Editor's Corner

Here I go again! Not too long ago I sent you 10 Words that Don’t Mean What You Think They Mean. Today, I have a list of words that you may be using incorrectly. This list comes from Dictionary.com.

I was unaware of the nuance of a couple of these words, and I find this kind of thing so delightful! I fully admit to being a word nerd, and I hope some of you are kind enough to travel down this nerdy path with me.

It’s OK if you are disinterested in this topic, I only hope you’re not uninterested. And I hope you have a glorious day.

Donna Bradley Burcher |Technical Editor, Advisory | jack henry™

Pronouns she/her/hers

Symitar Documentation Services

About Editor’s Corner

Editor’s Corner keeps your communication skills sharp by providing information on grammar, punctuation, JHA style, and all things English. As editors, we spend our days reading, researching, and revising other people’s writing. We love to spend a few extra minutes to share what we learn with you and keep it fun while we’re doing it.

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Did the subject line of today’s Editor’s Corner spark your interest? Well, for those of you who like to swear and were hoping I might be talking about curse words, I’m sorry to disappoint you. But now that you’re here, let me tell you about grammatical expletives.

In grammar (unlike in my life when someone cuts my spouse off in traffic), an expletive is a sentence that begin with phrases like “There is/was,” “There are/were,” and “It is/was.” Both curse words and grammatical expletives are considered to be filler words—words that take up space, but don’t add meaning.

So, is it OK to start your sentences with grammatical expletives? Well, yes, but they really should be avoided in many cases. Here are some examples of what I mean along with some alternatives:

• There are many people who think Elvis is still alive.

Many people think Elvis is still alive

• It was a very violent storm that hit the region last night.

A very violent storm hit the region last night.

Are there times when it’s OK or preferable to start your sentence with an expletive? Absolutely. If you revise your sentence to avoid the expletive and it just doesn’t sound right, you should leave it as is. For example, I would not change the sentence “There is no place like home.” The alternative, “No place is like home” just doesn’t have the same punch, and it’s not just because of Dorothy and her ruby red slippers.

Here’s another example of a sentence I probably would not change: “There is a problem with your plan.” The alternative, “Your plan has a problem,” just doesn’t work for me. It sounds harsher and more judgmental.

Now, if I intended to be judgmental, a revision like that might work. Look at this:

• Dear spouse, there is a problem with your aggression when driving.

Dear spouse, your aggression when driving is a problem.

Let the argument and the real expletives begin!

Have a curse-free day!

Donna Bradley Burcher |Technical Editor, Advisory | jack henry™

Pronouns she/her/hers

9660 Granite Ridge Drive, San Diego CA 92123

Symitar Documentation Services

About Editor’s Corner

Editor’s Corner keeps your communication skills sharp by providing information on grammar, punctuation, JHA style, and all things English. As editors, we spend our days reading, researching, and revising other people’s writing. We love to spend a few extra minutes to share what we learn with you and keep it fun while we’re doing it.

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Hello, readers!

Thank you to Jane Gredvig for sharing a Facebook reel with me to share with you. Don’t worry if you aren’t into Facebook, I’ve taken notes and done some additional research that I’ll share with you here.

Note: I am using male and female as the words were defined in the past, as long ago as the 1300s.

Many of you may be familiar with the word pejorative. Meriam-Webster defines pejorative as “a word or phrase that has negative connotations or that is intended to disparage or belittle.” Some synonyms for pejorative are insulting, derogatory, demeaning, and uncomplimentary.

The video, however, is about pejoration. It is a noun that means (also from M-W) “a change for the worse…specifically: an historical process by which the semantic and connotative status of a word tends to decline.” The Facebook reel claims that pejoration is a negative indicator of cultural biases if you look at language evolution throughout history. Now for some examples.

First, the voyage from a non-judgmental term for a woman, to a term meaning a promiscuous woman or prostitute.

As you can see, these terms are all for women. Where there are so-called male equivalents, these are not weighed down with the heaviness of the female version.

