Editor's Corner

Today’s idiom (or colloquialism or proverb) is “It ain’t over till the fat lady sings.” Rather than my own simple definition of this phrase, I thought I’d give you Wikipedia’s version, complete with a photo of an “ample” lady, post-song.

From Wikipedia:

It ain’t over till (or until) the fat lady sings is a colloquialism and has been classified as a proverb. It means that one should not presume to know the outcome of an event which is still in progress. More specifically, the phrase is used when a situation is (or appears to be) nearing its conclusion. It cautions against assuming that the current state of an event is irreversible and clearly determines how or when the event will end. The phrase is most commonly used in association with organized competitions, particularly sports.

The phrase is generally understood to be referencing the stereotypically overweight sopranos of the opera. The imagery of Richard Wagner’s opera cycle Der Ring des Nibelungen and its last part, Götterdämmerung, is typically the one used in depictions accompanying reference to the phrase. The "fat lady" is the Valkyrie Brünnhilde, who is traditionally presented as a very buxom lady with horned helmet, spear and round shield (although Amalie Materna played Brünnhilde during Wagner’s lifetime (1876) with a winged helmet). Her aria lasts almost twenty minutes and leads directly to the end of the whole Ring Cycle. As Götterdämmerung is about the end of the world (or at least the world of the Norse gods), in a very significant way "it is [all] over when the fat lady sings."

Amalie Materna as the Valkyrie Brünnhilde (1876)

Kara Church

Technical Editor, Advisory

Symitar Documentation Services

When I’m editing a document, one of the most common questions I get is, “On page 1, you changed the word type to enter. On page 2, you changed the word enter to type. Which is correct?”

It may seem like I’m flipping a coin (or adding some variety to spice up your writing), but the Symitar Style Guide actually has a rule about when to use type and when to use enter.

If you’re telling the reader exactly what to type, use the word type.

Example: In the City field, type San Diego.

If you’re describing what kind of information to enter, use the word enter.

Example: In the City field, enter the name of your city.

You’ve probably heard a joke similar to the following:

Speaker A: Say your name.

Speaker B: Your name.

This is (allegedly) funny when it happens in a movie, but it’s frustrating to come across such ambiguities in technical writing. Most people in this situation would say (for example) “John” or “Jane,” but there is room for misunderstanding.

We try to help readers in two ways. In addition to using different verbs, we use bold text to indicate that the reader should type something exactly as shown (like San Diego in the previous example).

Ben Ritter | Technical Editor | Symitar®
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JHA folks, if you are including file names and file name extensions in your writing, please use these guidelines from the JHA Style Guide for Technical Communication and Training.

Jackie Solano | Technical Editor | Symitar®

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Good morning! Before I get started on today’s idiomatic phrase, let’s have a quick look at the differences between idioms, colloquialisms, and proverbs. The definitions, according to Google, are:

· Idiom: a group of words established by usage as having a meaning not deducible from those of the individual words (e.g., rain cats and dogs, see the light).

· Colloquialism: a word or phrase that is not formal or literary, typically one used in ordinary or familiar conversation (e.g., wanna (want to), y’all (you all), look blue (look sad).

· Proverb: a short pithy saying in general use, stating a general truth or piece of advice (e.g., “Early to bed and early to rise, makes a man healthy, wealthy and wise”).

As you can see, there are some similarities and they might overlap now and then.

Today I have an idiom from our JHA collection that seems contradictory because of how it sounds and what it actually means. That is the idiom “break a leg” to mean “good luck,” usually when someone is about to go onstage.

From the Phrase Finder:

Theatrical types are well known for their belief in superstitions, or at least for their willingness to make a show of pretending to believe in them. The term “break a leg” appears to come from the belief that one ought not to utter the words “good luck” to an actor. By wishing someone bad luck, it is supposed that the opposite will occur. Other superstitions are that it is bad luck to whistle in a theatre, to say the final line of a play during dress rehearsal, or to say the name of “the Scottish Play” [KC – Macbeth, Macbeth, Macbeth!] in a theatre’s green room.

Kara Church

Technical Editor, Advisory

619-542-6773 | Ext: 766773

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A couple of weeks ago, someone mentioned a word that they had to look up after hearing it in one of their favorite shows. This word is hornswoggle. Hornswoggle is a word from the 1820s, and it means “to cheat someone.” The origin of this word is unknown, so I don’t have an etymology for you. However, I do have a bunch of different synonyms for the word (from Merriam-Webster).

Kara Church

Technical Editor, Advisory

619-542-6773 | Ext: 766773

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Earlier last month I received an interesting email from Tom H. about the words thee, thou, and ye, meaning you. Most of us remember learning these words from Shakespeare class, hearing biblical quotations, or perhaps our last experience at a Renaissance fair. But Tom wanted to point out that while thee and thou are pronouns for a single you, ye actually refers to the plural pronoun you, something like “y’all.”

This is very interesting. Today, when we learn other languages that still have a separate word for you (singular) and you (plural), we are told that English uses you for both cases. (Unless you are in a part of the U.S. that has not given up on y’ouns or y’all or all y’all.) Perhaps we should bring back ye?

For more information on thee, thou, and ye, here’s what Merriam-Webster has to say:

thou

archaic

: the one that is being addressed — used as a nominative pronoun of the second person singular especially in biblical, ecclesiastical, solemn, or poetic language

First Known Use: before 12th century

thee: THOU
archaic
: used especially in biblical, ecclesiastical, solemn, or poetical language, and to some extent in the speech of Friends especially among themselves, in contexts where the objective case form of an inflected pronoun is the one to be expected especially as indirect object of a verb

ye: YOU

: used from the earliest times to the late 13th century only as a plural pronoun of the second person in the nominative case including direct address and still surviving archaically and in many dialects in this use alongside of other more recently originated uses

Kara Church

Technical Editor, Advisory

619-542-6773 | Ext: 766773

Symitar Documentation Services

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Hello and a very happy Friday to you all.

