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M
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Sep 11, 2010 09:49AM
My apologies, Ruth. Now you know why I go by M.
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Yes Ruth, not to confuse you, but I use the dash for my address since I live in a condo, and we all have numbered units, separating us from the other people.
Ruth, if I used a dash in my name, I guess it would be an M dash.
M wrote: "Hi, MrsSeby! People can be peculiar about their names. I wondered if maybe Ruth set off the second part of her last name, as you'd use dashes to interrupt a sentence with an interesting observation..."Thanks, M. I know the hyphen is on the keyboard, but when you're typing a book manuscript for a printer, you have to use the en dash instead of the keyboard hyphen. (At least some printers, I don't know about all of them, some might be different. I only know about my own experience.)
I'm very particular about my name. I hate nicknames and people always find a way to shorten it. I've thought of changing it to something like "Joy" that can't very well be shortened, but I don't think I'd really ever change my name. Too much trouble! And too much family history entwined in the one I now have.
I was Annie when I was little, or Annie Oakley. I was forever with six-shooters on my hips. Now I just have fat and am called Kitty(fat cat).
Carol (Kitty) wrote: "I was Annie when I was little, or Annie Oakley. I was forever with six-shooters on my hips. Now I just have fat and am called Kitty(fat cat)."Oh, Carol. I've seen your photo. You are not fat! I was super skinny until I was thirty. People made "skinny jokes" about me. I didn't care. LOL
Mod
Hee!
Carol (Kitty) wrote: "You are prejudice, but thanks"You're welcome and sure I'm prejudiced! :)
If this isn't the place to ask this, just let me know.I've always been unsure of the correct way to use em dashes. It's not exactly when to use them or how, but rather the format. I've seen a couple different ways. The first is: word-word
The second: word - word
The third: word--word
Although when I write, I always copy/paste an em dash I got off of wikipedia--so that I have the full dash and not a hyphen or two combined hyphens. So, which is correct? This also seems to be something that there is't a definitive answer on.
An em is a unit of measure in typeset matter--in any face, about as wide as the type is high. An em dash (so called because it's an em wide) is what we normally think of as a dash, used to denote a sudden break in thought. A 2-em dash is used in instances where a word isn't finished (What the f----?) or following a date to indicate continuation of time (1973----). A 3-em dash is used to indicate an omitted word (She told me her name was ------). Except in the use of a 3-em dash, there should be no space between the dash and the words before and after it.The protocol for typescript and traditional type are not alike, and mixing them up shows ignorance of, or disregard for, the tools one is using. An ordinary user, for example, should never have occasion to underline something when using traditional type (italic is available). The "rabbit tracks" that in cheap, incomplete versions of typefaces come up instead of the quotation marks and apostrophes designed for the face seem to me an abomination. Goodreads uses rabbit tracks instead of quotation marks and apostrophes. No dash is available, either. As when using a typewriter, there's nothing to do but put two hypens together.
If you've found a way to cut and paste a real dash from somewhere, more power to you! Maybe you can figure out a way to do the same thing with quotation marks.
I'm no authority. I can throw some terms around because I used to set type on a photosetter at a little advertising business. One the most practical books I owned was a manual of style used at the University of Chicago Press sometime around World War I. It contained the answer to just about any question I had occasion to ask regarding typography.
I hope that helps.
Mod
But just this morning I discovered a better way, at least in Word 2008. Go to Tools, AutoCorrect. Where it says "Replace x with y" type in -- and an m dash copied from somewhere. That should give you an m dash every time you type --.
It would nice if, for the posted messages, Goodreads would use a face that isn't missing a lot of its characters, or use a typewriter face such as Courier for everything. Some programmer, out of infinite experience, chose a stripped-down Georgia for the posted messages, in a nonstandard size (9.5 point), while the type in the comment box is Courier New (10 point).
why is it i before e but not after c. and possesives and plurals and singulars. When do you know when to use double ss or one s. just thinking out loud.
Mod
Yes, but I just question why some things are true to form and others are not. I guess no one nowadays can do a darn thing about it.
Robin, don't you know not to question why things are the way they are? You'll end up philosophical, and that's not good for anybody.
