mike's web log

Coming Xmas End of year ... uh ... soon

Wed, 21 Jul 2010 16:23:38 GMT

Here's a picture (this one's from Facebook) of the early ad campaign for the forthcoming Windows Phone 7:

So, when will this be available? Well, ok, so it's not Christmas 2010. This one's easy -- Christmas seems to have become something of a charged term. Let's, uh, not use that one.

What about Holidays 2010? Dunno, seems ok to me. Is it perhaps not specific enough? Maybe Holiday Season 2010? Maybe that's too long?

So the solution is ... Holiday 2010? Which holiday? Are they maybe leaving themselves lots of room to release during some holiday in 2010? Halloween-Thanksgiving-Christmas-whatever?

The thing is, that's distracting me so much that I haven't actually read the ad copy.

Do Germans even speak German any more?

Sun, 23 May 2010 10:44:16 GMT

English has, of course, always been exceptionally hospitable to terms of foreign origin[1], notwithstanding the mutterings of the Cranky Contingent who are suspicious of any lexical innovation (not to mention anything foreign withal). As for the reverse -- other languages adopting our terms -- I tend to think about the French, who actively legislate against the incursion of English terms ("Franglais") into their otherwise pure (haha) tongue. Or even about the British, many of whom get theyselves all exercised about encroachments from American English (example, example, example).

So I always find it a bit surprising to see evidence that German seems to be so hospitable to English. This is so well known that it has a name (Denglish = Deutsch + English). Where it surprises me the most is when an English word pops up in a context in which, to the best of my (imperfect) understanding, a suitable German word exists.

This weekend I had cause to get some "thermal paste," which is goo that you smear between your computer's CPU chip and the big ol' heat sink (thing with fins) that sits on top of the chip. The packaging for this goo came in, like, five languages. The English section said this:

Heat is the enemy.
Here's your silver bullet.

Which alluded to the product's name, "Formula 5 Silver Thermal Compound."

In German, this was rendered as:

Das Problem: Hitze.
Die Lösung: Cool bleiben.

[more]

The third time it's enemy action

Sun, 18 Apr 2010 22:35:54 GMT

In the movie Goldfinger, the eponymous villian encounters James Bond multiple times, and upon their third encounter, makes this observation to our hero: "Mr Bond, they have a saying in Chicago: 'Once is happenstance. Twice is coincidence. The third time it's enemy action.'"

I know better than to spot three occurences of an editorial issue and declare enemy action (generally expressed as "the language, it's going to hell"). But I do find these odd. Draw your own conclusions.

Cars starting at $8999 or less. (Sign at car dealer in Renton WA)
Maximum capacity: up to 250 lbs. (Costco catalog)
An extensive On Demand library, now approaching more than 20,000 choices. (xfinity brochure[1])

[1] This appears to have been fixed in the online version.

Happy Annual Celebration of Syntax and Usage!

Thu, 04 Mar 2010 11:36:40 GMT

If you're wondering about the fireworks and the parade and about why your editor has brought a selection of festive and tasty treats to the office today[1], it's because it's National Grammar Day. (National Grammar Day!! What's next, National Punctuation Day?!? Yes.) National Grammar Day commemorates a famous battle in which the forces who were determined to stamp out "hopefully" as a sentence modifier were defeated by a valiant and plucky band of descriptive linguists and progressive editors.

Haha, not really.

In general, I cringe at anything that purports to "raise people's awareness" of grammar, because that generally devolves into the self-annointed experts whinging at length about how people's sloppy ways are ruining English. (Yawn.) Thus I was pleased to read two very good posts about NGD which seem, imo, to emphasize the good side of raising one's grammar awareness. The first post is by John McIntyre (who else), who notes that ...

One way to make [National Gramamr Day] substantial — no, not by acting as an officious prig and peever — is to practice the craft to produce more effective writing.

A laudable call to arms. Which he follows up with suggestions like getting yourself some decent writing advice, and of course, hiring an editor.

Then there is a post by Gabe Doyle that says everything I ever wanted to say about what it really [more]

"But we invented English!"

Sun, 27 Dec 2009 07:48:32 GMT

Now and again, an Englishperson will utter what they imagine to be the ultimate argument for why their particular brand of English is the One True Language: "But we invented English!"

