Editor's Corner

Bonjour! On the third day of Christmas, my true love gave to me: three French hens. And at this point I started wondering, “What is it with this guy and birds?” In honor of French hens, today we are going to look at some French words we have adopted into English. Here are 10 of a list of 20 from DailyWritingTips.com:

1. cachet (“seal”): originally, a seal or mark of approval; now, also (and primarily) used in a figurative sense meaning “prestige”

2. détente (“relaxation”): an easing of political tensions; specifically, the thawing of the Cold War during the 1970s

3. élan (“rush, impetus”): high spirit or enthusiasm

4. fête (“feast, festival”): a celebration, or to celebrate

5. haute couture (“high fashion”): High-quality custom tailoring, referring either to specific garments or to the industry; sometimes called simply couture

6. malaise (“discomfort”): a feeling of poor mental or physical health, or a sense of cultural unease

7. panache (“small wing,” from Latin through Italian): flair or flamboyance

8. patois (“native or local speech”): a nonstandard dialect, especially the speech of uneducated or provincial speakers, or a jargon

9. raconteur (“one who recounts”): a storyteller, or anyone skilled at relating anecdotes

10. savant (“one who knows,” from savoir, “to know”): a learned person, especially a specialist; also a shortening of “idiot savant,” a clinical term for a mentally disabled person with anomalous skill or ability in one area of learning, or a casual term for someone whose knowledge is almost exclusively in one subject

Kara Church

Senior Technical Editor

619-542-6773 | Ext: 766773

www.symitar.com

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On the second day of Christmas, my true love gave to me: two turtle doves. If we were using the specific collective noun for a group of doves, I would say that my true love gave me a dole, flight, or piteousness of doves. Then I would probably run and cry because he gave me 1) a “piteousness” of something, and 2) that something was birds, which I’m not really fond of as pets.

As far as collective nouns go, a collective noun is the word used for a group of people or things that are being referred to as a whole, such as “an armada of ships.” I’ve selected some examples for you below, but this is just a taste. The first list is alphabetical by the collective noun; the second list is alphabetical by animal name and followed by the collective noun. Enjoy!

For the full lists of collective nouns from both lists below, visit the Enchanted Learning website.

A selection of collective noun phrases (A to Z):

· army of caterpillars, frogs, soldiers

· belt of asteroids

· caravan of camels

· clowder of cats

· den of snakes, thieves

· fleet of airplanes, ships

· flight of swallows

· gaggle of geese

· host of sparrows

· knot of toads

· leap of leopards

· mob of kangaroos

· nest of mice, snakes

· orchard of trees

· parliament of owls

· quiver of arrows

· range of mountains

· shrewdness of apes

· thicket of trees

· unit of soldiers

· yoke of oxen

A selection of collective nouns for animals (A to Z):

Kara Church

Senior Technical Editor

619-542-6773 | Ext: 766773

www.symitar.com

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On the first day of Christmas, my true love gave to me: a partridge in a pear tree.

Here in the United States, you might have to substitute a pheasant or a quail, since the medium-sized partridge is native to almost everywhere except here. According to Greek legend, the first partridge was created when Daedalus, a master crafter and inventor, jealously threw his nephew Perdix (in Greek Пέρδιξ, meaning “partridge”) off the top of a tower.

The story goes that Perdix went to live with uncle Daedalus to learn the mechanical arts. As often happens in the Greek myths, the student outshines the teacher and the teacher goes a bit bonkers. While Daedalus is busy making wax and feather wings for his son Icarus (which will eventually lead to Icarus’s death because he flies to close to the sun, thus melting the wax and wings), Perdix is walking on the beach and collecting fish spines and serpent’s jaws and inventing the saw. Perdix is also claimed to be the creator of the compass (the two-point type used to draw circles, measure distance, and poke other students with).

When Daedalus can no longer handle being outshone by his nephew, he tries to bump him off, by pushing him from a high tower. Of course, this is a Greek myth, so there must be a god or goddess nearby. Indeed there is, and this time it is Athena. Athena values ingenuity and saves Perdix by turning him into a partridge and punishes Daedalus by branding him with the image of a partridge. (I think Daedalus still got the better deal.)

The result of this undesired flight as far as Perdix (the partridge) goes, is that partridges are destined to keep a low profile. They build their nests in bushes (not trees), they eat seeds off of the ground, and they don’t take long flights. If you are going to give someone a partridge, be kind. Put it in a pear bush rather than a pear tree.

