Editor's Corner

Good morning! Today’s colors, from What Colors Mean in Other Cultures, are the secondary colors on the color wheel: green, purple, and orange.

Green

Green shares many common meanings around the world, some of which include nature, ecology, environmental awareness, the military, and the color for traffic lights.

In Western cultures, green represents spring, money, freshness, inexperience, jealously, greed, and Christmas (when combined with red). Nicknamed The Emerald Isle for its luscious green countryside, green is the national color in Ireland and it’s associated with good luck, leprechauns, shamrocks, and Saint Patrick.

Most Eastern and Asian cultures relate green with new and eternal life, new beginnings, fertility, youth, health, and prosperity. And while this is true in Chinese culture, wearing a green colored hat for men is taboo because it suggests the man’s wife is cheating on him.

After gaining its freedom from Spain in the 19th century, Mexico chose to display green in its flag to represent independence.

Across many South American cultures that are rich in forests, green symbolizes death.

Purple

Royalty, wealth, power, exclusivity, and fame are common themes for the color purple across many Eastern and Western cultures. For many centuries, purple dye was extremely rare and difficult to produce because it was extracted from sea snails. As a result, purple clothing was expensive and became a status symbol among kings, queens, and other rulers.

Just as black is the traditional color for death and grieving in many cultures, purple shares the same meaning in some European nations, including the U.K. and Italy, as well as Brazil, Thailand, India, and among many Catholics. In Thailand and Brazil, purple is customarily worn alongside black when mourning of the death of a loved one, and in Brazilian culture, it is considered unlucky to wear purple when not attending a funeral or related service.

In the United States, purple—the symbol for honor and courage—is represented by the Purple Heart, the military’s highest award given to soldiers, sailors, Marines, and airmen for their acts of bravery.

Orange

Ever heard that adding more orange to your wardrobe will liven things up? That’s because in many Western cultures, orange is considered a fun and edgy color, and represents curiosity, trying new things, and creativity.

Certain countries also associate orange with wealth. In the Netherlands, for example, it’s the national color and represents the Dutch Royal family. But in many Middle Eastern countries, such as Egypt, orange is associated with mourning.

In Japanese and Chinese cultures, orange signifies courage, happiness, love, and good health. And in Indian cultures, it’s symbolic of fire. The orange-colored spice, saffron, is considered to be lucky and sacred.

A symbol of strength and bravery in Ukraine, orange represents a time when the country came together in 2004 and stood up to the government during one of the biggest fraudulent presidential elections in history, known as the Orange Revolution.

I hope you’ve enjoyed this voyage around the world and what colors mean to its different people.

Kara Church

Pronouns: she/her

Technical Editor, Advisory

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

Hello, my friends. A happy autumn morning to you and yours. Today I’m going to continue with the topics of colors and what they mean around the world. The other day we looked at red; today we’ll have a gander at blue and yellow. As before, I’ll start with the positive and negative feelings and idioms associated with these colors in traditionally Western cultures. Then, we’ll move around the globe to see how some of the other cultures of the world view them.

Western Details (from Daily Writing Tips)

Blue
Positive: stability, loyalty, harmony and trust. The sea and sky. Things heavenly.
Negative: depression, coldness
Idioms: true-blue (loyal); the blues (feelings of depression)

Yellow
Positive: Sunny, happy, optimistic
Negative: deceitful, cowardly
Idioms: yellow, yellow-bellied, have a yellow streak down one’s back (cowardly). Yellow journalism (journalism more interested in sensationalism than facts).

Other Cultures’ Details (from What Colors Mean in Other Cultures)

Blue

From depression to royalty to trust, blue holds more meanings than any other color around the world.

In many Middle Eastern countries, blue means safety and protection, and is symbolic of heaven, spirituality, and immortality.

Many religions have their own associations for the color blue as well. For example, in many Latin American countries—which are known to have high Catholic populations— blue is a sign of hope and good health, and is symbolic of the Virgin Mary, who is often depicted wearing a blue robe and headscarf, and represents wealth.