To bring this back to the negative indicator of cultural biases, there are examples from American cultures that are racist, classist, sexist, and just plain odd.

Notorious used to mean famous; now it means famous for something terrible. Silly has gone from happy to feeble in mind, lacking in reason, foolish. And awful went from full of awe to really bad.

Two of the sets of pejorative words representing classism are villain and boor, which meant farmworker. But as you know villain is now someone who does harm and a boor is an uncouth, rustic, uncultured person.

The final example is immigrant, which the video presenter says isn’t an insult, but many people give it a very negative emphasis. Keep your eyes open for words that seem to be evolving in their meanings over time, particularly those vilifying certain groups of people and what is going on in our culture that reflects these language changes.

Kara Church | Technical Editor, Advisory | Technical Publications

Pronouns: she/her | Call via Teams | jackhenry.com

Editor’s Corner Archives: https://episystechpubs.com/

Good morning or afternoon or evening—whatever time you are reading this email, I hope it is a good time.

My friend Jane G. suggested that it might be interesting to look into false etymologies: what they are and how they occur. What a good idea, I thought, and I decided to include a few examples. Thanks for the suggestion, Jane!

A false etymology is a popular but false belief about the origin of a specific word or phrase. According to Wikipedia, false etymologies “often have the feel of urban legends and can be more colorful and fanciful than the typical etymologies found in dictionaries, often involving stories of unusual practices in particular subcultures (e.g., Oxford students from non-noble families being supposedly forced to write sine nobilitate by their name, soon abbreviated to s.nob., hence the word snob).”

Wikipedia says that this phenomenon happens for a variety of reasons. Some false etymologies are “reasonable interpretations of the evidence that just happen to be false.” Perhaps a scholar attempted to discover the origin of a word or phrase and provided a theory based on the best evidence they had, but it was later found to be incorrect. Over time, as our knowledge grows, sometimes our theories change.

Some false etymologies are more purposefully false or deceptive—or maybe they just come from untrustworthy sources. Someone claiming to be an expert may offer an etymology that is picked up and spread around. And some origin stories just spread like gossip because they’re surprising, intriguing, or scandalous.

Now that you know what they are, let’s look at a partial list of false etymologies from Wikipedia:

There are far more false etymologies than are listed here. Over the years, I’ve learned to be less gullible when it comes to believing the origin of a word or phrase without doing a little research. I believed the false story about the origin of the phrase “rule of thumb” for much of my life. It just sounded so believable. (They often do!)

These days, we have the luxury of numerous search engines that allow us to research and find information. I find myself falling down a lot of interesting rabbit holes while searching for information about language and writing. It’s better than TikTok and Instagram™, if you ask me. By the way, the phrase “down the rabbit hole” originated in Lewis Carroll’s classic book Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, but I bet you knew that.

Enjoy the rest of your day.

Donna Bradley Burcher |Technical Editor, Advisory | jack henry™

Pronouns she/her/hers

9660 Granite Ridge Drive, San Diego CA 92123

Symitar Documentation Services

About Editor’s Corner

Editor’s Corner keeps your communication skills sharp by providing information on grammar, punctuation, JHA style, and all things English. As editors, we spend our days reading, researching, and revising other people’s writing. We love to spend a few extra minutes to share what we learn with you and keep it fun while we’re doing it.

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Happy Halloween!

It’s one of my favorite times of the year: Autumn, and in particular, Halloween. From the Ghost Glossary at Thesaurus.com, I have some Halloweenish words for you, and there are many more on the website.

Ghosts are spirits of the dead, often imagined as floating or moving around in a wispy, immaterial form. The word ghost developed from the Old English gast, which means “soul, spirit, life, breath.”