Kara

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Good morning! My apologies for the length of this email: it is really a Monday “2 for 1” special.

I’m going to give you a few more fun facts about the “12 Days of Christmas” song before we start the “Grammar and Language version,” but I’m also sending along this article from DailyWritingTips.

This article is for all of us—old school and new school. There are many of you out there that lament what texting and tweets are doing to our language; I am often right there with you. There are others out there that are excited about some of the new developments, additions, and changes to our language; I get it. And then there are some of you that are ready to change the world by getting rid of punctuation, leaving out phrases you find superfluous to discussion, and turning verbs into nouns and vice versa; I don’t understand anything you say. This article covers some of these changes and concerns and provides an important message as the bottom line: professionalism.

Ignorance or Sincerity? by Maeve Maddox

Posted: 08 Dec 2013 08:16 PM PST

Grammar consultants are in great demand these days by employers who fear that the inability of their employees to speak and write grammatically gives their businesses a black eye.

In addition to including English lessons in their employee training programs, some administrators go so far as to correct subordinates as they go about their work.

The senior vice president of a marketing and crisis-communications company in Florida interrupted an employee at a staff meeting to correct her failure to make subject and verb agree. She’d said, “There’s new people you should meet.” The v-p said he “cringes” every time he hears people use “is” when the subject calls for “are.”

The usage the Florida vice-president objected to was lack of subject/verb agreement in an expletive sentence. Although still an accepted target of revision in written English, this error is so common in spoken English that I thought everyone had given up on it in conversation.

What the staff member said: “There’s new people you should meet.”
What she should have said: “There are new people you should meet.”

Or, she could have avoided an expletive sentence altogether and said something like, “I’d like to introduce some new people.”

Not all employers are bothered by nonstandard usage. The v-p of a software company in Seattle values “sincerity and clarity” more than “the king’s grammar.” According to this businessman, “Those who can be sincere, and still text and Twitter and communicate on Facebook are the ones who are going to succeed.”

According to Tammy Erickson, a columnist for the Wall Street Journal, younger speakers aren’t necessarily ignorant of correct usage; they just don’t think it matters as much as “sincerity in communication.”

So, when a young employee says, “Me and my colleagues want to meet with she and Mr. Singh about the the [sic] new design,” is he merely being sincere? Or is he kissing his chances for promotion good-bye?

Erickson says that younger speakers don’t see correct speech as an emblem of intelligence or education. I suppose that’s not a problem if they go to work for someone like the man in Seattle, but I suspect that the attitude of the v-p in Florida is going to prevail in the work place for a long time yet.

Youthful job seekers may not regard correct speech as an emblem of education or intelligence, but they’d be wise to look upon it as a mark of professionalism.

Every occupation has professional standards. One of the skills required of any white collar worker is–or should be–the ability to speak and write a standard form of English.

As long as English remains a medium of global communication, native speakers who can’t be bothered to master a standard form of it for professional purposes are inflicting an unnecessary economic disadvantage on themselves.

Now, for your “12 Days of Christmas” fun facts:

· Most versions from 1780 to today say the gift giver is “my true love”; in 1842 there was a version where the gifts were sent by dear old mom.

· Someone decided in 1892 that instead of a partridge in a pear tree, they wanted “a very pretty peacock upon a pear tree.”

· In 1900, a version of the song opted for swimming “squabs” rather than swimming “swans.” I think that song-writer had just discovered opium.

· Throughout the ages, some of the other less popular actors and activities:

o 6 ducks-a-laying

o 8 hares-a-running

o 9 bears-a-beating

o 11 lads-a-louping (Scottish term for “leaping”)

o 11 badgers baiting

Kara Church

Senior Technical Editor

619-542-6773 | Ext: 766773

www.symitar.com

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Happy Friday!

Next week, I’d like to take a break from requests and peeves and get into the holiday spirit. I was sitting in a meeting trying to think of a framework to use, and “The Twelve Days of Christmas” popped into my head. No matter what your religion, you’ve probably heard or seen that song referenced. It’s the one where somebody’s true love is giving them some crazy gifts such as 12 drummers, 11 pipers, 10 leaping lords, and as the countdown goes on, a heck of a lot of birds, including a partridge in a pear tree.

