Good morning to you! It’s early here in San Diego, and I haven’t had my tea yet, but it looks like it’s going to be a beautiful day. if you’re ready, let’s jump right in.

We all want to sound like we know what we’re talking about. We want to sound authoritative—especially in professional environments. However, too often when writing, people believe that more words or bigger words will make them sound smarter, and they use these words and phrases at the risk of making their writing less clear.

One example of this is the simple phrase as well as. Many people use as well as and and interchangeably. However, they are not synonymous. I’ll give you an example of incorrect usage and some further explanation. This comes from the English Language Help Desk website:

Incorrect Example: Swedish is spoken in Sweden, as well as in parts of Finland.

Why is this incorrect? Because although you may not have learned this in school (I certainly didn’t!), the phrase as well as, places more emphasis on the phrase that comes before as well as. The phase used in the example actually means that Swedish is spoken not only in parts of Finland, but also in Sweden. (What a surprise!) To use as well as correctly in that sentence, it should read “Swedish is spoken in parts of Finland as well as in Sweden.”

On the other hand, the word and suggests that all words and phrases in a sentence are of equal importance. For example, “I love traveling and hiking.” I love them both equally.

And one last thing, when you do use as well as in a sentence, remember that the verb must agree with the noun proceeding it.

Correct example: Tea as well as coffee is popular in the UK.

Enjoy the rest of your day. 😊

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

8985 Balboa Ave. | San Diego, CA 92123

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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Hello!

As promised last week, here is the second half of the alphabet (MZ) and examples of these letters being silent in certain words. For the full article you can see Every Letter Is Silent, Sometimes.

N

Like silent b‘s, silent n‘s tend to come at the ends of words and after m: autumn, column, damn, hymn, limn, solemn. While this might suggest to some that m is a little too accommodating, we would never anthropomorphize letters in such a way.

O

There is the flagrant excess of letters in enough, rough, and tough, where o is among several who have no place being there. Then there is the formerly mentioned ruffian colonel, in which neither o behaves properly and the second o doesn’t even bother to try. But in addition to those we then also have jeopardy, leopard, and people. We’ll let you draw your own conclusions about o.

P

P is silent before n in a selection of somewhat technical terms, such as pneumonia and pneumatic. And it’s silent before s in a different selection of words such as psalm, psyche, and psychology. It boldly says nothing in corps and coup and receipt. In some pronunciations of comptroller it somehow convinces m to join with it in dissembling; the two there impersonate n.

Q

Q tends to function wholly aboveboard as an upstanding member of the alphabet. Most of us are fortunate to encounter its dereliction in lacquer only occasionally.

R

R exists in forecastle [KC Pronounced fk-sel.] only to mock landlubbers. It exists in February only to make us suffer.

S

S is a mostly-reliable letter. Its failings are limited largely to aisle, apropos, debris, isle, and island. We cannot, however, overlook its participation in the hot mess that is bourgeois.

T

T refuses to be audible in ballet, castle, listen, and whistle. In asthma it conspires with h to shun its usual duties.

U

U may appear reasonable, but evidence to the contrary is not difficult to find: build, catalogue, dialogue, colleague, guard, guess, laugh, league, tongue. Note that the second and third of these words have attempted eviction and are meeting with significant success: catalog and dialog are both fully accepted variant spellings.

V

V is at this point the only letter that refuses to be unheard in any established word of the language. And yet a dark cloud gathers on the horizon: in late May 2017 a much-followed and likely sleep-addled Twitter user tweeted out what was clearly a partially developed composition. The internet seized on the enigmatic final wordcovfefeand discussed it ad nauseam. Of the myriad pronunciations suggested for this non-word, several of the strongest contenders had a silent v.

W

W yields all power to the r that follows it in wrack, wraith, wrangle, wrap, wreath, wren, wrench, wrestle, wrinkle, wrist, writ, write, wrong, and wrought. As if that lot were not enough, w with no apparent logic whatsoever sits idly silent in answer, sword, two, and who as well.

X

We will admit to some small appreciation of x‘s discretion in its orthographic indiscretion. Its silence seems perhaps calculated in faux and faux pas.

