Editor's Corner

In my last post, I discussed vowelless words ("disemvoweled words"?). This week, let’s look at the other end of the spectrum: words without consonants.

Because (almost) all English words have at least one vowel, you might assume that there are many words with nothing but vowels. But the list is surprisingly short.

The one-letter words a and I are popular (the sixth and tenth most common English words, respectively), and there are a handful of all-vowel words that include the letter Y (like aye and eye).

What about words longer than one letter with just the vowels A, E, I, O, and U? Merriam-Webster’s Unabridged Dictionary includes just nine:

• aa: rough scoriaceous lava
• ae: (chiefly Scottish) one
• ai: a three-toed sloth of the genus Bradypus of South America
• ea: (dialectical, England) river, stream
• eau: a watery solution (as of perfume)
• ee: (Scottish) eye
• io: a shout of joy or triumph; a large hawk (Buteo solitaries) that is the only indigenous raptorial bird of Hawaii
• oe: a violent whirlwind off the Faroe islands
• oo: a Hawaiian honeyeater of the genus Moho

Some sources, including the Guinness Book of World Records, include the word euouae, which describes a cadence in medieval music. Euouae comes from the Latin phrase seculorum Amen. Does a Latin mnemonic count as an English word? It’s playable in Scrabble®, and that’s good enough for me.

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 Friday and it’s National Grammar Day. What more could you ask for? (I know…a pony or a puppy!)

For fun, Jackie found this quiz for you from https://www.grammarly.com/plagiarism-checker. Just click this link and press Let’s Play to start your quiz!

For articles, grammar fun, and t-shirts, check out Grammar Girl’s website here.

Happy National Grammar Day!

(And here is your puppy!)

Kara Church

Technical Editor, Advisory

Symitar Documentation Services

Dear Editrix,

I’d like to know about a phrase I hear used fairly often, but I wonder if it is really proper English. The phrase is these ones. For example, “I gave John a choice of socks and told him he could wear these ones or those ones his brother likes.”

Please let me know more about these phrases,

Baffled Bill

Dear Baffled,

Your ear is not fooling you: these ones is not proper, grammatical construction. I found several articles online about this topic, but I think Grammar Girl’s answer and examples were the most concise. I hope this helps!

The word "ones" can be plural, as in "I like the red ones." You could even say "I like these red ones." Imagine that "ones" is standing in for the word "roses" or “apples." But "I like these ones" is redundant and incorrect. "These" is already standing in for the noun. You should say simply "I like these" instead.

The situation is the same with "those":

§ He likes those ones. (redundant)

§ He likes those. (better)

The phrases "this one" and "that one" don’t seem to bother linguists, but it doesn’t hurt to take a second look when you use the phrases to make sure that you aren’t being unnecessarily wordy.

Kara Church

Technical Editor, Advisory

619-542-6773 | Ext: 766773

Symitar Documentation Services

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Unfortunately, the Chicago Manual of Style didn’t give us much snarky Q&A to choose from this month. Here are the two fairly tame questions and answers I have for you about subject/verb agreement for today.

Q. I am unsure of how to handle subject-verb agreement in sentences that involve em dashes or parentheses. For example, “The president (and, to some extent, Congress) is committed to the policy” or “The president—and, to some extent, Congress—is committed to the policy.” Is it correct to treat the subject in each of these sentences as singular or plural?

A. Singular. Choose a verb as though the parenthetical “afterthought” weren’t there. (This is true if the afterthought is set off by commas as well.)

Q. When providing options between two or more singular items and one or more plural items, should a writer use a plural verb or a singular verb? For example: “When Mom or Dad or both [say/says] no, you’d better stop asking.”

A. Grab the nearest noun or pronoun in the series and use it to determine the verb:

· When Mom or Dad or both say no, you’d better stop asking.

· When your parents or the babysitter says no, you’d better stop asking.

Kara Church

Technical Editor, Advisory

Symitar Documentation Services

Today my gift for you is an article from our vacationing Donna. Enjoy!

******************************

Good morning!

Today’s topic is the unnecessary future tense. No, I’m not referring to an episode of Star Trek or The X-Files. Sorry. I’m talking about grammar—again. I gathered much of today’s information from The Global English Style Guide by John R. Kohl (pp. 39-40).

The future tense includes the auxiliary verb will (as in I will enjoy my vacation!). You should use the future tense when you’re talking about something that happens only in the future as in this example:

· You cannot predict which record will be deleted because the internal sort might place either record first.

The problem is that many writers use the future tense when they’re not necessarily talking about something that happens only in the future, as this example shows:

· When you develop your application, test different values to determine which values will result in the best performance.

