Editor's Corner

Today’s tidbits are from an article on numerical terms on DailyWritingTips.com.

Note to Symitar/Episys readers: According to most style guides, Mr. Nichol uses the em dash incorrectly. If you follow The Chicago Manual of Style, there should not be any space on either side of the dash.

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(From “10 Types of Numerical Terms,” by Mark Nichol)

How many categories of numerals are there, and what are their functions? No, you haven’t stumbled onto DailyMathTips.com by mistake; this post helps sort out the ways you can refer to numbers and under which circumstances, with nary a digit or operational sign in sight. Ready? One, two, three . . .

Cardinal Numbers

Cardinal numbers — one, two, three, or the numeric equivalents, and so on — represent simple quantity (though, as shown in the previous paragraph, they can also be employed in a countdown — or, in that case, a countup). The names of English numerals are all derived from Old English, as are the suffixes -teen, which derives from a form of ten and means “ten more than,” and -ty, which means “ten.” Hundred and thousand are also derived from old English, but million and other terms for orders of magnitude come from Latin by way of French.

Collective Numerals

Collective numerals represent sets. There are various subcategories — kinship terms such as twin and triplet, and musical terms like duo and trio – and, well, singletons, like that word, pair, dozen, and so on. Language origin varies among these assorted words.

Composite Numbers

Composite numbers — unary, binary, ternary, and so on — represent composition (what something is composed of). Binary is the only one of these Latin-derived terms commonly used, though quaternary was applied to a geological age.

Distributive Numerals

Distributive numerals represent alternating patterns. In some languages (like Latin, which has singuli and bini, for example, to mean “one by one” or “two by two” respectively), these numerals are represented by a single term, are usually described in English in phrases such as “each day,” “every other week,” and “every third month.” However, English also has one-word examples such as centennial and its multiplied variants, descended from Latin terms.

Multiplicative Numbers

Multiplicative numbers — once, twice, thrice — represent repetition. The ancestors of these words are variations on the Old English words for one, two, and three. Among the categories listed in this post, the multiplicative group is the only one that does not represent any value higher than three. (The reason for this lack is unknown, though perhaps it’s because it’s rarely necessary to describe an attempt or action beyond several previous efforts.)

Kara Church | Senior Technical Editor

Symitar, A Jack Henry Company

8985 Balboa Ave. | San Diego, CA 92123

Let’s start the weekend early with something fun! Today we’ll look at Spoonerisms. Spoonerisms are words or phrases where certain sounds get mixed up—when you’re talking faster than you think, or perhaps have had too much to drink. My dad’s second favorite is “I’d rather have a bottle in front of me than a frontal lobotomy.” His number one favorite is not fit for print. 🙂

The Spoonerism was named after Reverend William Archibald Spooner, a man who apparently mixed his words often. A brief history of the reverend and more details on Spoonerisms can be found on The Wordplay Web Site (http://www.fun-with-words.com/spoon_history.html). The list below contains an edited list of Spoonerisms from the same web site.

Enjoy!

From Reverend Spooner himself…

…and from others…

Kara Church | Senior Technical Editor

Symitar, A Jack Henry Company

8985 Balboa Ave. | San Diego, CA 92123

Folks, I’m sorry I forgot the voting buttons on my e-mail earlier.

Today’s response totals are:

ABC – 0

CCB – 50

BBB – 4

BCB – 53

CCC – 5

Total number of responders: 112

Looks like the first question threw a lot of people for a loop. At the bottom I’ve included a “lay/lie” chart; I think it is better than the one from last week.

1) In the early morning, before they get him up, he lies in his crib and sings. [I lie, you lie, he lies]

2) At midnight, the boy crept downstairs as quietly as he could.

3) As Allie and Timmy sit together, she reads American Psycho, which she had brought for him.

Review of Lie and Lay(from http://www.auntruthgrammar.com/)

Lie

Lay

Kara Church | Senior Technical Editor

Symitar, A Jack Henry Company

8985 Balboa Ave. | San Diego, CA 92123

It’s time for Thursday’s quiz! Today were going to concentrate on irregular verbs. To those of you new to the quiz, here’s how it goes if you subscribe to Editor’s Corner:

· I send an e-mail with a few questions.

· You jot down your answers.

· You click the response that corresponds to your answers by using the voting buttons (Outlook only).

· I send the correct answers (and a count of how many people selected each answer) around noon.

