A few days ago, I introduced you to Procrustes, Procrustean solutions, Procrustean formatting, and a few other related terms. Today, I’d like to continue with some other words that come from Greek myths. While Procrustes was simply a villain, the next two people anger the gods in some way, and their names are associated with the punishments they are given.

Sisyphus

Sisyphus was the founder and king of what is now known as Corinth. When it was time for Sisyphus to die, Death came to fetch him for the boat ride across the River Styx and into the underworld. Using trickery, Sisyphus avoided death twice! He lived a much longer life that he was supposed to, but the Greek gods spare no wrath for humans who interfere with their plans. For fooling the gods twice, Sysiphus was punished by having to spend eternity rolling a huge boulder up a hill, and every time, just as he reaches the top, the boulder rolls down to the bottom again. According to Wikipedia, “tasks that are both laborious and futile are therefore described as Sisyphean.”

Tantalus

Tantalus, like many characters in Greek myths, had one parent who was divine, and another who was mortal. When Tantalus was among the gods, he committed crimes that led to his punishment. Some myths say he told mortals the secrets he learned in heaven, others say he tested the gods’ observation by killing his son, and lastly, he was accused of stealing the nectar and ambrosia from the gods and giving those to mortals—activities generally frowned upon.

The punishment for his crimes was that Tantalus “was made to stand in a pool of water beneath a fruit tree with low branches, with the fruit ever eluding his grasp, and the water always receding before he could take a drink.” (Wikipedia)

The Greeks use the proverb Tantáleioi timōríai (Tantalean punishments) in reference to those who have good things but are not permitted to enjoy them.

I thought of the word “tantalize” and had to see if it was related to Tantalus. Indeed, tantalize is from Tantalus. Here is a definition and etymology from Etymology Online:

tantalize (verb)

"to tease or torment by presenting something desirable to the view, and frustrating expectation by keeping it out of reach," 1590s, with -ize + Latin Tantalus, from Greek Tantalos, name of a mythical king of Phrygia in Asia Minor, son of Zeus, father of Pelops and Niobe, famous for his riches, punished in the afterlife (for an offense variously given) by being made to stand in a river up to his chin, under branches laden with fruit, all of which withdrew from his reach whenever he tried to eat or drink. His story was known to Chaucer (c. 1369). Related: Tantalized; tantalizing; tantalizingly; tantalization.

Here is a painting of Tantalus, which was printed on duvet covers. Why people, why?! I certainly hope your bedtime isn’t this unpleasant!

Kara Church

Pronouns: she/her/hers

Technical Editor, Advisory

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

Today I was reading an article and it referred to a Procrustean solution. I hadn’t heard that word for a long time, and I thought it was too good to pass up as an Editor’s Corner article. There are two other words I thought I should mention too: Sisyphean and Tantalean. These three words have something in common. First: they are all eponyms (words that come from people’s names). Second: these people are all from Greek myths. Rather than define the words first, I’ll tell you a little about the myths, and then you’ll see why the words mean what they do. The stories might even make them easier to remember.

Procrustes

In Greek mythology, Procrustes was a metal smith. He was no ordinary metal smith who would forge you a sword or make a doorknob for your house. No, Procrustes was a bandit and a scoundrel. He was called Procrustes “the stretcher” and “the subduer.” His favorite trick was to invite people in to sleep on his iron bed. If they did not fit (and nobody ever did), he would stretch them until they fit if they were too short, or he’d cut their legs off if they were too tall. Therefore, the word Procrustean describes “…situations where an arbitrary standard used to measure success, while completely disregarding obvious harm that results from the effort.” (Wikipedia)

Here are some additional uses of the word Procrustean that I thought were interesting (these are also from the Wikipedia article):

• A Procrustean solution is the undesirable practice of tailoring data to fit its container or some other preconceived structure. In a Procrustean solution in statistics, instead of finding the best fit line to a scatter plot of data, one first chooses the line one wants, then selects only the data that fits it, disregarding data that does not, to "prove" some idea. It is a form of rhetorical deception made to forward one set of interests at the expense of others. The unique goal of the Procrustean solution is not win-win, but rather that Procrustes wins and the other loses. In this case, the defeat of the opponent justifies the deceptive means.
• In computer science, a Procrustean string is a fixed length string into which strings of varying lengths are placed. If the string inserted is too short, then it is padded out, usually with spaces or null characters. If the string inserted is too long, it is truncated. The concept is mentioned in the Sinclair ZX81 and Sinclair Spectrum user manuals, where a portion of a string is replaced by another string using Procrustean assignment—the replacement string is truncated or padded in order to have length equal to the portion being replaced. Such an assignment is also sometimes referred to as Procrustean formatting.