In Judaism, blue is the shade for holiness and divinity, and in Hinduism it’s the color of Krishna—the most highly worshipped Hindu god who embodies love and joy, and destroys pain and sin.

Yellow

For a color that makes many of us feel cheery and warm, yellow has some surprisingly dark meanings in other cultures.

Take France, for example, where yellow signifies jealously, betrayal, weakness, and contradiction. In the 10th century, the French painted the doors of traitors and criminals yellow. And in Germany, yellow symbolizes jealousy.

In China, yellow is associated with pornography. When the Chinese term for "yellow picture" or "yellow book" is used to discuss any type of publication or media, it’s in reference to pornographic images and websites.

Yellow is reserved only for people of high rank in many African nations, because of its close resemblance to gold, which is universally associated with money, quality, and success. Egyptians also closely associate yellow with gold, which was commonly used to paint mummies and tombs before the deceased were sent to the afterlife, making it symbol for mourning.

In Japanese culture, yellow has represented bravery, wealth, and refinement since the War of Dynasties in 1357. During this time, warriors wore yellow chrysanthemums—which represent the emperor in Japan and royal family—as a pledge of courage.

Considered lucky in Thai culture, yellow is the lucky color for Monday, and it’s considered the most important shade of the week because it represents the King of Thailand, King Bhumibol, who has held reign since June 9, 1946, and was born on December 5th, in 1927—a Monday. To pay tribute to the king, many Thais wear yellow on Mondays, and some schools require all teachers to wear yellow during the first week of December.

Kara Church

Pronouns: she/her

Technical Editor, Advisory

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

Idioms are so useful and so good at getting a point across, but they are also often misused. Someone told me the other day that I should “nip it in the butt.” I laughed, but I can see why the person got it wrong. While the actual idiom is “nip it in the bud,” it makes sense either way.

Let’s start with a definition of idiom from Wikipedia: “An idiom is a common phrase which means something different from its literal meaning but can be understood because of popular use…Idioms are made of normal words that have a special meaning known to almost everyone.”

Like the mondegreens Kara sometimes shares (remember mondegreens are misheard song lyrics), misused idioms can be funny, but they can also be embarrassing to people who use them incorrectly—when either speaking or writing. So, to make sure you’re not embarrassed by using an incorrect idiom, I thought I’d share some of the most common ones. I gathered this partial list from a few different online resources.

Have I piqued your interest? If you want to see more, check out this list of (mostly) different misused idioms I shared a few years back: 12 Idioms You Might be Getting Wrong.

Donna Bradley Burcher |Technical Editor, Advisory | Symitar®

8985 Balboa Ave. | San Diego, CA 92123 | Ph. 619.278.0432 | Ext: 765432

Pronouns she/her/hers

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, folks!

I recently received an article from Daily Writing Tips about colors and their meanings. I know back in January I talked about “fancy colors,” and in years past I have probably written half a dozen other articles on color, but there is always something new. The Daily Writing Tips article mentioned colors in several literary works, but I noticed they were all Western classics, and the examples were all from English-speaking countries. I did some extra research and found a blog called What Colors Mean in Other Cultures.

Suddenly, I found myself with enough information to start putting a term paper together. But this is supposed to be interesting and fun, not tedious! This is the quote from Daily Writing Tips that piqued my interest:

In Gone with the Wind by Margaret Mitchell, our first view of Scarlett O’Hara (her very name conjures up the image of a dangerous woman) emphasizes her green eyes. Because colors can have more than one type of connotation, green in the description of Scarlett has nothing to do with plants. Negative associations with green include envy and deviousness.

“The green eyes in the carefully sweet face were turbulent, willful, lusty with life, distinctly at variance with her decorous demeanor.”

I’m sure many of you have read Gone with the Wind and seen the movie. This description captures so much about Scarlett’s look, personality, and being. The use of colors in descriptions can set a mood. Inspired by the two references on color mentioned above, I would like to delve deeper into the ways different cultures feel about colors. Let’s start this series with the color red.