Ghosts are common in folklore around the world, and there are many different names for them:

• spirit: A general synonym for a ghost, spirit can also be used in terms for ghosts that haunt a specific place or that have a specific characteristic. For example, you can have a forest spirit that haunts the woods or a vengeful spirit that’s out for revenge.
• specter: Sometimes used to refer to an especially scary ghost, the word specter comes from the Latin word spectrum, meaning “appearance.” Specters are spirits that you can see.
• apparition: A supernatural thing that appears suddenly, like a ghost. An apparition may or may not be the spirit of a person. You could see the apparition of a horse, a ship, or an entire battle scene, for example.
• wraith: A wraith is a ghostly version of a living person whose appearance is thought to signal their imminent death.
• phantom, phantasm: A spirit or apparition, a phantom or phantasm is especially prone to appearing and disappearing suddenly.
• revenant: The spirit of a person that has returned after death. In other words, a revenant is another word for a ghost.
• shade, shadow: Both shade and shadow are poetic synonyms for ghost. Shade is sometimes specifically used to refer to spirits of the dead in the underworld as imagined in ancient Greek and Roman mythology.
• Gremlin:Refers to an invisible creature known for wreaking havoc in machinery, especially airplanes. The term is first recorded in the late 1920s, and it may be related to the word goblin, but its origin is unknown. In popular culture, the appearance of gremlins varies widely.
• Goblin: A small, ugly creature known for harassing humans. The word goblin comes from the Middle High German word kobold, which refers to a mischievous creature or spirit that haunts houses or mines (the name of the metal cobalt comes from the same word—from the miners’ belief that malicious goblins placed it in the silver ore). In popular culture, goblins are often depicted as tiny, cunning minions of evil or wild and dangerous tricksters.

• cacodemon: To the ancient Greeks, an evil demon, or a cacodemon, is the opposite of a good spirit or angel (called a eudemon).
• eidolon: A phantom or apparition. In the Iliad, an eidolon was a shapeshifting spirit that took the appearance of Helen of Troy and, in some versions of the story, may have even caused the Trojan War.
• banshee: In Irish folklore, a spirit in the form of a wailing woman who appears to or is heard by members of a family as a sign that one of them is about to die. Banshees are especially known for their horrifying scream (the “cry of the banshee”).
• dybbuk: In Jewish mythology, a dybukk is a ghost of a dead sinner that seeks to possess a living person. According to the stories, a dybbuk can only be removed through a religious exorcism.
• jinn: In Islamic mythology, a jinn (popularly known as a genie) is a spirit that influences humans to be good or evil. In popular culture, they are often portrayed as super powerful magical creatures who grant wishes (which often turn out much differently than the wisher intended).
• doppelgänger: A ghostly double or counterpart of a living person. The word doppelgänger comes from a German term literally (and spookily) meaning “double-walker.”

Don’t forget, if you want to read more about ghosts, goblins, and bogeymen, see the full article here.

Kara Church | Technical Editor, Advisory | Technical Publications

Pronouns: she/her | Call via Teams | jackhenry.com

Editor’s Corner Archives: https://episystechpubs.com/

Good morning, and welcome to another beautiful Thursday.

I love it when my grammar resource sites provide me with unusual lists of words, which MSN did recently. They sent me (and millions of other people) a list called “10 Words That Don’t Mean What You Think They Do.” Ah, just my cup of tea! Some of these might be surprising to you, so read on and enjoy.

1. Contingency: There’s no such thing as "a contingency of experts," "of French chefs," "of Chinese ministers," or the like. A contingency is something that might happen ("We must prepare for every contingency"). A group of people is a contingent.

2. Disinterested: If you’re not interested in something, you’re uninterested. "Disinterested" means that you have no direct stake in something, financially or in some other sense. A judge in a courtroom should always be disinterested in the proceedings, though they may interest [the judge] very much.

3. Exhibit: If you go to the museum to see a Picasso exhibit, you’re just seeing one painting or print or whatever. An exhibit is a single item. Think "Exhibit A." An exhibition is a whole collection of exhibits, which is probably what drew you to the museum.