Such craftiness and dishonestly is alive and well today, but it’s named after a mythical creature from long ago. And speaking of long, this will be too long if I continue with Sisyphus and Tantalus, so I’ll leave them for next time. In the meantime, stay away from iron beds and people nicknamed “The Stretcher.”

Kara Church

Pronouns: she/her/hers

Technical Editor, Advisory

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Editing: Symitar Documentation Services

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Good afternoon and happy Thursday, friends!

I had some free time the other afternoon, so I decided to get nerdy and read some grammar articles. I came across an article about common grammar mistakes. As an editor, I see my fair share. As a writer, I certainly make my fair share. But I was curious about what mistakes are most common. I won’t share them all, but I will share a few of the most common of the common mistakes so that we can try to avoid them.

• Overuse of adverbs

Adverbs usually end in ly. In trying to be descriptive, people tend to overuse them. The following examples show that the adverb doesn’t make the sentence any stronger.

Mistake: I drove really quickly to get to my appointment on time.

Correction: I drove quickly to get to my appointment on time.

• Misuse of lie/lay

Use the word lay if you are putting something down, but if you are going to make yourself horizontal, use the word lie.

Mistake: Lay your phone down and lay down on the couch with a good book.

Correction: Lay your phone down and lie down on the couch with a good book.

• Ambiguous pronoun references

Pronouns stand in for nouns. When you use them, you need to make it clear exactly what noun the pronoun stands in for. In the first example below, it is unclear who will receive the bonus. The corrected sentence makes it clear.

Mistake: The managers told the employees that they would receive a bonus.

Correction: The managers told employees that all employees would be getting a bonus.

• Comma splices/run-on sentences

When two independent sentences are joined with only a comma, we call that a comma splice. When there is no punctuation joining two independent sentences, we call that a run-on sentence. You can fix these mistakes by adding a period and creating two sentences or by adding a comma and a coordinating conjunction.

Mistake: I was very hungry, I ate almost the whole pizza. [comma splice]

Correction: I was very hungry. I ate almost the whole pizza. [period with two sentences}

Correction: I was very hungry, so I ate almost the whole pizza. [comma with coordinating conjunction]

• Wordiness

Writers used to get paid by the word. These days, business and technical writers are expected to use as few words as possible while still getting the point across clearly. It takes practice and a good bit of revision to pare a sentence down to make it both clear and concise.

Mistake: It has come to our attention that your tax returns are overdue and we urge you to file them at your earliest convenience.

Correction: Your tax returns are overdue. Please file them now.

• Would of/should of/could of

When we speak, we use a lot of contractions (for example, don’t, couldn’t, aren’t). The spoken contractions for would have (would’ve), should have (should’ve), and could have (could’ve) just happen to sound like would of, should of, and could of. But don’t be fooled: would of (and friends) are not grammatically correct options. If you write these phrases, use the full form, not the contraction: would have, should have, could have.

Mistake: I could of had a V8®!

Correction: I could have had a V8!

Donna Bradley Burcher | Senior Technical Editor | 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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Seven years ago, I wrote an article on one of the more polite nicknames my coworker Jackie gave me: Edie Munster, because I have a widow’s peak. More recently, one of you sent me an email and said:

I had a hair appointment last night, and the stylist and I got to wondering where the term “widow’s peak” came from. Any thoughts? And any other famous people besides Eddie Munster that has one?

Oh boy, do I have an answer! And I have more recent photos and updated information on widow’s peaks for you.

Today’s information is from Healthline.com.

If your hairline comes together in a downward V-shape at the center of your forehead, you’ve got a widow’s peak hairline. Basically, it’s higher on the sides and has a low point in the middle.

The widow’s peak is quite distinctive in some people, while others have just the hint of one. It may be more obvious when you pull your hair straight back.

Whether you have a straight hairline or a widow’s peak is mostly a matter of genetics.

Why is it called a widow’s peak?

The term “widow’s peak” may be a holdover from 18th-century England. Tradition was that when a husband died, his wife would wear a black triangular hat or hood with the point falling in the middle of the forehead.

[KC – Here’s an example.]

Widow’s Peak Myths

A widow’s peak is a type of hairline and nothing more, despite a few persistent myths.

Folklore would have you believe that a widow’s peak forecasts an early widowhood. There’s no basis in fact for this myth.

In television and movies, the widow’s peak tends to be a “bad guy” feature. Dracula and the Joker, for example, both have a widow’s peak.

Despite popular culture, you can rest assured that having a widow’s peak says nothing about character or personality. Consider actors in “good guy” roles, like Marilyn Monroe, Keanu Reeves, and Vanessa Williams, who all have prominent widow’s peaks.