You can rewrite the previous example in present tense (removing the auxiliary verb will), and it still works:

· When you develop your application, test different values to determine which values result in the best performance.

To avoid using future tense unnecessarily, just ask yourself if the word will is necessary in your sentence. If it’s not necessary, remove it!

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Today you get a timely article about leap years, from Copyediting.com. Are any of you lucky enough to have a birthday only once every four years? If so, happy birthday youngsters!

Leap years have been part of the calendar for over two millennia, which means they (leap years and calendars both) predate English itself. So it should come as no surprise that a leap year has another name besides leap year.

The term bissextile is a hanger-on from ancient times to describe all things that have to do with that extra day added every four years. And, etymologically, the word bissextile is more clearly descriptive of what it is — at least, it would be if you were brought up in Rome 2,700 years ago.

Before the reign of Julius Caesar, Rome used a very flawed lunar calendar. In that old Roman system, the months were divided into day markers called calends (the first of the month, coinciding with the new moon), nones (the fifth or seventh day), and ides (the middle of the month). Individual days were referred to by how many days they fell before the calends, nones, and ides.

The Julian calendar, mandated by and named after Julius Caesar, was the first 365-day solar calendar. But Caesar and his astronomers recognized that a solar year wasn’t exactly 365 days long, and so every few years (and they had some calculation problems here), they added an extra day at the end of the year. This was still a time when the names of the months still made sense — the year began in March; December was, as the name implies, the tenth month; and the last two months of the year were January and February.

So under the Julian calendar, the leap day was added to the end of February. According to the old Roman system, that extra day was inserted after the sixth day before the calends of March, essentially making it the second sixth day, or bissextus, from bis-, twice or double, plus sextus, sixth.

Though both the old Roman lunar calendar and the Julian calendar have by and large been left behind, the words bissextus or bissext, the leap day, and their adjective form bissextile are still around, though not in common usage.

So, this Monday, February 29, wish your friends a Happy Bissextus!

Kara Church

Technical Editor, Advisory

619-542-6773 | Ext: 766773

Symitar Documentation Services

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When I was in kindergarten, my teacher made a wager. She would give one hundred dollars to any student who could name a word with no vowels.

Many students tried, but none succeeded. Most of the suggested words contained vowels. My contribution, the onomatopoeia grr, was rejected as "not a real word."

Grr is an interjection (an exclamation expressing an emotion). Merriam-Webster’s Unabridged Dictionary does not have an entry for grr, but it does include three other vowelless interjections:

• hm/hmm/hmmm: used to express the action or process of thinking
• sh: used to urge or command silence or less noise
• tsk: used to express disapproval

The Oxford Dictionaries website includes grr ("used to express anger or annoyance"), and also the following interjections:

• brrr: used to express someone’s reaction to feeling cold
• mm/mmm: used to express contentment or pleasure
• pfft: used to represent a dull abrupt sound as of a slight impact or explosion
• psst: used to attract someone’s attention surreptitiously
• tch: used to express irritation, annoyance or impatience

Even if we accept my teacher’s stipulation that interjections are not real words, a student could have claimed the hundred dollars with the adjective nth (as in, "to the nth degree"):

• nth: numbered with an unspecified or indefinitely large ordinal number; extreme, utmost

The Oxford Dictionaries website also includes xlnt as an alternate spelling of excellent, to which I say pfft, grr, and tsk tsk. Even in kindergarten, I had some standards.

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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The other day, I told you I would find out why the words will not are combined into the crazy contraction won’t instead of win’t or willn’t. This is a nice article from Mental Floss, promising to answer our questions.

Most contractions in English are pretty straightforward: they are, they’re; he would, he’d; is not, isn’t; we will, we’ll. The two words join together, minus a few sounds. Put it together, and shorten it up. What could be easier? But that isn’t the case for "will not" which becomes "won’t" instead of "willn’t." Why does the "will" change to "wo"?

It doesn’t really. Which is to say, we don’t change it, our linguistic ancestors did. We just inherited it from them as a unit. But there was a reason for the "wo" in the beginning. In Old English there were two forms of the verb willan (to wish or will)—wil- in the present and wold- in the past. Over the next few centuries there was a good deal of bouncing back and forth between those vowels (and others) in all forms of the word. At different times and places "will" came out as wulle, wole, wool, welle, wel, wile, wyll, and even ull, and ool.