For those of you who are fully or partially colorblind, I hope you will still find value in this information.

Western Details (from Daily Writing Tips)

Red
Positive: excitement, passion, life
Negative: danger, guilt
Idioms: red light (warning to stop); red flag (a sign of danger); red-handed (in the act); red in the face (embarrassed)

Other Cultures’ Details (from What Colors Mean in Other Cultures)

Red is the most powerful of all colors in Indian culture and holds many important meanings. Among them are fear and fire, wealth and power, purity, fertility, seduction, love, and beauty. Red is also representative of a certain time and place in one’s personal life, including when a woman gets married. A married woman can be identified by the red henna on her hands and the red powder, known as sindoor, worn along her hairline.

In South Africa, red is associated with mourning, and the section of red in the country’s flag symbolizes violence and sacrifices that were made during the struggle for independence.

In Thai tradition, each day of the week is assigned a specific color and is linked with a particular God. Red is the color for Sundays, and it’s associated with Surya, a solar God, who was born on this day. Many Thai people pay their respects to Surya by wearing red on his birthday each year.

In Chinese culture, red is traditionally worn on the New Year, as well as during funerals and weddings. It represents celebration and is meant to bring luck, prosperity, happiness, and a long life to the people.

Next time we’ll have a look at the two other primary colors: yellow and blue.

Kara Church

Pronouns: she/her

Technical Editor, Advisory

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

One of you wonderful people introduced Donna and me to a daily email called “A.Word.A.Day with Anu Garg.” One of the recent words, sinisterity, made me very curious because of my Catholic upbringing and my left-handed brother. I don’t know if the church still teaches that left-handedness and the left side are evil, but the definition of sinisterity led me down that rabbit hole I often end up in.

To prevent the rest of you from getting too dirty, I created this table. Information from the emails and my favorite etymology site: Online Etymology Dictionary.

And back to Catholicism for a minute. From the 1920s all the way through the 1970s, Catholic schools still taught that “left” was evil. My grandfather and brother were both forced to write with their right hands, even though they were already identified as “lefties.” The result for both? Ambidexterity. Grandpa could even write at the same time with both hands.

Kara Church

Pronouns: she/her

Technical Editor, Advisory

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

As neighborhood Halloween decorations go up, I’ve been wondering what kind of tricks and treats to provide you this year. One of our coworkers, Alan, was kind enough to send this article, Why We Knock on Wood, and the Origins of 7 Other SuperstitionsHere are two of my favorites, but the others are available online. Thank you, Alan!

Spilling Salt

Salt is essential to human life and was once an extremely valuable commodity, so much so that the word “salary” derives from it. The crystalline mineral was used in ancient Jewish, Greek, and Roman sacrifices, and it was the primary means of preserving food before refrigeration came along. Over the years, salt became associated with purity, incorruptibility, and sanctity—good for both staving off rot and evil spirits. It stood to reason, then, that spilling salt was bad for both the budget and soul.

During the Renaissance, Leonardo da Vinci strengthened the association between spilled salt and misfortune by depicting Judas with a saltcellar knocked over next to him in his painting “The Last Supper.” [KC – See Judas below, spilled salt next to him; red square mine, not Leonardo’s.]

At some point, a belief arose that taking a pinch of salt with the right hand and throwing it over the left shoulder would counteract any bad luck caused by spilling the stuff. The idea comes from an imagined link between the left side and the devil—as well as the idea that Satan just can’t stand salt. [KC – Who knew?]

Friday the 13th

This superstition marries ideas about both Friday and the number 13 to create what is supposedly the unluckiest day of the calendar. The aura of doom around the number 13 may go back to early civilizations who based their numerical systems on the number 12. (That’s how we got 12-month calendars and days divided into 12-hour segments, for one thing.) Because it came right after 12, 13 was seen as a problematic or strange leftover.

