Editor's Corner

Yesterday, a man (who shall remain nameless to protect him from being whipped with a cable) told me he’d heard people refer to Episys Console Control as Council Control. Unless we switched from data processing software to political and legislative software, Council Control is incorrect. Then I heard more rumors of people getting council and console confused. David Petersen was kind enough to do my work for me, and sent these definitions and examples to add to yesterday’s council and counsel:

· consul (noun)—an advisor, diplomat, representative

· console (noun)—a control terminal for an electronic device (e.g., a “computer or TV console”)

· console (verb)—to comfort, soothe, calm (e.g. “She consoled her friend after her bad break-up.”)

· council (noun)—a group of people meeting for a purpose

· counsel (verb, noun)—advise; advice, an attorney

Thank you David, and thanks to everyone for helping me keep these articles relevant!

And for today’s special feature…

I received this article the other day, and I wasn’t sure if anyone would be interested—but many of you sent it on to me from other places it was published. I’ll take that as a show of interest, so I’ve included it in its entirety. From DailyWritingTips.com:

Is That Even a Word?

Posted: 30 Jan 2013 08:10 PM PST

No authoritarian authority exists that determines whether a given word is valid or bogus. In any language, there’s a complex and imperfect vetting procedure; at least in English, most serious writers agree on the correct or preferred form of a word that is one of two or more variants or on whether a word is acceptable at all. Here’s a list of words that have been under scrutiny in this approval process:

1. Administrate: A back-formation of administration and an unnecessary extension of administer

2. Commentate: A back-formation of commentator and an unnecessary extension of comment

3. Dimunition: Erroneous; the correct form is diminution (think of diminutive)

4. Exploitive: A younger, acceptable variant of exploitative

5. Firstly: As with secondly and thirdly, erroneous when enumerating points; use first and so on

6. Heighth: Rarely appears in print, but a frequent error in spoken discourse (Why isn’t height modeled on the form of depth, length, and width? Because it doesn’t shift in spelling and pronunciation from its associated term, tall, like the others, which are derived from deep, long, and wide, do. Neither do we say or write weighth.)

7. Irregardless: An unnecessary extension of regardless on the analogy of irrespective but ignoring that regardless, though it is not an antonym of regard, already has an antonymic affix

8. Miniscule: A common variant of minuscule, but widely considered erroneous

9. Orientate: A back-formation of orientation and an unnecessary extension of orient

10. Participator: Erroneous; the correct form is participant

11. Preventative: A common and acceptable variant of preventive

12. Societal: A variant of social with a distinct connotation (for example, “social occasion,” but “societal trends”)

13. Supposably: An erroneous variant of supposedly

14. ’Til: Also rendered til and till, a clipped form of until that is correct but informal English; use the full word except in colloquial usage

15. Undoubtably: An erroneous variant of undoubtedly

Kara Church

Senior Technical Editor

www.despair.com

Kara Church

Senior Technical Editor

Good morning! I have a lot of words today and tomorrow from the “C list.” As usual, the definitions and examples are from Grammarbook.com; those in blue are from me.

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I’m feeling a bit like Grog the caveman today, which means talking is at the bottom of the list after killing bison, washing the gathered grains and weeds, making a blanket out of bison fur, and sweeping out my corner of the cave. Instead of more words today, Grog take break. Grog give symbol of snail, unless Grog eat snail.

From Grammar Girl:

Where Did the @ Symbol Come From?

How Old Is the @ Symbol?

Every source I found seemed to have a different date for the origin of the “at” symbol, so I’m not going to commit to a certain date. Let’s just say it was a long time ago—at least in the Middle Ages.

Many sources including the Ask Oxford website and a book called Letter by Letter: An Alphabetical Miscellany reported that the "at" symbol comes from shorthand for the Latin word "ad"—A.D.—which means “to, toward, or at." Scribes used to use it to list prices on invoices and accounting sheets, as in 12 eggs AT one penny per egg.