There was less variation in the contracted form. From at least the 16th century, the preferred form was wonnot from "woll not," with occasional departures later to winnot, wunnot, or the expected willn’t. In the ever changing landscape that is English, "will" won the battle of the "woles/wulles/ools," but for the negative contraction, "wonnot" simply won out, and contracted further to the "won’t" we use today. When you think about what it takes to actually pronounce the word "willn’t," this isn’t so surprising at all.

Kara Church

Technical Editor, Advisory

619-542-6773 | Ext: 766773

Symitar Documentation Services

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The other day, my husband and I were driving home from the vet with Buster, and my husband asked me, “Is Buster going to stand during the whole ride, as he is wont to do?” Before I could answer, Ray then asked, “And what about the word wont? What’s that all about?” I quickly found the etymology on my phone and read it to him, but I also thought I’d do a quick article about it since it’s likely to get mixed up with one of our odder contractions, won’t.

Wont is pronounced like want and it means “in the habit of doing something” or “accustomed.” Indeed, Buster is wont to stand in the back of the car with his nose poking out of the window and his eyes searching the world to keep us safe from squirrels.

Won’t is a contraction for will not. Why isn’t the contraction win’t? I have no idea…but I’ll find out and tell you next time!

Buster naps after a day at the park.

Kara Church

Technical Editor, Advisory

Symitar Documentation Services

This past weekend, my husband and I went to two beach outings. We visited the sunken ship on Coronado, and we attended a doggy birthday beach party. Richard Lederer, our local English expert, wrote this article in honor of the Westminster Kennel Club Dog Show, and I thought now would be the perfect time to talk more about dogs in our language. Enjoy!

Note: Newspapers use a different style guide than we do, so some of this punctuation (or lack thereof) seems a bit off.

This is a good time, then, to talk about how the canine expressions trot, scamper and bark through our English language.

We call a tenacious person a bulldog, a showoff a hot dog, a fortunate person a lucky dog, a man with an active social life a gay dog who puts on the dog and a rapscallion a cur or dirty dog. A dominant person is a top dog who can run with the big dogs, while his counterpart is an underdog. Some of us lead a dog’s life going to the dogs in the doghouse. Others are young pups in puppy love.

As long ago as AD 1150, the learned St. Bernard of Clairvaux said, "Qui me amat, amat et canem meam." That translates to Love me, love my dog, an expression of the astonishing interspecies bond between dogs and human beings. In Geoffrey Chaucer’s 14th century tale of "Troilus and Creseyde," the poet writes, "It is nought good a sleping hound to wake," which comes down to us as Let sleeping dogs lie. These are dog-eared phrases, so-called because a page in a well-worn book can get folded over like the ear of a dog.

Another phrase derived from literature is in the doghouse, which means "to be out of favor." This phrase was born in James Barrie’s 1904 play "Peter Pan." Mr. Darling, the father of the three children, is punished for his shabby treatment of Nana, the Newfoundland dog who is also the children’s nurse. And where does he spend his exile? In Nana’s doghouse, of course.

There abound a number of explanations for it’s raining cats and dogs, including the fact that felines and canines were closely associated with the rain and wind in Norse mythology. In Odin days, dogs were often pictured as the attendants of Odin, the storm god, and cats were believed to cause storms. Another theory posits that during heavy rains in 17th-century England, some city streets became raging rivers of filth carrying many drowned cats and dogs. But the truth appears to be more mundane. Cats and dogs make a lot of noise when they fight (hence, fighting like cats and dogs), so they have become a metaphor for a noisy rain or thunderstorm. Sometimes dogs fight with other dogs over a single bone, a dust-up that gives us the phrase bone of contention.

A three-dog night is not only a popular music group of the 1970s, but a night so cold that one must sleep with three dogs in order to generate enough body heat to be comfortable.

In the early 19th century in American English, barker came to signify the person who stands outside a carnival or circus to shout (bark) out its attractions to passersby. From the same period arose the expression barking up the wrong tree because hunting dogs can mistakenly crowd around the base of a tree thinking they have treed a raccoon that has actually taken a different route. The phrase is still used to mean wasting one’s energy by pursuing the wrong path.

Another classic Americanism is hot dog. In the 19th century United States, some folks suspected that sausages were made from dog meat. When hot sausages in a bun became popular, it was but a short leap to the term hot dog. Cartoonist Tad Dorgan featured the hot dog in some of his sports cartoons, helping to popularize the new name. That the sausage looks a little like the body of a dachshund also helped hot dog to cleave to the American palate.

That’s all I have for you today. To read the article in its entirety, click here: Richard Lederer and the San Diego U-T.

Happy Bella

Kara Church

Technical Editor, Advisory

Symitar Documentation Services