This is, needless to say, a specious argument. Except apparently it is needful to say, because I keep running across this argument. (#, #, #, #, #, #, ...) Herewith, therefore, a short guide to just why the argument "But we invented English" is nonsense.

1. No one invented English. What, you did? You and your sisters, and your cousins, and your aunts? Not quite. English has been in development, via many fascinating historical and linguistic turns, since before the Saxons and Danes established themselves in the British Isles in pre-Medieval times. Since that time, this once purely Germanic language has taken on a heavy dose of Old French, a healthy helping of Latin and Greek, and some tang from practically every other language it's ever come into contact with. This was not exactly a guided enterprise.

[more]

Softening the blow

Fri, 09 Oct 2009 09:05:44 GMT
Raymond Chen has an amusing post about a sociolinguistic issue, namely the addition of a softener on a statement that conveys negative news. He observes (presumably while on vacation) that the Hawaiian word mahalo shows up on the end of signs like these:
We do not accept coupons at this location. Mahalo.
No refills. Mahalo.
This counter is closed. Mahalo.
As he suggests, mahalo might officially mean "thank you," but ...

Of course, we see this a lot:

Restrooms for customers only. Thank you.

Or, as I amuse myself to imagine:

Restrooms for customers only. Thank's!

And in these cases one might need to pause for a moment to sort out exactly what we're being thanked for.

There are variants on this technique. One of the commenters on the thread observes a particularly bureaucratic version of this:
In order to serve you better, we do not accept coupons at this location.
In order to serve you better, no refills.
And another commenter has a great one that is vaguely antiquated-souding, but oh, my:[1]

She is such a hussy, bless her heart.

You can prepend a softener as well:

IMHO, this entire discussion is lame.

What other variations are there?

[1] I imagine this as a Southernism. Any thots?

The which that restricts (The that which restricts)

Thu, 17 Sep 2009 09:38:43 GMT
It is a non-truth all too often acknowledged, that a clause in possession of a restrictive relationship must be in want of a that. Any conservative-leaning guide to grammar will insist that you introduce "restrictive" clauses with that, and "non-restrictive" ones with which. Our corporate style guide is no exception; here's our guidance on the matter:

Correct
You will need to supply information about applications that you want to run with Windows.

Incorrect
You will need to supply information about applications which you want to run with Windows.

Correct
Your package contains the subsidiary information card, which you can use to obtain device drivers or local technical support.

No professional linguist takes this seriously. There's no evidence from actual English usage, contemporary or historical, that which is not suitable for introducing restrictive clauses. (You can find recent talk about this on the Langauge Log here.)

Why am I blathering on this? Because I have yet again found something amusing on Facebook. This time it's a description of one of the innumerable games that you can play via Facebook. (As if FB just by itself were not already a yawning time suck.) This particular game appears to be a typing type of game, which is described thusly:
Typing maniac is a game which measures the typing skills and the ability to think fast that features multiple power ups!
There is editorial gold here, including a capitalization error (Typing Maniac). But more to the point, it's a rare instance where that and which [more]

Kinger. No, Kingite. No, Kingean.

Tue, 18 Aug 2009 11:13:56 GMT
In Facebook, one of my Friends noted that as a resident of Snohomish County[1] here in Western Washington, she's now a Snohomian. This is one county up from where Seattle is, which is King County. Which in turn led to the question, what do you call a resident of King County?[2]

English has a variety of ways to form a word that means "resident of," which the infallible Wikipedia lists as a demonym:

-ite: Seattleite, Manhattanite
-er: New Yorker, Dubliners
-an: Baltemorean, San Franciscan, Glaswegian
other: (Los) Angeleno (borrowed from Spanish, obviously)

I haven't investigated, but I suspect that any systematic set of rules for how to create a demonym is going to be complex at best and full of exceptions. Yet there must be rules, because it is possible to get it wrong. We're not Seattlers, for example, we just aren't.

So, here's your challenge: what do you call a resident of King County? The problem is that none of the normal rules result in a particularly satisfying name. What can we do about that?