Normally I try to stay away from politics, religion, and those other non-PC topics, which is why I am giving you a whole weekend to prepare yourself for references to a Christmas song. Essentially, as I said, I’m just using the song as a framework to talk about other things that are related to grammar and language. A stretch? Possibly. Fun? I hope so.

Here are some interesting tidbits about that song, which was first published in Britain (1780):

· The twelve days begin Christmas Day, or in some traditions, the day after Christmas

· The day after Christmas is also referred to in some cultures as Boxing Day or St. Stephen’s Day

· The twelve days of Christmas end on January 6, the Feast of the Epiphany

· The Epiphany is also referred to as the Twelfth Day

· Twelfth Night is defined by the Oxford English Dictionary as "the evening of the fifth of January, preceding Twelfth Day, the eve of the Epiphany, formerly the last day of the Christmas festivities and observed as a time of merrymaking”

· Shakespeare’s play Twelfth Night was written to be performed as a Twelfth Night entertainment

There’s more, but I’ll leave it at that for now. I promise you we will cover interesting, language-related topics in the next few weeks.

Kara Church

Senior Technical Editor

619-542-6773 | Ext: 766773

www.symitar.com

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Good morning!

One of the top issues people mentioned in their peeves list was the misuse of me, myself and I. If you search Google for those three words together, you can pick from many articles on the topic; I’ve even done two or three Editor’s Corners on this same subject. For those of you who aren’t sure of which word to use and when to use it, maybe this will help. For those of you who are tired of the issue, this article is from a book and website (http://public.wsu.edu/~brians/errors/myself.html) where the snarky grammarian’s irritation comes through loud and clear and can be entertaining in itself.

From Paul Brians’s Common Errors in English Usage:

I/ME/MYSELF

In the old days when people studied traditional grammar, we could simply say, “The first person singular pronoun is ‘I’ when it’s a subject and ‘me’ when it’s an object,” but now few people know what that means. Let’s see if we can apply some common sense here. The misuse of “I” and “myself” for “me” is caused by nervousness about “me.” Educated people know that “Jim and me are goin’ down to slop the hogs,” is not elegant speech, not “correct.” It should be “Jim and I” because if I were slopping the hogs alone I would never say “Me is going. . . .” If you refer to yourself first, the same rule applies: It’s not “Me and Jim are going” but “I and Jim are going.”

So far so good. But the notion that there is something wrong with “me” leads people to overcorrect and avoid it where it is perfectly appropriate. People will say “The document had to be signed by both Susan and I” when the correct statement would be, “The document had to be signed by both Susan and me.”

All this confusion can easily be avoided if you just remove the second party from the sentences where you feel tempted to use “myself” as an object or feel nervous about “me.” You wouldn’t say, “The IRS sent the refund check to I,” so you shouldn’t say “The IRS sent the refund check to my wife and I” either.

Trying even harder to avoid the lowly “me,” many people will substitute “myself,” as in “the suspect uttered epithets at Officer O’Leary and myself.” Conservatives often object to this sort of use of “myself” when “me” or “I” would do. It’s usually appropriate to use “myself” when you have used “I” earlier in the same sentence: “I am not particularly fond of goat cheese myself.” “I kept half the loot for myself.” “Myself” is also fine in expressions like “young people like myself” or “a picture of my boyfriend and myself.” In informal English, beginning a sentence with “myself” to express an opinion is widely accepted: “Myself, I can’t stand dried parmesan cheese.” In all of these instances you are emphasizing your own role in the sentence, and “myself” helps do that.

On a related point, those who continue to announce “It is I” have traditional grammatical correctness on their side, but they are vastly outnumbered by those who proudly boast “it’s me!” There’s not much that can be done about this now. Similarly, if a caller asks for Susan and Susan answers “This is she,” her somewhat antiquated correctness may startle the questioner into confusion.

For more traditional assistance with me, myself, and I, here are a couple of links:

http://www.elearnenglishlanguage.com/difficulties/memyself.html

http://www.elearnenglishlanguage.com/difficulties/ime.html

Kara Church

Senior Technical Editor

619-542-6773 | Ext: 766773

www.symitar.com

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Good morning! As the Hanukah and Kwanza candles are lit and the Christmas lights and Festivus poles go up, it is that time of year when many people take vacation. One of our astute readers brought up the “Out of Office” messages we set and the importance of the words we choose.