Today I’d like to talk about something I found when my buddy Morris asked me about the word tarnation during the idiom contest. His phrase was “Where in tarnation have you been?” We were both wondering where or what exactly tarnation might be. Is it a nation of tar? Is it some place bad? Usually, it seems to be used with a little bit of frustration behind it.

I found a very interesting article from Appalachian History that I’d love to share with you and Morris. Enjoy!

“What in tarnation?” is one of a wide variety of euphemistic expressions of surprise, bewilderment or anger that arose in 18th and 19th century America. Perhaps due to our Puritan legacy, Americans were, during this period, especially creative in devising oaths that allowed us to express strong emotions while still skirting blasphemy.

Such inventions as “heck,” “drat,” “darn,” “gosh,” “jiminy,” “gee-whiz” and “goldarn” were all devised to disguise exclamations that would have been considered shocking in polite society. “Sam Hill,” for example, is simply an early 19th century euphemism for “hell” (and while there have been many people named Sam Hill throughout history, the expression does not come from the name of any particular Sam Hill).

“Tarnation,” which dates back to the late 18th century, is an interesting example of this generation of euphemisms because it’s actually two euphemisms rolled into one word. The root of “tarnation” is “darnation,” a euphemistic modification of the word “damnation,” which at that time was considered unfit for polite conversation. “Darnation” became “tarnation” by being associated in popular speech with “tarnal,” an aphetic, or clipped, form of “eternal.”

It may seem odd that “eternal” would ever have been considered a curse word, but to speak of “the Eternal” at that time was often to invoke a religious context (God, Heaven, etc.), and thus to label something or someone “eternal” in a disparaging sense (“You eternal villain!”) was considered a mild oath. Shakespeare, for example, used “eternal” in this way in at least two of his plays.

So at some point someone, probably in a moment of exasperation, mixed “darnation” with “tarnal,” and we ended up with “tarnation.”

Kara Church

Technical Editor, Advisory

619-542-6773 | Ext: 766773

Symitar Documentation Services

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On December 19, Merriam-Webster announced its 2016 word of the year. It was the third dictionary publisher to do so (after Oxford Dictionaries and Dictionary.com).

Like Dictionary.com (and unlike Oxford Dictionaries), Merriam-Webster honors an existing word, not a recent coinage.

In 2006 and 2007, Merriam-Webster tried letting website visitors vote for the word of the year. After voters chose a joke word (truthiness) and video game slang (w00t), Merriam-Webster reverted to using search volume as the main criterion.

Specifically, Merriam-Webster chooses an existing dictionary entry that had a significant increase in number of searches, compared to the previous year.

For 2016, Merriam-Webster honored the word surreal:

· surreal: marked by the intense irrational reality of a dream

Some of Merriam-Webster’s shortlisted words spiked in popularity after notable appearances in pop culture (revenant) or politics (bigly and deplorable). Surreal was unusual in that it had multiple spikes throughout the year.

“Beginning with the Brussels terror attacks in March, major spikes included the days following the coup attempt in Turkey and the terrorist attack in Nice, with the largest spike in lookups for surreal following the U.S. election in November,” according to Merriam-Webster. “Surreal is looked up spontaneously in moments of both tragedy and surprise, whether or not it is used in speeches or articles.”

Merriam-Webster noted, “Surreal was also used in its original sense, referring to incongruous or unrealistic artistic expression, in reviews for the movie The Lobster.”

You can read about the other finalists for word of the year at Merriam-Webster.com.

Ben Ritter | Technical Editor | Symitar®
8985 Balboa Avenue | San Diego, CA 92123
619-682-3391 | or ext. 763391 | www.Symitar.com

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It’s my birthday today, so as a present to you, I’m sharing some of my favorite items from the idiom contest. I’m not sharing the naughtier ones, but there are a few here that you may not appreciate if you are easily offended.

Kara Church

Technical Editor, Advisory

619-542-6773 | Ext: 766773

Symitar Documentation Services

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It’s not even my birthday yet and I got some new books! One is called Comma Sutra, which promises some interesting lessons on good grammar and includes quizzes. Now, since the title is a play on words with the Indian book of sex and love, I may have to change things up before I share them with you, but still it should be fun!

I also bought another book called What the F: What Swearing Reveals About Our Language, Our Brains, and Ourselves. Okay, that one might be completely unquotable. We’ll see.

And finally, I purchased You’re Saying It Wrong, by Ross and Kathryn Petras. Not only is it a pronunciation guide, but it provides historical tidbits on the words it reviews. So today, let’s have a look at an excerpt from this book.

Anyway

[EN-EE-way]
anyhow, nonetheless, supports or refers back to a previous statement or point

What is this simple word doing in a collection of shibboleth words? Yes, of course you know how to pronounce this. Good for you…since an alarming number of people seem to think there is an s at the end of it. “Anyways,” they say. “I was going to say it correctly anyways.”

But it’s anyway, singular, derived from the phrase “by any way” dating back to the 1300s. It’s possible the errant s added to anyways stemmed from the Middle English ani-gates (somehow, in any way), since any ways has appeared in texts from about 1560. But it doesn’t matter: no s, any and way. That’s it—pure and simple.

Kara Church

Technical Editor, Advisory

619-542-6773 | Ext: 766773

Symitar Documentation Services

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