[1] The -mish suffix is much used for placenames around here (Duwamish, Snohomish, Skykomish, Suquamish): "In the native Lushootseed language, the aboriginal inhabitants of the White River Valley were known as the Stkamish, the Smulkamish, and the Skopamish. (The common anglicization of the "amsh" suffix, which means "people of," resulted in many local tribes with the "mish" suffix, such as the Duwamish and Suquamish.)" [#]

[more]

Well, they've lost my business

Fri, 07 Aug 2009 08:44:56 GMT
The Ferrari web site lets you choose the language you want to shop for a car in:

All I can say is that if they're going to cop out and use only that effete British English, forget it -- I'll take my business elsewhere.

Hahaha.

Looking in the dictionary means you've failed

Tue, 04 Aug 2009 23:20:51 GMT
Being interested in dictionaries is a sort of sign of uber-word-nerd-ness -- what could be considered more word-nerdy than sitting around reading a dictionary? But for those who do, there is no end of amusement. Nancy Friedman has a cool post about dictionaries, which includes a note about some of her favorites. (The Cowboy Dictionary among them, what fun.) One of my favorites is Mrs. Byrne's Dictionary of Unusual, Obscure, and Preposterous Words, or of course the legendary New Hacker's Dictionary, aka the Jargon File. Anu Garg's A.Word.A.Day list, which mines the incredible richness of the English lexicon, has legions of fans.

On the more utilitarian side, we at work have a prescribed list of reference works. For our dictionary, we use the American Heritage Dictionary. Even knowning that the AHD was designed to counter the "permissiveness" of the infamous Webster's Third, I like the AHD a lot.

[more]

Loquerisne linguam latinam?

Sat, 16 May 2009 15:18:46 GMT
Quick, without looking it up, tell us what the following literally stand for:

i. e.
e. g.
etc.

... and then tell us what those words mean.

Ok, smart guy, maybe you know all these, but does everyone? (Like people who read anything you write?) I'm going to guess no.

Our style guide at work (MSTP) has a strong bias against Latin terms that are, you know, still in Latin. They recommend that we don't use Latin if there's a common English equivalent. MSTP: " ... even if you think they are generally known and understood."

Thus:

i.e. (id est) = that is
e.g. (exempli gratia, "for the sake of example") = for example
ergo = therefore
etc. (et cetera, "and the rest") = and so on[1]
via = through, by
de facto ("from the fact") = real, actual
exit ("he/she leaves") = leave, stop, quit, close Update: See comments.

... and, um, etc. So to speak.

Sticking with English has multiple benefits. One is that ESL readers don't have to rassle with weirdo academese when reading the docs.[2] A second one is that even a lot of English-language writers can't seem to keep i.e. and e.g. straight (why? Coz it's a frickin' foreign language), and not using those terms neatly bypasses that particular problem.

Of course, there are some, haha, bona fide[3 [more]

There's a word for it

Tue, 10 Mar 2009 12:59:26 GMT
In the world of editing, new terms are generally slow to be accepted. There are two reasons for this, namely that editors don't want to release a new term until they are reasonably assured that a) it's not just a fad term and b) most readers will understand it without difficulty. (Well, also because editors in general tend toward the conservative side when it comes to language issues.)

However, in what might be a record for shortest time to acceptance, a debate has begun about whether our corporate style guide should be amended to accept the term netbook. This is still subject to legal review, but it's at least gotten to that stage.[1]

This seems like a pragmatic discussion, because there isn't really a very good alternative term. "Subnotebook"? "Small notebook PC"? These are not bad terms (well, the sub- prefix in the first term is perhaps not precisely defined), but it seems that the current industry term is in fact netbook. Being too conservative in accepting a term like this for our publications can actually lead to confusion ...
Us: "Small notebook PC"
Them: You mean "netbook"?
Us: Yes.
Them: Then why didn't you just say so?
There was discussion at one point about the term podcast, which some people thought (probably correctly) was obviously based on the name iPod, and we therefore had a variety of reasons to avoid using. But again pragmatism made the decision for us -- what other term could you use for podcast, especially if your only reason for using the term is to avoid actually saying podcast?

As I say, it's not a definitive ruling yet, but as I also say, it's been an unusually fast process for proposing the formal acceptance of a new term. Guess we'll see how it all shakes out.

[1] [more]

Roundup

Wed, 18 Feb 2009 21:58:27 GMT
I'm actually supposed to be working on something. This is more fun.