It’s all for fun, and if you want or need to look something up, I encourage it. Sometimes research is the best way to learn.

1) In the early morning, before they get him up, he _____ in his crib and sings.

a. laid

b. lies

c. lays

2) At midnight, the boy ____ downstairs as quietly as he could.

a. creep

b. creeped

c. crept

3) As Allie and Timmy sit together, she reads American Psycho, which she had _____ for him.

a. brang

b. brought

c. brung

Kara Church | Senior Technical Editor

Symitar, A Jack Henry Company

8985 Balboa Ave. | San Diego, CA 92123

Some know it as the “Oxford comma,” others call it the “Harvard comma,” but outside of these universities we little people call it the “serial comma.” This tiny speck has led to much debate among writers, editors, and other word nerds around the world.

For those of you who don’t know what I’m talking about, it is the comma that precedes the word “and” in a series. In the following example, it is the comma after “singing” and before “and.”

John likes fishing, singing, and bowling.

Most style guides, including The Chicago Manual of Style, recommend the use of the serial comma because it prevents ambiguity; however, The Associated Press Stylebook, the style guide used by many newspapers, magazines, and our Marketing department, is an exception. The AP Stylebook essentially tells writers not to use the serial comma, unless “an integral element of the series requires a conjunction” or “before the concluding conjunction in a complex series of phrases.” I say, make it easy—use the serial comma. As Bryan A. Garner says in his book Garner’s Modern American Usage, “Whether to include the serial comma has sparked many arguments. But it’s easily answered in favor of inclusion because omitting the final comma may cause ambiguities, whereas including it never will.”

Not sold on making that extra keystroke? Below is an example from The Chicago Manual of Style that demonstrates what can happen without the serial comma. I rest my case.

“Among those interviewed were his two ex-wives, Kris Kristofferson and Robert Duvall.”

Kara Church | Senior Technical Editor

Symitar, A Jack Henry Company

8985 Balboa Ave. | San Diego, CA 92123

Today is a quick follow-up to yesterday’s topic of “time.” This information is from the “time zone” section in the Chicago Manual of Style. According to our house dictionary, Merriam-Webster, the spelled out versions of eastern, central, and mountain, are often capitalized.

Time zones, where needed, are usually given in parentheses—for example, 4:45 p.m. (CST).

GMT Greenwich mean time

EST eastern standard time

EDT eastern daylight time

CST central standard time

CDT central daylight time

MST mountain standard time

MDT mountain daylight time

PST Pacific standard time

PDT Pacific daylight time

“I don’t mind going back to daylight saving time. With inflation, the hour will be the only thing I’ve saved all year.”

Good morning, folks. This may be a repeat to some, but since I have a lot of new subscribers, I’m going to review “time.” These are the rules according to the Chicago Manual of Style (CMOS), and the standards we use for Episys eDocs. I know some departments use the AP Stylebook, so before making big changes or going on a grammar attack, understand that these are guidelines. 🙂

Time of day

The following abbreviations are used in text and elsewhere. Though these sometimes appear in small capitals (with or without periods), Chicago prefers the lowercase form, with periods, as being the most immediately intelligible. [KC – Emphasis mine.]

• a.m. – ante meridiem (before noon)
• m. – meridies (noon [rarely used])
• p.m. – post meridiem (after noon)

The abbreviations a.m. and p.m. should not be used with morning, afternoon, evening, night, or o’clock.

• 10:30 a.m. or ten thirty in the morning
• 11:00 p.m. or eleven o’clock at night

[KC – I am including this section because some of our system documentation includes settings and interfaces that
use the twenty-four-hour clock. This is not the formatting you’d normally see in newsletters or prose.]

The twenty-four-hour system

In the twenty-four-hour system of expressing time (used in Europe and in the military), four digits always appear, often with no punctuation between hours and minutes.

• 1200 = noon
• 2400 or 0000 = midnight
• 0001 = 12:01 a.m.
• 1438 = 2:38 p.m.
• At 1500 hours (or 1500h) we started off on our mission.
• General quarters sounded at 0415.