First of all, languages develop over a very long time period. They move around with the people who speak them and eventually somebody might start to write them down. Now the alphabet that was used to write down the English language was the Roman alphabet, a perfect alphabet for the Latin language, for which it was devised...not so perfect for English. English has 44 sounds,yet as you know the Roman alphabet has only 26 letters, so we must use combinations. You may wonder why each language doesn't have its own alphabet, but really that would make them much harder to learn if each one had a completely different alphabet. At least we have some idea when we go to learn anther European language. Actually, a long time ago, English had a special symbol for the 'th' sound in 'the'. It looked a bit like a letter 'y'. Have you ever seen someone try to copy this by writing 'Ye Olde Shoppe'? That 'ye' was pronounced 'the'...but modern people think it was a 'y' so they mispronounce it. Then take a look at the word night. What on earth is that 'gh' doing in there? Fact is, pronunciation has changed over time. When someone first wrote it down, there would have been a throaty sound in there, which has since disappeared. If we changed the spelling everytime pronunciation changed,we would lose the ability to read older books and communicate through the written word. It may not be a perfect system, but it does enable us to communicate with eachother from different parts of the world. Languages are about as complex as the humans who speak them. I have just given a couple of examples of that complexity. Rules may seem bothersome, but they actually assist communication, believe it or not. In fact widespread education in reading and writing has actually slowed down the rate of change. If you go back a few hundred years to the King James Bible, you can probably understand most of it, because English has changed fairly slowly. If you went back a few hundred years before that, you would find the language much harder to understand, almost like a foreign language.I hope this was helpful. Now I will sum up this little story in six words:
Rules are useful. Learn them happily.
Look what happened to the Anglo-Saxons. King Alfred established the first newspaper, The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, to promote literacy; Beowulf was the national epic, recited by schoolchildren everywhere; and the Danelaw had instituted the Viking Press, which had just released a translation in Old English of Boethius' Consolation of Philosophy. Then people got lazy and started slurring case endings, using weak verbs, and sticking in prepositions, and the next thing they knew, the Dark Ages were over and everybody was speaking Middle English. Publishers couldn't even remainder the formerly best-selling Caedmon's hymn or "The Dream of the Rood" because nobody could read King Alfred's English anymore. We certainly don't want that to happen to us!
bugger the rules let's make up our own. And s for philosophical Phillip, never.
Mod
Robin wrote: "bugger the rules let's make up our own..."I gotta agree to an extent. Rules of spelling and grammar are agreed upon by a people to foster clarity and hopefully avert some miscommunication.
But words and grammar are the tools that writers use to express ideas and sometimes the right word doesn't exist, particularly for a new or novel idea.
In that case we call on another human trait, that of being nature's consummate toolmaker, to coin a word or phrase that does the job.
And as to being able in the future to understand what is written... even history ain't what it used to be.
No no anarchy, but remember the comic last name Carter, used to mangle the English language. I guess it falls into conventions, I know that we all have to follow the i before e except after c, and verbs and nouns, I am just talking about everyday conversation. Does that make sense?
No one knows her alphabet like Jan,strange tales of how each character began,
how some medieval rogue
spelled through with thorn and yogh,
how e dropped out of wo-ful and wo-man.
M wrote: "No one knows her alphabet like Jan,strange tales of how each character began,
how some medieval rogue
spelled through with thorn and yogh,
how e dropped out of wo-ful and wo-man."
I've never had a poem
Written just for me
So thankyou for it, M
It's appreciated,see?
Hello, Can someone help me clear something up? If a last name ends in "s" (such as Williams or Phillips or Jones) isn't the correct plural form the addition of "es"? Isn't this the rule for ALL last names that ends in "s"? Such as Williamses or Phillipses or Joneses? I know the apostrophe shows possession, so should not be used...correct? Thanks!! :)
Plural for names ending in 's'The AP and Chicago stylebooks are in agreement here; to form plurals of common nouns as well as proper names ending in "ch," "s," "sh," "ss," "x" and "z," add "es". Examples:
"the Martinezes" and "the Williamses".
Plural possessive for names ending in 's'
The AP and Chicago manuals agree that the plural possessive of proper nouns ending in "s" is formed by adding only an apostrophe to the plural form. The Chicago manual shows these examples:
"The Rosses' and the Williamses' lands" and "the Joneses' reputation".