Big Machines Dancing. (video) "Beauty can be found everywhere, even in a pit surrounded by hulking machines." [via Toolmonger via Friend Dennis]

How to Stop Picking Your Nose. Illustrated.

Diagramming the Obama Sentence. For those of y'all who don't follow all the language blogs.
[T]he elegant balance of the central construction shows that Obama has a good memory for where he's been, grammatically, and a strong sense of where he's going. His tripartite analysis of the problem is clearly reflected in the structure of the sentence, and thus in the three main branches of the diagram.

In diagram form:

[via mxrk]

YouTube Comment Fight! (video) "There's gonna be a rumble tonight!" I guess I'll ask again: is there any point in YouTube comments? [via ... don't remember. Prolly Twitter.]

Roundup

Fri, 06 Feb 2009 13:53:30 GMT
Kinda went to town on the pix and quotes today, oh well.

Pizza-Pro 3000^tm. No comment.

[v Friend Dennis]

And speaking of tools ...

The Ultimate Dogfooding Story. In the world of software, "dogfooding" refers to testing software by using it yourself. ("Eat your own dogfood.") Jeff links to a post by Erik that references a thingy named Sawstop, which is a safety device for table saws. Here's Erik:
Slide a piece of wood into the spinning blade, and it cuts the board just like it should. Slide a hot dog into the spinning blade, and it stops instantly, leaving the frankfurter with nothing more than a nick.
The interesting part of the story (read Erik's piece) is how this guy tested the device.

Fastidious spelling snobs pushed over the edge. People who get wigged out by spelling errors might be suffering additional stress, given current economic ills.[1] [via Fritinancy]

Lexicon. Facebook has a neat little app that "counts occurrences of words and phrases on Walls over time." (Must have a Facebook account to use, of course.) Here are a few of examples that I found interesting (click to see larger images):

Search term: "Obama" (note spike, which is in November):

[more]

Edgar Ate Dynamite, Good Bye Edgar

Wed, 28 Jan 2009 21:18:07 GMT
On its face, the idea of a mnemonic is sort of odd -- you can't remember one thing, but you'll remember another, and this will help you remember the first one. Huh? How does that work?

It works, of course, because we can remember words and stories a whole lot better than we can remember random -- or at least, comparatively meaningless -- sequences. So, the title of this entry is a time-tested way to remember the pitches of the strings on an (E-tuned) guitar:

[source]

Countless times while practicing I have recited to myself the story of poor Edgar and his unfortunate taste in snacks.

We all know many of these ... the notes on the lines of a musical staff (Every Good Boy Deserves Favor/Fudge/Fruit), and the space in between (F A C E), the latter being a just word rather than a story.

[source]

There are mnemonics for remembering the order of the planets (My Very Educated Mother Just Served Us Nine Pies, more), the order of colors in the rainbow (ROY G BIV, more), for which way to set the clock for Daylight Saving Time (Spring Forward, Fall Back[1 [more]

Roundup

Tue, 30 Dec 2008 14:31:11 GMT
If it's the end of the year, it must be time for end-of-the-year stuff.

The Seven Best Capers of 2008. A roundup (hey, wait ...) of criminal activity this year that showed unusual imagination. With the qualifier that the best capers of all are those that are never detected ...

Motorcycles Finally Go Green. "Motorcycles may deliver 70 mpg or more, but they can be 10 times more polluting per mile than passenger cars." And that's street bikes; traditional two-stroke engines -- still popular on dirt bikes for their power/weight ratios -- are incredibly dirty. (Advanced designs for two-stroke engines ameliorate this considerably.)

The Fargo campus responds to Redmond's December 2008 storm conditions. During our recent snow episode here in the Seattle area, the Microsoft campus was effectively shut down due to, you know, snow and cold. The folks at Microsoft's Fargo (North Dakota) campus were not impressed, and issued their own Real Estate and Facilities announcement.[1]

Saying it wrong on purpose. An article on wordplay via mispronouncinations (<-- haha). Much of the fun is contributed in the comments. (I particularly like refrigulation machine for the fridge.) [via wishydig]

[more]

A taste that was bad was left in their mouths

Wed, 10 Dec 2008 19:31:33 GMT
I was listening to NPR tonight, where they were interviewing Jim DeMint, the distinguished senator from South Carolina. They were on about some thing or other to do with car companies, but what really got my attention was how he said something, because the gentleman got himself into a bit of a linguistic pickle. At one point in the interview he came out with:
... left a bad taste in a, uh, a number of members of Congress, uh, mouth.
(This starts right about 3:15 in the interview.)