Y

We cannot blame y for its gratuitous presence in beyond. The letter may, in fact, believe itself to be essential in the word. It cannot be ignored, however, that the word would reasonably have its same pronunciation if it were spelled "beond," "beeond," or "be-ond."

Z

There will surely be attempts to blame the French, and yet the following have been fully established members of the English language for centuries now: chez, laissez-faire, and rendezvous. We cannot look the other way, Z.

And there you have it! English is a bit crazy and also completely fascinating. I hope you enjoy your day!

Kara Church | Technical Editor, Advisory | Technical Publications

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

Editors Corner Archives: https://episystechpubs.com/

Good morning, folks!

I was looking around for something interesting to share with you today, and I found this article, Every Letter Is Silent, Sometimes. Now and then, Donna and I challenge you with frequently misspelled words or we discuss the oddities of English, but I don’t know that we’ve ever covered this topic. I had to read more to see if the folks at Merriam-Webster could prove that all 26 of our letters are occasionally hushed. I’m dividing the list in half so you can savor the silence over a couple of days.

A

The a in bread (as well as in tread) does nothing. You might as well spell it bred except that then it looks too much like the past tense of breed. So don’t do that. A is similarly indefensible in aisle and aesthetic.

B

Most silent b‘s come at the ends of words and just after m: bomb, climb, comb, crumb, dumb, lamb, limb, numb, plumb, thumb, tomb. Just when one starts to feel comfortable with the relative regularity of these, debt and subtle show up like a couple of toughs.

C

C may as well cede all power to s in words like science and scissors, but we’ll also point out that it’s not doing much of anything in acquire, indict, or muscle.

D

D is shirking its auditory duties in handkerchief and mostly doing the same in handsome. Its appearance in Wednesday can only be seen as some kind of cruel joke.

E

The word sleeve has an excessive number of e‘s. We’re saying it right now. Sleve or sleev would work fine, but English does not like to leave v‘s on the ends of words; it props them up with e‘s, as though they’d fall over otherwise. That v habit explains, then, words like leave and give, but there’s no excusing the e in words like imagine.

F

While some people do in fact pronounce the second f in fifth, the first pronunciation given in our dictionary is the one that omits it. Overall, however, f is to be commended for its performance generally. We’d give it an A, if we were on speaking terms with that letter.

G

G has no business being in sign nor phlegm, as far as the modern reader is concerned. It obviously doesn’t care. This callousness is also evident in that slew of gn- words: gnarl, gnash, gnat, gnaw, gnostic, gnu. It can be no surprise, then, that g also participates in the likes of such offenses as high, though, and through.

H

The h‘s at the beginning of heir, honest, and honor have nothing to say. Neither do the ones in rhyme and ghost. That h makes a contribution of a sort in the second syllable of rhythm only goes so far in repairing the letter’s record.

I

I doesn’t do a blessed thing in business, except to be impersonated by the u in the first syllable. It also does no discernible good in suit, which in a decent orthographic system would be spelled soot.

J

Some of you may be happy to know that we have at this point only one English word in which the j is silent: marijuana.

K

The silent k in an assortment of common words demonstrates a callousness for beginner spellers especially: knee, knife, knight, knit, knob, knock, knot, know, knuckle.

L

The most indecent of the silent l words is surely colonel. The word sounds identical to kernel, which is an honorable, respectfully spelled word. L is also silent in could, should, would, as well as in calf and half, and in chalk, talk, walk, and for many people in calm, palm, and psalm.

M

One can get through much of life never encountering m in its silent form. By the time a person is ready for a word like mnemonic they have likely come to accept the vagaries of silent letters.

There you have the first half of alphabet and the examples. Next time, we’ll finish the list with silent examples of N–Z. Once you’ve seen that, you’ll be ready for the next trivia night at your local TGIF!

Kara Church | Technical Editor, Advisory | Technical Publications

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

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

Good morning, friends!

Recently, I took a DNA test. It was a gift from my husband for my birthday. We both took tests years ago, and my results were that I was a huge part (more than 60%) Indigenous American. Have you seen me? I am pretty darn white. Not only that, but my parents also told us kids we were Irish, Welsh, British, Slovak, and German. Anyway, there were some secret ingredients in me, but no Indigenous American according to 23 and Me.

It did get me thinking about family names in my past, though. And then I stumbled on this article at Trivia Genius. It’s about surnames. I’d love to share some of the information with you.