I haven't found a rule yet. I took a quick look through the University of Chicago Press's Manual of Style (1927), Hacker's The Bedford Handbook for Writers, Roberts' Understanding Grammar, Warriner's English Grammar and Composition, and even James Kilpatrick's curmudgeonly The Writer's Art, but none of these seemed to think it worth mentioning. The only instances I've seen of it in standard usage add an -es.As you would add -s for the plural of a name such as Davidson, it only makes sense to add an -es to a name such as Jones, which isn't a collective noun. If one is a Jones, two of them must be Joneses. Two of them can't be the same Jones. ("I'm Jones." "No, you're not. I am!")
The apostrophe is merely an ellipsis, sometimes marking where part a declensional ending used to be (as in possessives); where part of a number has been left out (summer of '78); or when numbers, letters, words are mentioned as things in and of themselves (figure 8's, J's, maybe's).
I hope that helps!
Oh, I see that G N has found it in his/her stylebook. I really need to get a newer Manual of Style.
M, dear M,since you're about
please help me out,
i'm tied up in knots
what's right, what's not?
“There's a storm coming, Mum!” Aimon Alexander hefted his scuba gear over the side of his mother's jet boat and turned to face her, striding down the front steps of their cottage with her laptop and satellite phone.
OR
“There's a storm coming, Mum!” Aimon Alexander hefted his scuba gear over the side of his mother's jet boat and turned to face her, as she strode down the front steps of their cottage with her laptop and satellite phone.
When I read Dolphins and Sharks (I hope you don't mind), I tripped over that very sentence you're bringing up. I think the second version you've given above is better, but my impression is that you have two images that need to be disentangled: that of Aimon turning to face his mother and that of his mother striding down the steps. I'd probably separate and clarify the images by using a relative pronoun to subordinate the last clause:“There's a storm coming, Mum!” Aimon Alexander hefted his scuba gear over the side of the jet boat and turned to face his mother, who strode down the front steps of their cottage with her laptop and satellite phone.
I thoroughly enjoyed the chapter you posted! I think you write very well.
HUH! Flattery will get you anywhere!Thank you. You, my mother, and another reviewer have pointed this out, but the timing is bugging me in the simple past tense, so I'm thinking of this:
“There's a storm coming, Mum!” Aimon Alexander hefted his scuba gear over the side of the jet boat and turned to face his mother, who was striding down the front steps of their cottage with her laptop and satellite phone.
Which makes me want to go back to the former....for me the last clause is automatically subordinated by the presence of 'his mother'. But not in the mind of the reader...who must rule supreme.
Thank you also for the very nice comments.
For what it is worth I like striding better it seems more comfortable for a reader. I am speaking from a reader's view not a grammarian view.
Now, Kitty, don't go confusing me with those grammarians! I'm doing good to know the difference between an absolute construction and a bottle of vodka.
No no I admire people who know their way around words . I am not capable so I don't usually comment. I think you can compete with the best of them M ,considering your background.
Mod
Ruth wrote: "The striding version leads us away from the story and into a debate with ourselves as to who is doing the striding. It's the kind of bump that writers would do well to avoid."this is exactly the tussle of which one is afraid.
M wrote: "but my impression is that you have two images that need to be disentangled: that of Aimon turning to face his mother and that of his mother striding down the steps. "
Egad. I just realised the problem. The images are meant to be combined ie Aimon turns to face his mother while she is striding down the steps. That's what you are meant to see in your mind.
Ruth, in the original, striding down the front steps of their cottage with her laptop and satellite phone is a dangling participial phrase. We know what it modifies because of the context, but it's confusing because it doesn't work grammatically. I think you're exactly right.
G N, doesn't it seem to you that those images combine in the reader's mind automatically? Here's another way you could write it and keep the same images: “There's a storm coming, Mum!” As Aimon Alexander hefted his scuba gear over the side of the jet boat, he turned his face to his mother, who was striding down the front steps of their cottage with her laptop and satellite phone.
I think of striding as taking long, measured steps. Can you stride down stairs?
How about an Absolut reconstruction... pardon the vodka pun. “There's a storm coming, Mum!” Aimon Alexander hefted his scuba gear over the side of the trailered jet boat and turned to face his mother as she hurried down the front steps of their cottage with her laptop and satellite phone.
1) Somehow the image of striding is more a flat ground kinda thing in my mind.
2) the trailered adjective puts them firmly on dry land. My initial mental picture had the son in the boat looking back at his mom on shore.
3) Finally, if there's any way possible, use "bommie" in a context that explains what it is. It's not a common word. I'm still a bit unclear as to what it means.