That is (haha) a mouthful. He hesitates before launching into that gnarly possessive, and dang, you can see why.

Dealing with compound nouns is kind of tricky. For the plural, you inflect the actual noun: members of Congress, fathers-in-law, attorneys general, to call the roll of the usual suspects. Yet the possessive inflection wanders to the end of the compound unit: my father-in-law's car or the attorney generals' conference.

This kinda doesn't make sense. As in, for plural its noun + qualifiers, but for possessive it's all a unit?

The vernacular is, for a change, more consistent: poll a bunch of folks who are not (e.g.) editors and see if you can get them to produce a plural for their in-laws; I guarantee that you'll hear about a great many father-in-laws. (Good luck trying to maneuver someone into spontaneously saying the plural of attorney general.)

The construct that Senator DeMint launched into is probably a no-win situation. If I get this right, a "correct" inflection for all of this would be:
... left a bad taste in a number of members of Congress's mouths.
[more]

The next next one

Mon, 24 Nov 2008 10:52:22 GMT
I had some interesting linguistic confusion today with a non-native speaker around the word next and days of the week. Let me explain in the form of a survey, maybe.
Today is Thursday, and someone says to you "Let's get together next weekend." You interpret them to mean:

The upcoming weekend, ie, 2 days hence.
The weekend after that, ie, 9 days hence.

Today is Sunday, and someone says to you "I'd like you to have this back to me next Tuesday." You interpret them to mean:

In 2 days, ie, this Tuesday.
In 9 days.
To me, the next-ness of next in these instances reaches over the closer day to the one that follows. I think (?) that this is because I expect the closer day to be referred to as this: Let's get together this weekend, please return that to me this Tuesday.

What are your thots?

Sic transit "transitive"

Wed, 19 Nov 2008 22:06:09 GMT
I was looking up a word (not this one) on Dictionary.com the other day that happened to be a verb. This might not be new, but it's the first time I noticed it:

Dictionary.com aggregates entries from multiple dictionaries, and further down the page is the entry from American Heritage, which looks slightly different:

People who spend their days wallowing around in grammar will refer to a verb "used without object" as intransitive (in dictionaries, generally v. intr. or even just vi), and to a verb "used with object" as transitive (v. tr. or vt)).[1]

Not surprisingly, I'm well used to the terms transitive and intransitive and I was (as noted) interested to see that their use had been dispensed with in this context. That isn't unreasonable; the terms are technical and therefore probably not something that casual dictionary users are apt to know.

But in a similar vein, how many such casual users know what an object is in reference to a verb? It's an interesting question that a lexicographer would have to put some thought into -- how much technical vocabulary can you get away with? For that matter, who exactly is your audience?

[1] FWIW, the definitions, at least as provided by Dictionary.com, are sort of circular: transitive [more]

Roundup

Mon, 03 Nov 2008 10:01:50 GMT
A short list today. Spending too much time away from the computer. Ha!

How to get someone to answer your questions. Clever strategy, heh. [via Raymond Chen]

How Math Unraveled the 'Hard Day's Night' Mystery. You know that opening chord for The Beatles' "Hard Day's Night"? Guy figured out how they made it. [via Daughter Sabrina]

Spelling Bee. The Visual Thesaurus people have put up a spelling-bee style spelling test that's strangely addictive. [via Fritinancy]

Roundup

Tue, 21 Oct 2008 10:07:31 GMT
Happy Birthday, Sarah!

The Things He Carried. "Suspicious that the measures put in place after the attacks of September 11 to prevent further such attacks are almost entirely for show -- security theater is the term of art -- I have for some time now been testing, in modest ways, their effectiveness." [via Jeff Atwood]

It's not a compliment. Join wishydig as he hunts for a suitable definition for twittad, a connotative trainwreck of a name that was (apparently) coined in seriousness.

Curiouser and curiouser. Dioramas on a different scale. [via Daughter Sabrina]

Spill

Six Apart CEO: Down Economy Boosts Blogging. Here's the logic: "[...] a bad economy will probably lead to an overall uptick in blogging, Alden says. 'When you don't know where else to invest," he explains, "you invest in yourself.' [...] When you get laid off or your company goes under, it's a good time to build your personal brand by blogging."