Odd as it may seem, the association is reinforced by two stories of ancient dinner parties. In Norse mythology, evil was introduced into the world when the trickster god Loki showed up as the 13th guest at a dinner in Valhalla. Judas Iscariot, who betrayed Jesus, was also the 13th guest to arrive at the Last Supper. That led to a belief, starting around the 17th century, that it was unlucky to have 13 guests at a table. Incidentally (or not), it was also imagined that witches’ covens usually numbered 13.

Friday, meanwhile, was the day Jesus was crucified. By tradition, it was also thought to be the day Eve gave Adam the apple and they were cast out of the Garden of Eden. In Britain, Friday was also Hangman’s Day, when those condemned to die met their fate. Somehow, over the centuries, these ideas combined to give Friday a bad rep…

Yet it was only the Victorians who combined the ideas around Friday and the number 13 to create the idea of Friday the 13th as being uniquely unlucky. Of course, these days the American horror film franchise may have reinforced the idea.

Knock on wood, I wish the best of luck to you on Halloween!

Kara Church

Pronouns: she/her

Technical Editor, Advisory

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

Not long ago, in an article I wrote about apostrophes and possessive words, I discussed “driver license” vs. “driver’s license.” I said then that the correct term is “driver’s license.” Quite a few of you checked your licenses and promptly let me know that “Driver License” is written, as clear as day, right at the top of your license.

Here’s the not so funny part—my California license is called a “Driver License.” How did I never notice that? (It could be because the photo is so bad, that I don’t notice anything else.) You won’t be surprised to know that the states are not consistent about what they call this license.

I did some more digging to find out why some states don’t use the possessive term, “driver’s license,” and here’s what I found, according to Wikipedia:

• A “driver’s license” is a license that belongs to a driver.
• A “driver license” is a license to drive.

So, I can show you my personal driver’s license (it is mine; it belongs to me), but the DMV issueds me a driver license (a license to drive). No wonder people are confused!

My manager, Ben, put it this way: he said that states that call it a driver license “…might want to emphasize that the license doesn’t belong to a driver (since no one has an innate right to drive). Rather, the license turns a nondriver into a driver.” OK. That makes sense, but it doesn’t explain why some states call it a driver’s license, some call it a driver license, and some call it an operator license. Oh, the inconsistency!

In the UK, it is called a “driving license.” That solves the problem. I’m going with that.

Oh, and I also have one of these:

Donna Bradley Burcher |Technical Editor, Advisory | Symitar®

8985 Balboa Ave. | San Diego, CA 92123 | Ph. 619.278.0432 | Extension: 765432

Pronouns: she/her/hers

Editing: Symitar Documentation Services

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As writers and editors, we tend to spell things out a little more than most. We explain what acronyms stand for the first time we use them; we avoid “info” and write information, we spell out documents instead of writing “docs”; and we avoid abbreviations.

Sometimes, however, we make exceptions, but we still like being consistent with those exceptions. This brings me to the topic of today: 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, and 365 days a year. Imagine if you will, a document that mentions this full coverage ten different times. What a mouthful and an eyeful! Read that often enough and you could be asleep very quickly. At some point, all of these amounts of time were whittled down to the numbers 24/7 or 24/7/365. Hip hip hooray!

Here is where the editors come in. Remember we are one company, and we want to represent time consistently. Here are a few reminders for you.

Correct:

24/7 or 24/7/365

Incorrect:

24 x 7 x 365

24x7x365

24 / 7 / 365

24*7*365

The slashes are the only correct symbol to use between the numbers, and you do not need spaces before or after the slashes.

The time of day is a little more flexible. We prefer hours and minutes, with a.m. and p.m. in lowercase and with periods. Time zones should be written in capital letters and without representing Daylight or Standard time. Here are some examples.

Correct:

7:30 a.m.

7 a.m.–3 p.m.

5:15 p.m. ET

Incorrect:

5:15 PST (do not mention Standard time)

6 A.M. (do not use capital letters with periods)

7:30 AM – 9:30 PM (do not use capital letters without periods; do not use spaces on either side of the en dash)

In case you forget the different zones, here you go:

Eastern Time: ET

Central Time: CT

Mountain Time: MT

Pacific Time: PT

Wherever you are and whatever time it is, I hope you have a lovely day!