First, surname: this is also sometimes referred to as your family name. When you look around the world, however, not every country uses surnames like the United States. According to the article, many people in Mongolia don’t have surnames, in Hungary, what we would call the “last name” comes first. In Iceland, a surname can change with each passing generation.

The article is about the 20 most common surnames. Since China and India would fill all of the top spaces because of the populations, the article took a sampling across the world and provided these results.

Nguyen (24.5 million)

About 2,100 years ago, China conquered present-day Vietnam. At the time, the Vietnamese didn’t have surnames, which was a problem for the Chinese, who wanted to keep track of their new vassals. So they started handing out surnames. One of those names was Ruan, which would evolve into Nguyen. “It seems likely that some mid-level Chinese bureaucrat, in seeking to figure out who actually lived in his newly conquered Vietnamese territory, simply decided that everyone living there would also be named Ruan — which became Nguyen,” writes Dan Nosowitz at Atlas Obscura.

Johnson (3.1 million)

This surname owes its popularity to the New Testament. The given name John is one of the most popular in Christian world, and for good reason — the Bible is chock-full of beloved Johns: John the Apostle, John the Baptist, and John the Evangelist to name a few. The spread of Christianity helped make John one of the most popular first names in the western world. When patronymic surnames became popular in the Middle Ages, Johnson became an obvious frontrunner — and it hasn’t looked back. It’s now the second most common surname in the United States.

Ivanov (2.5 million)

A leading surname in Bulgaria — and a top contender in other Eastern European countries — is basically a Slavic version of “Johnson.” That’s because Ivan is a mere translation of John, both of which trace back to the Greek name Ioannes, meaning “graced by Yahweh.” Variants such as Ivanov and Ivanovich basically mean “Son of Ivan,” whereas Ivanova is the most common feminization.

Rodriguez (9.2 million)

For Spanish surnames, the suffix -ez is patronymic. That is, anytime you see a Spanish name ending in -ez, the name means “son of.” The surname Rodriguez, for example,merely means “Son of Rodrigo.” It derives from the old Germanic name Hrodric, which loosely means “powerful ruler.” Back in the day, anybody in the Rodriguez clan could claim that he or she was related to a political bigwig.

Ali (29.8 million)

Ali ibn Abi Talib is something like Madonna or Prince: He’s so popular, people just know him by his first name — Ali. Both the cousin and son-in-law of the Islamic prophet Muhammad, Ali was also the religion’s fourth caliph (circa 656 CE), or successor, to Muhammad. His followers would become the first Shia Muslims, who now account for 10 percent of all Muslims. Ali’s place in Islamic history has turned his name, which means “lofty” or “sublime,” into one of the most common surnames in the Arabic world, primarily in Pakistan and Somalia.

This is just a sampling of the article. If you want to read more, click here. The history of these names is fascinating.

Kara Church | Technical Editor, Advisory | Technical Publications

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

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

Hello, and happy Thursday! As promised, today I’m serving up the second half of English idioms from around the world. If you have a favorite idiom, send it my way. I’ll compile a list to share with everyone.

I hope you enjoy these lively expressions and the rest of your day!

· My teacher is sitting on my head (my teacher is putting pressure on me). INDIA. In super-multilingual India, it’s not unusual for people to translate idioms from one language to another. This one comes from Hindi. My teacher’s really sitting on my head. He’s given us three essays to write by Monday.

· What’s for ye’ll no go past ye (what will be will be, qué será será) SCOTLAND. Don’t be fretting now, love. What’s for ye’ll no go past ye.

· Go for/out for a rip (go out for a drive somewhere and have a great time, usually with beer involved) CANADA. A: Hey buddy, wanna go for a rip? Just got the keys to my new truck. B: Hell, yeah!

· Out of whack (misaligned, wonky, broken, askew). US. Looks like you put those shelves up in a hurry! They’re a bit out of whack. In the UK, skew-whiff has a similar meaning.

· Lekker (cool, tasty, sexually attractive). SOUTH AFRICA. This word comes from Dutch via Afrikaans. A: Did you see that guy at the bar? B: I know, man – so lekker!

