t true if you can t stop at least admit that it s inaccurate and what you really mean is we have no word for this in english the concepts aren t untranslatable if they truly were we d have lists of words in their home languages with no explanations whatsoever they re inconvenient to us as english speakers because we have no single term in english that means precisely what they mean to me it all comes back to english thinking it s the be all and end all when it isn t either of those things it s just another language on our planet languages have words for concepts that are important to their speakers think on that for a bit the next time you run into something untranslatable by grammargeddonangel in language linguistics writing august 11 2023 238 words leave a comment social unsocial media thoughts this has zero to do with editing or grammar or usage or any of the usual things i write about but it s important to me to get this out there for the eleven people who ll read it i ve left twitter for good i did that months ago really but i m saying it again i m not going back to that place even keeping my account there as a placeholder was to me providing support for what s happening there which i don t condone in any fashion whatsoever no bird site for me i abandoned facebook years ago and never looked back therefore no threads for me either i m seriously considering nuking my instagram account but my only hesitation there is it s a connection to my kids and colleagues in a nonprofessional manner as i only post personal stuff there still i m tacitly supporting zuckerberg by staying it s wearing on me bluesky no thank you that s just going back to supporting dorsey i left twitter for a reason going to another platform run by the same dude wtf no i ve tried hive and post too they didn t do much for me meh mastodon is my choice in this venue nothing will replace twitter that magic was wrecked and burned but what i m building on mastodon is a fine replacement not substitute as that has connotations i don t feel are accurate here for what i had there no i don t have the same camaraderie i did no i don t see the same waves of interest i did but i m connecting with people i d never have found there and they re from a far larger pool an ocean or two and there are a few folks who made it there from other places and we ve found one another and that makes it homey some i hadn t seen in a few years which was a lovely surprise so there you have it if you find me on mastodon that s great if you re staying away because of reasons that s your choice we re all adults here we get to decide for ourselves i m still gramrgednangel that hasn t changed nor will it barring unforeseen circumstances keeping the same handle makes sense i chose the zirk us instance server one that ...
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