4. Flagrant: People use "flagrant" to mean obvious, as in "a flagrant error" or "a flagrant invitation." It means something stronger than that, though—not just obvious but particularly offensive or objectionable. The aforementioned error and invitation are more correctly "blatant."

5. Further: San Francisco isn’t further from New York than Boston is and you didn’t run further than you should—it’s "farther" in both cases. "Farther" refers to physical distance, "further" to non-physical or metaphorical ones ("Let’s not take this argument any further.”)

6. Infamous: This adjective gets applied to all kinds of things these days—"The restaurant’s infamous chocolate cake," "The team’s infamous victory over their rivals," and so on—when what people actually mean is "famous" or "celebrated." "Infamous" isn’t a compliment: It means disgraceful or having a bad reputation.

7. Insure: You can’t insure that something bad won’t happen. You can insure yourself—that is, buy insurance—so that you’ll be compensated if something bad does, but what you want to try to do is ensure that something bad won’t happen. "Ensure" means to guarantee or make certain; "insure" means to buy insurance or otherwise indemnify.

8. Notorious: See "infamous," above. "Notorious" sometimes gets used in the same way ("The restaurant’s notorious chocolate cake.") But it doesn’t just mean famous—it means famous in a bad way, or known unfavorably.

9. Penultimate: This is the penultimate word in this list. And, no, it’s not the last one. The last word is the ultimate one; "pen-" is a Latin prefix meaning "almost," and "penultimate" means second-to-last.

10. Tortuous: It sounds like something that tortures you, but that would actually be "torturous." "Tortuous" means winding or twisting, like a road that curves up a mountainside.

Donna Bradley Burcher |Technical Editor, Advisory | jack henry™

Pronouns she/her/hers

9660 Granite Ridge Drive, San Diego CA 92123

Symitar Documentation Services

About Editor’s Corner

Editor’s Corner keeps your communication skills sharp by providing information on grammar, punctuation, JHA style, and all things English. As editors, we spend our days reading, researching, and revising other people’s writing. We love to spend a few extra minutes to share what we learn with you and keep it fun while we’re doing it.

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Happy Tuesday, folks!

Today I want to talk to you about something personal: taking a shower. Yes, believe it or not, this is a quick and dirty English lesson about a term I learned from Donna a few weeks ago: shower orange. She wrote about it and a bunch of other new terms here in Editor’s Corner. I got distracted and disgusted with the term nepo baby, so today I’m back-tracking to the term I liked, farther down in her article.

Today, I’d like to revisit shower orange. No, it is not about how you get orange face paint off after dressing as a jack-o-lantern for Halloween. Nor is it about a women’s prison, Orange Is the New Black. Lastly, nor is it about how Mom dressed my brother and me in orange foul weather gear stuffed with newspaper to look like pumpkins in the Seattle showers. (Yes, trick-or-treating during Seattle Halloweens required a costume and a backup costume, depending on the weather and the never-ending desire for candy.)

According to Dictionary.com, a shower orange is:

an orange that is peeled and eaten under a steamy shower, the purported benefit being that the steam enhances the orange’s citrusy fragrance and creates a soothing experience for the person who is showering:

Example: I’ve been enjoying the aromatherapy of shower oranges for years—and I also appreciate the easy cleanup!

I did some further research on this, because mixing bathing and eating sounds messy. On the website Facets of Lafayette, they say:

You can reuse citrus peels, such as lemon or lime, as aromatherapy in the shower by storing the peels in a freezer and pulling out a few as needed. Once you turn the hot water on, place the frozen peels on the bottom of the shower floor to defrost and release their powerful scents to help elevate your mood and awaken your senses.

This sounds a bit tidier, plus it is good reuse, especially if your city collects greens each week for composting and you keep them in the freezer already. If food in the shower sound gross, but you want some aromatherapy, I also learned about shower melts from Facets of Lafayette. These are “a shower version of bath bombs that will make your shower feel more luxurious. Also known as shower steamers, fizzies, or soothers, which are sure to pack a serious punch of in-shower aromatherapy.”