Names for the @ Symbol

The “at” symbol, by the way, is more formally known in English as the “commercial at,” presumably because of its original use in commerce. It has various names in other languages, and one of my favorites is Italian, in which it is playfully called the “snail.” Longtime listeners or people who have my books will know that in my example sentences, I like to use a character called Squiggly who is a snail. [Grog – Grog no like Squiggly. Grog hit Squiggly with club.] I’ve also seen it called a strudel and a cinnamon roll, which are both cute because it is shaped kind of like a rolled up pastry. [Grog – Mmmm…Grog like cute pastry.]

@ on Keyboards

A book called Managing Web Usage in the Workplace tells of examining pictures of old typewriters and finding that it was relatively common for the @ symbol to be included on the keyboard starting around 1880.

@ for E-mail Addresses

Ray Tomlinson first used the “at” symbol to format an e-mail address using ARPAnet in 1971 for a message he sent to himself from one computer to another to test the system, and amusingly, he’s repeatedly been quoted as saying he doesn’t remember what the message said—it was just some forgettable test message—because he didn’t think it was a big deal at the time.

@ on Twitter

More recently, if you use Twitter, you know that you indicate a reply to someone by prefacing his or her name with the @ symbol, but it wasn’t that way in the early days of Twitter. Users started putting @ before someone’s name to indicate that it was a reply, and the people at Twitter noticed and wrote it into the system so that when you hit the reply link, it automatically inserts the @ symbol. Lately, it’s been showing up more as a general symbol to indicate a response. For example, people use it in the comments section to indicate that they’re responding to someone who posted earlier.

For the full article see: http://grammar.quickanddirtytips.com/where-did-the-at-symbol-come-from.aspx

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Today we have a bunch of “B” words for you. This is by no means the full list of “B” homonyms, nor the complete list of confounding English terms beginning with the second letter in our alphabet. As with the other A through Z terms, these are from grammarbook.com, with examples here and there from the Editrix.

Photo from http://weddingengagementnoise.com/tag/brides-on-horses/

Kara Church

Senior Technical Editor

I have a few more frequently confused word clusters from the A’s today. By special request, I’ve also included the fraternal triplets: assure/ensure/insure. The definitions are from grammarbook.com; the examples are from my frazzled brain.

Kara Church

Senior Technical Editor

Let’s start getting into some of the homonyms, homophones, and other words that often get a bit confused. Today I have an oldie but a goodie for you. Perhaps these rules from grammarbook.com will stick better than my last tips on this topic.

affect vs. effect

Rule 1: Use effect when you mean bring about or brought about, cause, or caused.

Example: He effected a commotion in the crowd.

Meaning: He caused a commotion in the crowd.

Rule 2: Use effect when you mean result.

Example: What effect did that speech have?

Rule 3: Also use effect whenever any of these words precede it: a, an, any, the, take, into, no. These words may be separated from effect by an adjective.

Examples: That book had a long-lasting effect on my thinking.

Has the medicine produced any noticeable effects?

Rule 4: Use the verb affect when you mean to influence rather than to cause. [KC – Don’t be afraid of this word and overuse the word “impact” instead. Impact and impacted
have other meanings and some of those meanings are pretty gross.]

Example: How do the budget cuts affect your staffing?

Rule 5: Affect is used as a noun to mean emotional expression.

Example: She showed little affect when told she had won the lottery.

And for bonus time, a few homophones:

air – what we breathe

err – make a mistake

heir – one who inherits something

aisle – passageway

I’ll – contraction for I will

isle – a small island

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I got some exciting news from the Monett office yesterday after sending out the first e-mail on spelling. Fifth-grader, Miss Alex Sparkman (daughter of Rexanna Hood), won first place in the spelling bee at her school. The outdone sixth-graders will be waving goodbye as Alex makes her way to Joplin for the next competition. Congratulations!