This particular hairline is not a bad omen of any sort, nor is it a flaw. It’s just another thing you inherit from your parents, like green eyes, naturally curly hair, or dimples.

And now for some famous people with widow’s peaks:

Eddie Munster (Butch Patrick)

Chris Hemsworth

Milla Jovovitch

Kerry Washington [KC – Though her hair is usually covering it with bangs or longer styles.]

Leonardo DiCaprio

Kourtney Kardashian

And there are many more! Just search Google for “famous people with widow’s peaks” and then click Images.

Kara Church

Pronouns: she/her/hers

Technical Editor, Advisory

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

Just when I think we are done with mondegreens, someone hears the wrong song lyrics in a new song, or someone writes another book about mondegreens that I have to buy. The first list of mondegreens here is from the book I’ve mentioned several times, Mondegreens: A Book of Mishearings, by J. A. Wines. The second set is from a website called Mingle-Ish.

Kara Church

Pronouns: she/her/hers

Technical Editor, Advisory

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

Hello out there! I hope your summer is going well so far. I am relieved that I finally got to see my family in the Northwest and enjoyed a week of talking, hiking, and having adventures at Mt. St. Helens, Deception Pass, Nisqually Delta, and several other beautiful places near the Emerald City.

Outside of picnics, visiting with friends, and watching butterflies hover over flowers, another thing that’s been keeping folks busy is watching the Olympics. I always try to catch some swimming and gymnastic events, and this year I’ve been following some of the news about the mental health of several athletes. In particular, Simone Biles a U.S. gymnast who had issues with the twisties. Twizzlers? Who has problems with Twizzlers? They’re delicious!

But twisties are something completely different. And apparently, they are related to something else called yips. Let’s see what yips and twisties are.

From Wikipedia:

In sports, the yips (in gymnastics, the twisties) are a sudden and unexplained loss of skills in experienced athletes. Symptoms of the yips are losing fine motor skills and psychological issues that impact on the muscle memory and decision-making of athletes, leaving them unable to perform basic skills of their sport….

Originally coined by golfer Tommy Armour to describe a sudden and inexplicable loss of the ability to putt correctly, the term has later been broadened to apply to any unexplained loss of skill, and has been applied to athletes in a wide variety of sports.

Merriam-Webster offers a little more on the topic:

In gymnastics they call them “the twisties” — when the brain and body conspire to self-sabotage. Precise moves honed over years, to be as automatic as driving a car, suddenly become a torture and a danger even for a sporting phenomenon such as Simone Biles. In golf, the putting “yips” can feel debilitating, but no one gets hurt.— Matt Dickinson, The Times (London, Eng.), 28 Jul. 2021

None of that sounds very fun. Actually, watching the gymnasts always makes me wonder, “What made these kids and their parents think jumping on a trampoline and doing backflips was a good idea?” I think I’ll stick with swimming.

Cheers to this year’s Olympic athletes! They are the best of the best, except maybe when it comes to Olive and Mabel.

Kara Church

Pronouns: she/her/hers

Technical Editor, Advisory

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

It’s summer, and we’re all looking for ways to cool down. And nothing does it better than a milk shake, right?

But wait a minute…according to a book I’ve been reading (Wicked Good Words by Mim Harrison), we might not all be talking about the same thing.

Here in California, we usually just use the term shake rather than milk shake when we’re refering to a thick drink made by blending ice cream, milk, and flavorings. But across the country, folks use different terms.

In the Northeast, a milk shake does not include ice cream; it is simply milk that is shaken up with some flavor of syrup. If ice cream is involved, the blended drink is called a number of different things.

In Rhode Island, it’s sometimes called a cabinet (so named because the pharmacist who first blended one up kept either the ice cream or the mixer in a cabinet).

In Massachusets, they call it a frappe (from the French work frapper, meaning to ice).

In other parts of New England, it’s called a velvet. And to be more specific, if you want a shake made with vanilla ice cream and chocolate syrup, it’s called a black and white. If you use chocolate ice cream and chocolate syrup (now we’re talking!), it’s called an all black.

And I learned one more interesting tidbit while researching: McDonald’s does not use the term milk shake because dairy regulations vary from state to state on what can officially be called a milk shake—it depends on the percentage of milk fat—so they stick with the term shake.

I think Shakespeare said, “A shake by any other name, would taste as sweet.” Yeah, I’m pretty sure he said that. 😊

Keep cool and enjoy this summer day.

Donna Bradley Burcher | Senior Technical Editor | 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. I have been thinking about the easiest way to explain the difference between if and whether. By default, it seems people usually use if. But sometimes whether is the better choice and Grammar Girl did a really good job exaplaining why in a recent post. She provided this useful graphic:

And this is what makes the rule particularly important for us: she explains that “…in formal writing, such as in technical writing at work, it’s a good idea to make a distinction between them because the meaning can sometimes be different depending on which word you use.”