Roundup

Mon, 20 Oct 2008 18:20:09 GMT
Polls, polls, polls. What is this, Livejournal? One more for youse.

Choose wisely. "There is no question, but there are eleven possible answers." [toque salute: Fritinancy]

You Suck at Craigslist. Choice morsels carefully selected from among the ads posted by our ... less gifted writers, let's call them. [via Friend Kim]

Tastespotting. Per the contributor (Daughter Sabrina), "Just like notcouture, except food and not clothes!" Basically, food pr0n.

Men's Reactions Peak at Age 39. Took me a moment to get this. [via Jeff Atwood]

Roundup

Sun, 12 Oct 2008 23:47:36 GMT
It's the animals-and-quizzes roundup today.

Wearing The Hair Of The Dog. Subtitle: "Portraits Of People In Clothes Made From Their Pets' Fur." I like my dogs a lot, but even I find it slightly weird to make clothes from dog wool. However, I'm not sure why. [via Daughter Sabrina]

A Quick Guide to International Raccoon Appreciation Day. I regret that I missed this, which took place on October 1. The idea is actually to promote appreciation all supposed "nuisance animals," an effort that I approve of.

Can you guess where my accent is from? Think you have a good ear for accents? Give this a try. You'll do particularly well if you can distinguish, say, an Estonian accent from a Lithuanian one, based on 5 seconds' worth of speech. [via wishydig]

Country quiz. Can you identify a country based on its shape? I did somewhat better on this than I did on the accents thing. [Also via Daughter Sabrina]

Roundup

Fri, 03 Oct 2008 13:39:15 GMT
Editing Readme files today. By definition, a lot of weird technical stuff coming from all directions at the last minute. I love my job. :-)

Organizing Our Marvellous Neighbours: How to Feel Good About Canadian English. "This is a book that will give you confidence to write Canadian English well and correctly." [via Michael B]

YouTube Comment Snob. "YouTube Comment Snob is a Firefox extension that filters out undesirable comments from YouTube comment threads" based on criteria like ... more than # number of spelling mistakes, all caps, no caps, and excessive punctuation (!!!! ????). Even if this isn't for real (haven't tried it), the idea of it alone makes me happy. [via Language Log]

Sony Targets College Students With New E-Book Reader. "... includes new features like a touchscreen, note taking and highlighting with a stylus, and a front-lit screen." Alas, they're apparently targeting students who have generous student loans. Or generous parents. Dang, I so want this technology to become affordable.

How to judge a book by its cover. A video review by John McIntyre. "When a book poses a question on the jacket, ask yourself whether you really care about the answer."

Grammar? Who gives a sh*t?

Tue, 23 Sep 2008 14:18:54 GMT
The Wired blog had a post today about the new Google phone. These are the first two comments for that post:
This is a very informative article, and I do enjoy reading wired news, but you guys really need to work on your simple grammar. Do you have editors at all?
Posted by: Mike | Sep 23, 2008 10:00:49 AM

Mike. who cares. It's the friggin internet. You got the information. You understood it, right. Or was it too confusing? What is this 8th grade English class. Get over it. They aren't writing text books. Its a blog for crissakes!

People who comment on grammar through blog posts need to find something better to do with themselves.

I am an editor, and I approve this message. Thanks for all the good work Wired.
Posted by: c | Sep 23, 2008 10:19:33 AM
PS The Mike who posted the first comment is not me. :-)

mike's web log

Coming Xmas End of year ... uh ... soon

Do Germans even speak German any more?

The third time it's enemy action

Happy Annual Celebration of Syntax and Usage!

"But we invented English!"

Softening the blow

The which that restricts (The that which restricts)

Kinger. No, Kingite. No, Kingean.

Well, they've lost my business

Looking in the dictionary means you've failed

Loquerisne linguam latinam?

There's a word for it

Roundup

Roundup

Edgar Ate Dynamite, Good Bye Edgar

Roundup

A taste that was bad was left in their mouths

The next next one

Sic transit "transitive"

Roundup

Roundup

Roundup

Roundup

Roundup

Grammar? Who gives a sh*t?