Kara Church

Pronouns: she/her/hers

Technical Editor, Advisory

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

Dear Editrix,

Are there ever any good reasons to use words like “whilst” or “amongst?” I consider such words archaic and would avoid their use, but I see them in current writings by educated people.

Dearest Reader,

My response to you was going to be, “Yes, I agree. They sound a bit old and stuffy for today.” But then I decided I didn’t really know much about these words, so I thought I should look a little deeper into these three pairs:

• Among/amongst
• Amid/amidst
• While/whilst

Writer and teacher Brian Wasko begins his article about these couplets with the question: Which do you prefer? The following are selected tidbits from his answer that might help you decide if you want to avoid them or start sprinkling your speech with them.

Let’s be clear: this is a matter of preference, not correctness. Amongst is a legitimate and commonly used alternative to among. And the same goes for amidst and whilst.

These -st forms come across as old-fashioned to many—mostly American—ears. They have a King James/Shakespearean ring to them. But according to the OED blog, among and while are older than amongst and whilst, which were formed during the Middle Ages….You may consider them outdated, but it’s not legitimate to dismiss amongst, amidst, and whilst as archaic, both because among, amid, and while are actually older forms, and because all three are still in common popular use….

In terms of dictionary definition, there is no difference between among and amongst, amid and amidst, or while and whilst. They are interchangeable. On both sides of the Atlantic, the truncated versions are more common, but you are much more likely to hear amongst, amidst, and whilst in the United Kingdom than in the States….

This doesn’t stop people from feeling strongly one way or the other, of course. Some insist that the -st versions are outmoded, pointless, and/or pretentious and should always be replaced by their shorter contemporary forms. Others argue that amongst, amidst, and whilst are more elegant, trip easier off the tongue, or are subtly distinct in meaning and should be preserved.

Amidst the noise and flying fur, I will sit amongst my dogs whilst you consider which you prefer.

Kara Church

Pronouns: she/her/hers

Technical Editor, Advisory

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

Recently I sent out a couple of idiomatic phrases to you and briefly explained why they are sometimes difficult to understand. For example, when someone says it’s “raining cats and dogs” that means it is raining really hard; it has nothing to do with dogs and cats falling from the air. Today I’d like to talk about something different. Today’s words and phrases are called calques. A calque is a word or phrase from another language that is translated word-for-word in English. Calque is the French word for a copy of something. The word calquer means “to trace” in French.

An article from Daily Writing Tips gives us several examples. Here are two that I liked:

Another calque for writers comes from Czech psát do šupliku, “write for the drawer.” This is an expression that developed along with the Russian word samizdat, which refers to the practice of underground publishing of state-proscribed materials, often by hand, and passed around from reader to reader. In English, writing for the drawer can refer to any writing not intended for immediate publication.

Crab mentality is a calque from Tagalog isip talangka. It derives from the behavior of crabs in a pot. As one tries to escape over the side, it’s pulled down by the others in the pot. Applied to people, it refers to the unfortunate tendency of group members to resent or obstruct the progress of a colleague seen to be rising above the performance of the others.

Wikipedia provides calque examples from several languages. Here are some of the German ones they list. You should be able to see the relationship between the original German word and its translation to English.

· Beer garden calques Biergarten

· Concertmaster and concertmeister calque Konzertmeister

· Earworm calques Ohrwurm

· Flamethrower calques Flammenwerfer

· Intelligence quotient calques Intelligenzquotient

· Loanword calques Lehnwort

· Nostalgia calque Heimweh "home sore"

· Overman and superman (i.e., self-transcending human) calque Übermensch

· Rainforest calques Regenwald

· Stormtroopers calques Sturmtruppen

· Watershed calques Wasserscheide

This is one of the pictures I found when searching for a funny calque meme. I have no idea what the connection is, but a hot dog sounds delicious right now. (Okay, I’m fasting. Anything sounds good right now!)

Kara Church

Pronouns: she/her/hers

Technical Editor, Advisory

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