· Get off the grass (an expression of surprise or disbelief). NEW ZEALAND. A: Guess what! Jill and I are getting married. B: Get off the grass! I bet she thought you’d never ask her!

· Y’daft apeth (you idiot, you fool). MANCHESTER Don’t just stand there, y’daft apeth! Help me! Daft is a synonym of stupid and apeth comes from ha’p’orth, an abbreviation of halfpennyworth, i.e., an insignificant amount.

· Go to see a man about a dog (go to the toilet). UK. A: Are you leaving already? We’ve just ordered dessert. B: No, I’ll be right back. Just going to see a man about a dog. A good example of British reticence when it comes to talking directly about anything vaguely awkward.

· What’s occurrin’? (How are you?) WALES. This is a typical way to greet someone in the country, a little like What’s up?

· Bob’s your uncle (that’s all there is to it/that’s all it takes) VARIOUS. It’s really easy to use. Just plug it in, push this button, and Bob’s your uncle!

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

8985 Balboa Ave. | San Diego, CA 92123

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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Good morning, all. While happily scrolling through articles about language, I hippity-hopped down a rabbit hole about idioms, and I found a wonderful article called 21 Unusual English Expressions from Around the World. I love idioms—they bring language to life, and sometimes they reveal surprising secrets.

Today and Thursday, I want to share the idiom joy. Like many languages, English is spoken around the world, so it shouldn’t be a surprise that these English idioms are coined in some unexpected places. Not only do they come from the UK, Ireland, Australia, New Zealand, and South Africa, but some come from India and Singapore. I hope you get as much pleasure from these gems as I do. Since I’m sharing 20 of them (one was a bit too racy to include), I will give you half today and half next time. Enjoy!

· An omnishambles (something that has been managed or has turned out badly in every possible way) UK. First they mixed our rooms up, then the toilet flooded, and when we finally got to the beach it started raining. The entire holiday was an omnishambles!

· Go off like a frog in a sock (go berserk, go crazy). AUSTRALIA. Blimey, mate – if she sees the mess you’ve made, she’ll go off like a frog in a sock.

· A Bronx cheer (a loud sound, like blowing a raspberry, that expresses derision or contempt). NEW YORK. The crowd let out an enormous Bronx cheer when the quarterback fumbled the ball a second time.

· Catch no ball (I don’t understand) SINGAPORE. Tell me that again. Catch no ball, lah.

· Do the needful (do whatever you need to do to make it happen). INDIA. This plaintive little expression might come in handy if you ever need to deal with bureaucracy in India, where it’s often used in formal emails.

· The whole nine yards (everything available, everything possible, the whole way). US. The scholarship covers course fees, accommodation, even some living expenses – honestly, the whole nine yards!

· Donkeys’ years (a very long time). LONDON I haven’t seen Jeff in donkeys’ years. Although widely understood around the world, this expression really has nothing to do with the lifespan of donkeys at all. It’s actually an example of Cockney rhyming slang – donkey’s ears for years – that has been misinterpreted. [dbb – the origins of this one surprised me! My spouse sometimes uses this phrase, and he is from London where Cockney rhyming slang originates. Even he didn’t know this idiom
started out as rhyming slang.]

· I don’t give rocks (I don’t care at all). SOUTH AFRICA. I don’t give rocks what you think! I’m doing it anyway.

· Pack a sad (throw a tantrum). NEW ZEALAND. Don’t tease him like that or he’ll pack a sad. You know what he’s like.

· Put the heart crossways in someone (give someone a fright, a heart attack). IRELAND. Don’t be sneaking up on me like that, will you? You put the heart crossways in me.

Have a lovely day!

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

8985 Balboa Ave. | San Diego, CA 92123

Pronouns: she/her/hers

Symitar Documentation Services

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Good morning! Mind if I jump right in?

We editors talk a lot about writing clearly by cutting out unnecessary words and phrases. One way to do that is to look for and revise sentences written in passive voice. These sentences usually include the “to be” verb, and they emphasize the action or the object of a sentence instead of the subject (remember, the subject is the person or thing that is doing something in a sentence.)

To revise passive voice, you need to begin the sentence with a subject (in the example below, the subject is “the teller”).