The following explanations and examples are from Grammar Girl’s post:

Here’s an example where the two words could be interchangeable:

· Squiggly didn’t know whether Aardvark would arrive Friday.

· Squiggly didn’t know if Aardvark would arrive Friday.

In either sentence, the meaning is that Aardvark may or may not arrive Friday.

Now here are some examples where the words are not interchangeable:

· Squiggly didn’t know whether Aardvark would arrive Friday or Saturday.

Because I used "whether," you know that there are two possibilities: Aardvark will arrive Friday, or Aardvark will arrive Saturday.

Now see how the sentence has a different meaning when I use "if" instead of "whether":

· Squiggly didn’t know if Aardvark would arrive Friday or Saturday.

Now in addition to arriving on Friday or Saturday, it’s possible that Aardvark may not arrive at all.

These last two sentences show why it is better to use "whether" when you have two possibilities, and that is why I recommend using "whether" instead of "if" when you have two possibilities, even when the meaning wouldn’t change if you use "if." It’s safer and more consistent.

Here’s a final pair of examples:

· Call Squiggly if you are going to arrive Friday.

· Call Squiggly whether or not you are going to arrive Friday.

The first sentence is conditional. "Call Squiggly if you are going to arrive Friday," means Aardvark only needs to call if he is coming.

The second sentence is not conditional. "Call Squiggly whether or not you are going to arrive Friday," means Aardvark needs to call either way.

To sum up, use "whether" when you have two discrete choices or mean "regardless of whether," and use "if" for conditional sentences.

Whether or not you found this useful, I hope you have a lovely day.

Donna Bradley Burcher | Senior Technical Editor | 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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Recently, I’ve known several people who’ve celebrated their birthdays. In fact, I’m preparing to make my dog a special cake for her 13th birthday. I remembered a website my former manager sent about dates—Merriam-Webster’s Time Traveler. This site lists, by year, the first time words and phrases appeared in print. Just to make it interesting, I went back 100 years, and I was a little surprised with what was new to print in 1921. Here are some of the words I was surprised about because I thought they were fairly recent and some I just liked the sound of. I’m including the words and terms, the part of speech they are used for, and their definitions.

Ouroboros

Pigboat class of submarine

Peppa Pigboat class of submarine

Shih tzu, aka “walking mop”

Kara Church

Pronouns: she/her/hers

Technical Editor, Advisory

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

Happy Thursday!

I thought I’d see if there was anything new on the internet about mondegreens, since those are always a popular topic. While mondegreens are generally defined as misheard song lyrics, I found a book that covers “mishearings” from many sources, including children’s rhymes, advertisements, phrases, church songs, and a whole passel of different things. Here is the first batch of items I have for you from Mondegreens: A Book of Mishearings, by Jacquie Wines. First are the original words or lyrics, followed by the misheard version or versions.

Children’s Songs and Nursery Rhymes

Mary had a little lamb / Its fleece was white as snow

Mary had a little lamb / Its fleas were white as snow

Head, shoulders, knees, and toes

Head , shoulders, sneeze, and toes

Little Miss Muffet / Sat on a tuffet / Eating her curds and whey

Little Miss Muffet / Sat on a tuffet / Eating her curtains away

Lavender’s blue, dilly dilly, / Lavender’s green

Laugh and turn blue, dilly dilly, / Laugh and turn green

The Alphabet Song

Children are often encouraged to sing the alphabet. Many, however, get stuck on the letters “L, M, N, O, P”, as these offerings show:

…L, M, N, O, P…

Elly, belly, bee

Yellow, mellow, pee

I’m a little bee

Elementary

Church Sounds and Songs

Father, Son, and…?

Father, Son, and Holy Goat

Father, Son, and the whole East Coast

Father, Don, and the Holy Ghost

Father, Son, and the Holy Smoke

Amazing grace, how sweet the sound / That saved a wretch like me!

I’m aging great, how sweet thou are / To spare a wretch like me.

Amazing grace, how sweet my aunt / Who saved a wretch like me!

Amazing grapes, how sweet thou art / To spare some for my tea.

Amazing grace, how sweet the sound / That saved a wench like me.

And I have a bit of popular music, misheard like your standard mondegreen. The original song is by Bob Marley:

I shot the sheriff, but I did not shoot the deputy.

I shot the sheriff, but I didn’t shoot him dead you see.

I shot the sheriff, but I did not shoot the dead beauty.

I shot the sheriff, but I did not shoot the dead pony.

I shopped with Cheryl…

I shot the sherry…

Kara Church

Pronouns: she/her/hers

Technical Editor, Advisory

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