Now, before we get into spelling and frequently confused words, we’re going to learn a little Greek today that will, hopefully, help you remember some definitions. Let’s start with the linguistic terms homonym, homophone, and homograph. (Note: Sometimes these are all lumped under the term “homonym”; the following definitions are from Merriam-Webster.)

homonym

· From Greek homós (common, same) + onoma (name)

· One of two or more words spelled and pronounced alike but different in meaning

o A pool of water vs. pool the game

o A dog’s bark vs. the bark covering a tree

· KC’s hint – The key here is onoma (name); the words are “named” (spelled) the same, but have different meanings.

homophone

· From Greek homós (common, same) + phōnḗ(voice, utterance)

· One of two or more words pronounced alike but different in meaning or derivation or spelling

o aye, eye, I

o they’re, their, there

o to, too, two

· KC’s hint – The key here is phōnḗ (voice); the words sound the same, but have different meanings.

homograph

· From Greek homós (common, same) + gráphō (write)

· One of two or more words spelled alike but different in meaning or pronunciation

o entrance (the way in) vs. entrance (to mesmerize)

o minute (unit of time) vs. minute (tiny)

o bow (a type of knot) vs. bow (to bend at the waist, as sign of respect) vs. bow (“tool” used to shoot an arrow)

· KC’s hint – The key here is gráphō (write); the words are “written” (spelled) the same, but have different meanings or different pronunciation.

Kara Church

Senior Technical Editor

When I was a little kid, I was a pretty decent speller. In third grade, I was thrilled to be chosen to compete in the spelling bee for grades 3 to 5. We all spelled word after word, until there were four of us remaining—but there were only three ribbons. “Miss Church,” the librarian said, “Your word is potpourri.” The sweat started to pour. I was at a complete loss for letters. I asked them to repeat the word, as I stalled for time. I asked for a definition and my mind raced. “Hmm,” I said to my 8-year-old self, “If the place where nuns live is called a nunnery, I guess the place the Pope lives is called a popery.” That’s how I spelled it, and that’s how I lost.

Many of you have asked for more tips and tricks on spelling; some have asked about homonyms and homophones. I’ve been pondering how I can help, and I’ve been gathering information for months. I have some interesting information on homonyms, heteronyms, homographs, Spirographs (okay, maybe not this one); I’ve collected fascinating tidbits about Greek and Latin prefixes and suffixes; I have lists of homophones (words that sound the same but are spelled differently, such as there, their, and they’re) coming out of my ears. But where do I start?

Let’s start here, with some historical highlights of English spelling (original information from http://englishspellingproblems.co.uk/html/history.html):

· ~ 600: English spelling first developed in England

· 1066: Norman French becomes the official language of England after Norman Conquest

· ~ 1350: England began to re-establish its own identity

o English language had become very different from the Anglo-Saxon of pre-Norman times

o English writers, like Geoffrey Chaucer and William Tyndale, tried to give English a consistent spelling system, but their efforts were much undermined.

o Educated people had only written French or Latin before. They continued to use many of the French spellings they had become used to.

· 1476: Begin printing books in England

o Newly invented spelling system severely tampered with

o Foreign printers committed many spelling errors

o Printers paid by the line often inserted additional letters to earn more money

o Many errors eventually became accepted English spellings

· 1500-1600s: Imported many words from Latin and Greek into English

o Imported words usually keep original spellings

§ Latin and Greek were regarded as superior to English

o To show Greek origin, many words were spelt with y instead of i: symbol, system, symmetry.

o Silent letters proliferated: pneumonia, rheumatism.

o During this time the use of ea as an alternative spelling for both the ee and e sounds also became firmly established (speech – speak, bed – bread)

· 1700: All of the different influences had transformed English spelling into the phonically incoherent jumble we still use today

o Samuel Johnson’s dictionary of 1755 fixed spelling like a law

o English is spelled by dictionary rather than by phonetic rules or common sense [KC – Okay, this guy sounds a little bit angry!]

The things you can do with your Spirograph…

Photo from http://www.samstoybox.com/toys/Spirograph.html

Kara Church

Senior Technical Editor