Not only is the latter sentence a little shorter, it’s also clearer and easier to understand—which leads to another problem with passive voice: sometimes these sentences are confusing because it’s impossible to tell who did or should do the action. Here’s an example:

· The job should be run two times: once in the morning and once at the end of the day.

Who should run the job? Maybe it will be clear by the context of other sentences. Often though, it’s not. Along with the wordiness we already discussed, this ambiguity is another problem with passive voice. However, it’s also the reason a lot of people choose to use passive voice. You see, passive voice allows you to avoid attributing blame or responsibility. When 16-year-old me said to my dad, “There was an accident while I was driving your car,” I was trying really hard not to say, “Dad, I wrecked your car. Please don’t punish me.”

I was avoiding taking blame, and sometimes, in professional writing, you may want to avoid assigning blame, and in those cases, it’s OK to use passive voice. You might consider passive voice in the following instances:

· When the subject is unknown or unimportant:
Example: Quite a few vehicles are repossessed each month.
(I don’t know who repossessed the vehicles and it doesn’t matter in this context.)

· When the action, not the doer, is the focus of the sentence:
Example: Many sentences in Symitar eDocs are written in passive voice.
(I want to emphasize the issue, not the people who wrote the text.)

· When you do not want to attribute blame (as when a client makes a mistake or when you do, and you don’t want to take responsibility):
Example: Mistakes were made.

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

8985 Balboa Ave. | San Diego, CA 92123

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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My dear coworker, Ron, sent me a ton of Richard Lederer’s articles for my birthday, along with an adorable dachshund card. This is a “phone it in” day for me, and I am letting Mr. Lederer do all of the heavy lifting. This article was from Thanksgiving, but the terms and stories in here work all year round. I hope you find it interesting and educational. It will certainly help you save money if you throw a dollar in a dish every time one of his puns make you groan.

Click the title to read the full article; I clipped a few paragraphs to save space.

Food for thought: Every day we truly eat our words

Richard Lederer

Both our food and our language are peppered with salt. The ancients knew that salt was essential to a good diet, and centuries before artificial refrigeration, it was the only chemical that could preserve meat. Thus, a portion of the wages paid to Roman soldiers was “salt money,” with which to buy salt, derived from the Latin, sal. This stipend came to be called a salarium, from which we acquire the word salary. A loyal and effective soldier was quite literally worth his salt.

Salt seasons not only the word salary, but also the words salad, salsa, sausage, and salami. You don’t have to take my etymological explanations with a grain of salt. That is, you don’t need to sprinkle salt on my word stories to find them palatable.

If you know where the Big Apple is, why don’t you know where the Minneapolis? — which raises the question “Whence cometh the phrase Big Apple, referring to New York City?”

The first print citation shows up in 1921 in a regular racing column in the New York Morning Telegraph by one John Fitz Gerald, in which he used big apple to refer to the race tracks of New York. By 1924, Fitz Gerald had broadened the phrase to identify the city itself: “The Big Apple, the dream of every lad that ever threw a leg over a thoroughbred. There’s only one Big Apple. That’s New York.” The columnist wrote that he had first heard the phrase from two Black stable hands in New Orleans in 1920, for whom the big apple was their name for the New York racetracks — the big time, “the goal of every aspiring jockey and trainer.”

The cakewalk was originally a 19th-century entertainment invented by African Americans in the antebellum South. It was intended to satirize the stiff ballroom promenades of White plantation owners, who favored the rigidly formal dances of European high society. Cakewalking slaves lampooned these stuffy moves by accentuating their high kicks, bows, and imaginary hat doffings, mixing the cartoonish gestures together with traditional African steps. The most elegant and inventive contestants would receive a piece of cake, a prize that became the dance’s familiar name. Doesn’t that just take the cake?

Another member of the cake and pie family is bread. Companion derives from the Latin com, “together,” and panis, “bread.” You and I are companions who together break the bread of language. Breaking bread was an important ritual of welcome and hospitality. Hence, the word company.

I offer a toast to you, my verbivorous readers: “Here’s champagne to our real friends, and real pain to our sham friends!” Thank you for being real friends of our glorious, uproarious, victorious, courageous, outrageous, contagious, stupendous, tremendous, end-over-endous English language!

Kara Church | Technical Editor, Advisory | Technical Publications

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

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

Good morning!