Overall it's a great first chapter. You definately introduce the main players and give us a hint at their personalities while still carrying forward the story line. That's not a bad day's work for an opening chapter.
Stephen wrote: "How about an Absolut reconstruction... pardon the vodka pun."1) see below - response to the Mighty M.
2) next sentence in the paragraph - not shown.
3) bommie is australian slang for the indigenous people's word bomara which is a tower of coral.
Thanks for the comments - I'll work on bommie.
M wrote: "G N, doesn't it seem to you that those images combine in the reader's mind automatically?
There's a storm coming, Mum!” As Aimon Alexander hefted his scuba gear over the side of the jet boat, he turned his face to his mother, who was striding down the front steps of their cottage with her laptop and satellite phone."
There are 4 steps, low and perhaps a little wider than usual, and Alassa takes the steps two at a time. That's the picture I have. So I went with striding. I don't like 'she came down', and she wasn't walking, because that would have been stepping, and she can't step, because that's repetition of the noun and stairs are wooden, not brick and concrete.
Yes the images combine - it's getting the language to show that without the hiccough of the simple past tense. I like your rewrite and I'm going to think it over. Thank you.
Kitty, I'm not a linguist, but I think the first version appeals to you because it relies purely on context and cuts out those extra words. Your eye skips to the important words, so less words means absorbing the picture faster...well, that's my theory, anyway.
Okay, Stephen, here's the Absolut vodka version (with an absolute construction to kick it off):The scuba gear having been hefted over the side of the jet boat, Aimon Alexander shouted, “There's a storm coming, Mum!” He turned to face his mother, who was striding (and probably falling) down the front steps of their cottage with her laptop and satellite phone. "No more of that vodka for me," she thought to herself.
G N wrote: "M wrote: "G N, doesn't it seem to you that those images combine in the reader's mind automatically?There's a storm coming, Mum!” As Aimon Alexander hefted his scuba gear over the side of the jet ..."
Absolutely I am a speed reader. I tend to skip words. I have to force myself to really slow down.
M wrote: "Okay, Stephen, here's the Absolut vodka version:The scuba gear having been hefted over the side of the jet boat, Aimon Alexander shouted, “There's a storm coming, Mum!” He turned to face his mo..."
:D :D :D :D
ok - i'll just write the stuff and you guys douse it in alcohol!
:D :D :D :D
(goes off in a paroxysm)
Now you know why I never made it as an English teacher. I'm a poor reader. I read very slowly, every word.
G N as the author you're the final arbiter of taste. That's one of the upsides of doing the work. To me The scuba gear having been hefted over the side of the jet boat feels a bit clunky for the hurried but business-like feel that the rest of the writing has.
As to trailered I did read the full chapter so I'm aware that it's cleared up that they're land based in the beginning. However I just wanted you to be aware that this reader started a mental picture of dockside loading when he started reading. It was briefly jolted when I had to re-imagine them on dry land. This is BY NO MEANS a problem but it is one of those perpective things that's often hard for an author to pick up on his own. After all, YOU know where the characters are.
Don't sweat the small stuff now. Keep writing! And if you get the time check out my Deloit Stories I'd love any feedback I can get.
Stephen wrote: "G N as the author you're the final arbiter of taste. That's one of the upsides of doing the work.After all, YOU know where the characters are.
"
Hey, hey...I wish I did know where the characters were! They tell me, I write. Just the slave around here.
Thanks for the tip re perspective, and I'll check out your Deloit Stories :).
Stephen, you ordered an absolute constuction. I couldn't very well have Aimon stand in as the subject. The wonder and curse of such constructions is that they're grammatically unrelated to the rest of the sentence.
Mod
There are 4 steps, low and perhaps a little wider than usual, and Alassa takes the steps two at a time. That's the picture I have. So I went with striding
That may be the picture you have, but you've written nothing to ensure that that is the picture the reader has. This reader saw a long, steep flight of concrete steps. Why not just say she took the four steps two at a time?
I must say, however, that I have never taken steps two at a time when going down. I can't even imagine it with out the subsequent scene of the step-taker falling ignominiously on her nose.
I saw a flight of wooden steps that would be easy to take a spill on, but I don't unsually think of scuba divers as people likely to fall down stairs.We know the boat's on a trailer because she has to drive it to a ramp. For some reason (probably because of her occupation) I initially assumed that Alassa lives on the water and keeps her boat moored there at a pier, so I went through a brief spell of readjustment when they got on the road.
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