For those of you that aren’t in a perpetual drought like we are in Southern California, you’ll have to let me know if you have a favorite fruit or fizzy for bathing time!

Kara Church | Technical Editor, Advisory | Technical Publications

Pronouns: she/her | Call via Teams | jackhenry.com

Editor’s Corner Archives: https://episystechpubs.com/

Hello, folks.

Today I’m rehashing some old rules, but they require rehashing because so many people ignore them <sigh>. I’ll try to provide you with the primary details so as not to overwhelm. Today’s topic is quotation marks.

You may ask yourself, “What’s the big deal?” My response is, “Use them correctly and it’s not a big deal.” But I see them used incorrectly all the time and it leads to confusion. Here are some examples:

Incorrect: ‘Joe told me that Marcus would be at his party.’

Incorrect: At the ‘Adjustment?’ prompt, type ‘01’.

Go ahead and have a look and see if you can figure out why these are incorrect, then we’ll get to the rules and the correct way to write them.

First rule: In our documentation, you will most often use double quotes. I suspect programming has different rules, but our rule is that if you want to quote something, you use double quotes.

Example: One of my favorite funny quotes from Jack Handy is “Before you criticize someone, you should walk a mile in their shoes. That way when you criticize them, you are a mile away from them and you have their shoes.”

Second rule: In U.S. English, “punctuation such as commas, periods, question marks, and exclamation marks (generally) go inside quotation marks.” (GrammarBook.com) For the exceptions, this is a great document: How to Punctuate Quotations.

Example: Jameela asked, “What are we having for lunch today?”

Third rule: When you are using quotation marks to emphasize a term or expression that’s different from standard use, you use double quotation marks the first time you use the term, and then drop the quotation marks the next time you use the term in a sentence.

Examples (from GrammarBook.com):

• I just spoke with my "buddy," the IRS agent assigned to my audit.
• At this real estate firm, that contract is what we call a "dealio."

Fourth rule: When you have a quotation within a quotation, it is okay to use single quotes for the inner quotation. There are more rules to this piece, but most of you won’t be writing quotes within quotes, so let’s look at an example and stop there.

Example: “I can’t believe Nils said, ‘I refuse to do it!’ when I asked him to change his shirt.”

I’m going to stop there, and go through the incorrect examples, and tell you why they are wrong.

Incorrect: ‘Joe told me that Marcus would be at his party.’

No single quotations marks for quotations (unless it is a quotation within a quotation).

Incorrect: At the ‘Adjustment?’ prompt, type ‘01’.

No single quotation marks because the information is already bolded to stand out; and by the way, the period should be inside the quotation marks. The way this is written is confusing.

Sam is worried that he has single quotation marks!

Kara Church | Technical Editor, Advisory | Technical Publications

Pronouns: she/her | Call via Teams | jackhenry.com

Editor’s Corner Archives: https://episystechpubs.com/

Good day to you! Today I bequeath you the last installment of new words added to the dictionary for 2023. In my last two posts, I shared the following categories of words:

· Pop Culture and Slang and Artificial Intelligence

· Modern Problems and Science and Tech

For those of you feeling a little disconcerted because some of the words I previously shared have been added, maybe it will make you feel better if you think about words you used in your adolescence that drove your parents crazy. Some of those words may have made it into the dictionary too, and aren’t you glad they did?

· From the 1950s: brainwashing, fast food, UFO, moisturizer

· From the 1960s: junk food, fanny pack, repurpose, head-trip

· From the 1970s: granola, dorky, fintech, transgender

· From the 1980s: voice mail, comb-over, yuppie, emo

· From the 1990s: man cave, buzzkill, snark, website, emoji

· From the 2000s: binge-watch, unfriend, rogue, staycation

· From the 2010s: mansplain, deadname, hashtag, glamping

This time, I’m going to share some of the new words from the following categories: Health and Wellness and Identity and Relationships.