My friend, Sam D. asked a question about how to use the indefinite articles a and an. Since quite a few people other than Sam have also asked me the same question, I thought I’d revisit the rule.

You may have learned that you use a before a word that starts with a consonant (for example, a dog) and you use an before a word that starts with a vowel (for example, an elephant). That rule is usually true, but it’s incomplete and not always accurate.

In reality, you should choose the article (a or an) based on the sound of the following word. Let’s take words that begin with the letter U, for example. The word unicorn begins with a Y consonant sound: yu-nicorn, so you would say a unicorn. On the other hand, the word umbrella starts with a U vowel sound (um-brella), so you would say an umbrella. Remember, it’s the sound, not the letter, that counts.

Words that begin with the letters eu start with the same Y consonant sound as unicorn, so you would use the article a with them:

• a eucalyptus tree
• a European woman
• a euphemism

And as Sam pointed out, it can be difficult to know which article to use with initialisms and acronyms: for example, you would say an SSN not a SSN because the letter S starts with an ess vowel sound. Here are some similar examples:

• an FBI agent
• an MIT graduate
• an R&D project

The letters F, M, and R all begin with vowel sounds (eff, em, ahr).

• an FBI agent
• an MBA degree
• an RFP (request for proposal)

Confused? I’ve only just begun!

Some words, like historic, can follow either a or an. How do you decide? It actually depends on your accent. When you speak, do you stress the H sound or not? I do, and most Americans do—we say a historic. But many Brits do not. For Brits, the H sound is silent—the same way we pronounce the word herb (like thyme and oregano, not the man’s name). Most Brits say an historic.

If you’re still a little confused (and who could blame you?), I found this online resource that might help: Is It ‘a’ or ‘an’? A List of Special Words.

Then, my British spouse would encourage you to pour yourself an ’ot cup of tea and get on with your day.

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

8985 Balboa Ave. | San Diego, CA 92123

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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How dare me? I was a little frazzled last week, and though I mentioned a “Happy Groundhog Day” to you, I did not give the celebration the attention that it really deserves.

Groundhog Day occurs every year on February 2, where people wait for the official groundhog, Punxsutawney Phil, to come out of his hole and “forecast” the weather conditions for the next six weeks. This prediction is made at Gobbler’s Knob in Punxsutawney, Pennsylvania. During the celebration, if Phil comes out and sees his shadow (meaning the sun is out), we are in for six more weeks of winter. On the other hand, if Phil does not see his shadow when he emerges (it’s cloudy or rainy), then we will have an early spring. Spoiler alert: this year Phil saw his shadow, so keep your warm blankets ready!

Here are a few things you may not know about Groundhog Day:

• This prediction of the weather using animals comes from ancient Europeans, who did not use groundhogs, but instead used hedgehogs and badgers. German-speaking immigrants came to the United States and continued to use animals, but instead of the badgers and hedgehogs they adopted the groundhog to forecast weather.
• Groundhog Day has its roots in the ancient Christian tradition of Candlemas. From Merriam-Webster:
  Since ancient times, a procession of lit candles has observed the day, whence the name Candlemas, and the observance comes from Scripture deeming Christ as "a light to lighten the Gentiles, and the glory of thy people Israel." Candlemas, given its occurrence in the beginning of February, also became a day on which people would prognosticate the arrival of spring according to its sunny or cloudy skies.
• From the Farmer’s Almanac:
  Punxsutawney Phil is the focal point of the oldest and largest annual Groundhog Day celebration, held in Punxsutawney, Pennsylvania. According to groundhog.org, 1886 marked the first time that Groundhog Day appeared in Punxsutawney newspaper, but 1887 was the first time the official trek to Gobbler’s Knob took place.

And the name, groundhog, is not their only label. As someone whose family comes from Pennsylvania, I can tell you that I heard much less about groundhogs growing up than I did about woodchucks. Both are names for the same animal, a North American marmot (a large—very large—ground squirrel). Woodchuck comes from the indigenous American names for the animal wuchak, wejack, and possibly otchek. My grandpa and uncle referred to them as something even cuter: whistle pigs.

“Stop right there! I predict six more weeks of winter, people. I’m crawling back into my underground mansion!”

Kara Church | Technical Editor, Advisory | Technical Publications

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

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