Kara Church | Senior Technical Editor

Symitar, A Jack Henry Company

8985 Balboa Ave. | San Diego, CA 92123

It’s Friday, so let’s have some fun. A faithful reader and fellow language lover, Samuel Dean, sent this topic to me several weeks ago. First, a brief definition and history of eggcorns, from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eggcorn:

In linguistics, an eggcorn is an idiosyncratic substitution of a word or phrase for a word or words that sound similar or identical in the speaker’s dialect. The new phrase introduces a meaning that is different from the original, but plausible in the same context, such as "old-timers’ disease" for "Alzheimer’s disease…"

…the term eggcorn was coined by professor of linguistics Geoffrey Pullum in September 2003, in response to an article by Mark Liberman on the website Language Log, a blog for linguists. Liberman discussed the case of a woman who substitutes the phrase egg corn for the word acorn, arguing that the precise phenomenon lacked a name; Pullum suggested using "eggcorn" itself.

Here are a few examples of eggcorns, from the Eggcorn Database (http://eggcorns.lascribe.net/english/2/eggcorn/):

fetal » feeble

Chiefly in: (curled up) in the feeble position

Spotted in the wild:

I was impressed. He was looking quite happy for someone who spent the last night sleeping in the feeble position. (fanfiction.net, July 26, 2009)

dog-eat-dog » doggy-dog

Chiefly in: doggy-dog world

Spotted in the wild:

the [sic] true matter is: it’s a doggy dog world out there and they’re all in it for the money.

cruller » crawler

Chiefly in: French crawler

Spotted in the wild:

A local doughnut shop had a sign advertising “French crawlers”. [sic] (Wilson in ADS-L)

ghost » goat

Chiefly in: give up the goat

Spotted in the wild:

§ Luckily our old Toyota just got us through and then gave up the goat. (ABC Rural, SA Country Hour, Jan. 11, 2006)

§ Stay calm, collected, and don’t give up the goat. (Paul Davidson, Ten Rules for Making Rules, Apr. 16, 2006)

Have a great weekend, and welcome to all of you new readers!

Kara Church | Senior Technical Editor

Symitar, A Jack Henry Company

8985 Balboa Ave. | San Diego, CA 92123

In place of a quiz today, we’re going to go over something that is tough for many people, including yours truly. I am hoping that sharing this information might help all of you who’ve asked about “lie” and “lay,” and maybe sear it into my brain while I type it. This is the “lay vs. lie chart” and a ton of examples from The Blue Book of Grammar and Punctuation, by the late Jane Straus.

lay vs. lie chart

Examples in the Present Tense:

I lie down for a nap at 2:00 P.M. everyday.

I am lying down for a nap today.

The hens lay eggs.

The hen is laying eggs.

I am tempted to lie about my age.

I am not lying about my age.

Examples in the Past Tense:

I lay down for a nap yesterday at 2:00 P.M.

The hen laid two eggs yesterday.

He lied on the witness stand.

Examples with a Participle (has, have):

I have lain down for a nap every day this week.

The hen has laid two eggs every day this week.

He has lied each day on the witness stand.

For additional information and more examples, see the Purdue OWL (http://owl.english.purdue.edu/purdueowlnews/535) and read “The Owl’s Nest” article.

Kara Church | Senior Technical Editor

Symitar, A Jack Henry Company

8985 Balboa Ave. | San Diego, CA 92123

I’m skipping the last day of “dis-“ and “mis-” words since I think it’s putting everyone to sleep. For the final five words in the DailyWritingTips article, click here: http://www.dailywritingtips.com/15-dis-words-and-their-relations/

Moving on, today we’ll have a look at the word “blond.” Or is it “blonde”? If you had to suffer—I mean take—four years of French, you’re probably hip to the answer. For those of you who took Spanish, German, or Japanese, here’s the scoop. (Definition from The Grammar Devotional: Daily Tips for Successful Writing from Grammar Girl™, by Mignon Fogarty.)

“The word comes to English from French, in which it has masculine and feminine forms. As an English noun, it kept those two forms; thus, a blond is a fair-haired man and a blonde is a fair-haired woman. When you are using the word as an adjective, there is only one spelling: blond.”

[KC] I’ve written some examples for you:

· They chose a blonde to play the role of Mrs. Tibbles. (noun, female)

· She remembers her husband as a blond, but the children remember their father as grey-haired. (noun, male)

· When Dotty found the long blond hair on the car seat, it reminded her of the fun she and Rosemary had on their road trip. (adjective, neutral)

Kara Church | Senior Technical Editor

Symitar, A Jack Henry Company

8985 Balboa Ave. | San Diego, CA 92123