Health and Wellness

· decision fatigue (noun)

Mental and emotional exhaustion resulting from excessive or relentless decision-making, especially the cumulative effect of small decisions that one makes throughout each day.

· doctor shop (verb)

To obtain prescriptions for a controlled substance from more than one healthcare practitioner at a time.

· coffee nap (noun)

A short nap, usually 15–30 minutes, taken immediately after drinking a cup of coffee, the claimed benefit being that the energizing effect of caffeine may be bolstered by a sleeping body’s drop in adenosine levels.

· sleep debt (noun)

The difference between the amount of sleep a person needs and the actual amount of time spent sleeping, when the amount needed exceeds the time slept.

· stress eating (noun)

Emotional eating, especially in response to stress, tension, or anxiety.

· intermittent fasting (noun)

A pattern of eating that involves regular short periods of fasting, such as by limiting food intake to a certain period of the day or to fewer meals on certain days of the week.

Identity and Relationships [dbb – There were a lot of these; to see the full list go to
Dictionary.com.]

· grandfamily (noun)

A family in which one or more children live with and are raised by their grandparent or grandparents.

· kinkeeping (noun)

The labor involved in maintaining and enhancing family ties, including organizing social occasions, remembering birthdays, sending gifts, etc.

· diverse-owned (adjective)

A business owned by someone who is part of a group historically underrepresented in entrepreneurship, such as women, ethnic or racial minorities, LGBTQ+ people, etc.

· box braids (noun)

A hairstyle originating among Black people, in which the hair is parted into small squares or other shapes over the scalp and the hair from each section is woven into a braid.

· CODA (abbreviation, noun)

Child of deaf adult/adults: a hearing person with a deaf parent or parents.

· gay marry (verb)

To marry a person of the same gender.

· amalgagender (adjective)

Noting or relating to a person whose gender identity is linked to or impacted by the fact that they are intersex.

· stealth (adjective)

(of a transgender person) Living as a cisgender member of one’s identified gender, without revealing that one is transgender.

· autoromantic (adjective)

Noting or relating to a person who primarily feels romantic attraction to and desire for themselves, as opposed to other people.

Enjoy the day today!

Donna Bradley Burcher |Technical Editor, Advisory | jack henry™

Pronouns she/her/hers

9660 Granite Ridge Drive, San Diego CA 92123

Symitar Documentation Services

About Editor’s Corner

Editor’s Corner keeps your communication skills sharp by providing information on grammar, punctuation, JHA style, and all things English. As editors, we spend our days reading, researching, and revising other people’s writing. We love to spend a few extra minutes to share what we learn with you and keep it fun while we’re doing it.

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Hello readers,

A few weeks ago, before our friend, Ron Fauset, retired, he sent this. He is gone, but not forgotten. You can hear his snark as he both asks and answers this question, including the table below. This is more for the credit union crowd and Symitar users, but it’s good advice.

I hope you are having fun, Ron, wherever you are!

Dear Editrix:

I attended a meeting where the term “PowerOns” was thrown about. For me, this is like nails on a chalkboard. (For you younger people, ask your grandparents what a chalkboard is.)

I’m sure that all of you are familiar with Microsoft® Excel®. Excel is the application name. We create Excel workbooks or spreadsheets regularly. When we refer to these workbooks or spreadsheets, we don’t refer to them as Excels. We can say, “Use Excel to create spreadsheets” or “I created an Excel spreadsheet.” You would not say, “I created an Excel.”

Likewise, PowerOn is the application name. We use PowerOn to create specfiles or definition files, etc. We do not create PowerOns. We do not run a PowerOn. We can say, “Use PowerOn to create specfiles” or “I created a PowerOn specfile.” You would not say, “I created a PowerOn.”

If you say, I created RepGens, well, you are just dating yourself and we have nothing further to discuss except your impending retirement.

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