As most of us know, it is good to include the following information:

· Date (or dates) you will be out

· Whether you will have access to email

· Approximately when you will respond

· Alternative steps for sender to take if they need immediate assistance

The following message is close, but requires a bit of fine-tuning:

I am out of the office today and will have no access to email. I will respond to your email at my earliest convenience; however, should you need immediate assistance, please contact Joe Baldocky at jbaldocky.

First, “I am out of the office today” would be clearer with an actual date. Second, the phrase “will have no access” is awkward. Some alternative phrasing is “…and will not have access…” or “…and do not have access to email.” Third, “I will respond at my earliest convenience” may be true, but it sends the message that the sender is of secondary concern—a message you definitely do not want to impart to clients. You want to let clients know that you will get back to them as soon as possible. Honestly, chances are that a customer with an urgent matter is not going to care what is convenient for you. Instead, how about “I will respond to your email as soon as possible after I return”?

Here’s a revised version of the message:

I am out of the office today (Wednesday, December 04, 2013) and do not have access to email. I will respond to your email as soon as possible after I return; however, should you need immediate assistance, please contact Joe Baldocky at jbaldocky.

Now go forth and enjoy your holidays!

Kara Church

Senior Technical Editor

619-542-6773 | Ext: 766773

www.symitar.com

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Each month, the Chicago Manual of Style publishes a Q&A column. Here are a couple of items I found educational and interesting. I love the response to the second question and agree wholeheartedly.

Q. Could you please clarify the proper usage of the word cannot, as opposed to can not?

A. In general, use cannot whenever you could mentally substitute can’t. Use can not when not goes with another word, such as only:

He cannot hum. [He can’t hum.]

She can not only hum; she can play the bagpipes. [She can hum.]

But beware of times when not doesn’t go with only:

He cannot only inhale; he must also exhale. [Only here means “solely” rather than “merely.” Our litmus test still works, however: He can’t only inhale.]

Q. My staff and I encountered a phrase and there’s a bit of debate as to how to hyphenate it: Wall Street darling-ready. Some believe an en dash should be inserted between Street and darling, followed by the hyphen between darling and ready. Others, however, feel the addition of the en dash would make the phrase even more difficult to interpret for readers. Thoughts?

A. I’m sorry, but the phrase looks like nonsense; I don’t think you can save it by tacking on hyphens or dashes. Please rewrite the sentence and—as they say—murder your darling.

Kara Church

Senior Technical Editor

619-542-6773 | Ext: 766773

www.symitar.com

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Happy Thanksgiving Eve! (Or, “Happy Thanksgiving, Eve!”)

For a three-day work week, I must say the last few days have been quite challenging. This is all I can muster today and it was placed on my desk by a co-worker:

Question: When it comes to fables, what is an epimyth?

Answer: An epimyth is the moral of a story.

I hope you have a good, safe, and tasty holiday!

Kara Church

Senior Technical Editor

619-542-6773 | Ext: 766773

www.symitar.com

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Today’s tidbit is based on a question from one of our audience members. Enjoy.

Question: What is the appropriate way to refer to more than one frequently asked question (FAQ)?

Answer:

1. For the first instance of the words, spell them out and follow them with the acronym in parentheses.
Use this document to find answers to the company’s most frequently asked questions (FAQs).

2. The term “frequently asked questions” is not a proper noun, so it should not be capitalized unless part of a title.
Can you make me a list of frequently asked questions? (correct)
Can you make me a list of Frequently Asked Questions? (incorrect)

3. If the first instance of the term is in a title, do not use the acronym. Spell out the words and use rule 1 for the first instance of the term in the text.
Title: Frequently Asked Questions from New Employees
Text: This section contains frequently asked questions (FAQs) from new employees, including standard break time information, health care concerns, and time off.

4. You can use the acronym by itself after you have defined it.
This section contains frequently asked questions (FAQs) from new employees, including standard break time information, health care concerns, and time off. If you have a question you would like to add to our list of FAQs, please send it to Human Resources.

5. More than one is written FAQs, without an apostrophe.
I love FAQs! (correct)
I love FAQ’s! (incorrect)

Note: These rules apply to the use of acronyms in general. There may be a few exceptions, but nothing I can think of offhand.

Kara Church

Senior Technical Editor

619-542-6773 | Ext: 766773

www.symitar.com

NOTICE: This electronic mail message and any files transmitted with it are intended
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