ASF spelling and grammar lessons

2020hindsight · 4 October 2008

well I'm with noi ... who started all this with his post..

When a hyphenated phrase is coming up, and you are qualifying it beforehand, it is necessary to write, "He was a two- or three-year-old."

Incidentally, Wiki agrees with us (well doesn't disagree at least, lol)
(PS the entire hyphen matter seems to be amazingly optional)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyphen

Suspended hyphens
A suspended hyphen (also referred to as a "hanging hyphen" or "dangling hyphen") may be used when a single base word is used with separate, consecutive, hyphenated words which are connected by "and", "or", or "to".

For example, "nineteenth-century and twentieth-century" may be written as

"nineteenth- and twentieth-century."

This usage is derived from that of German, which uses a dangling hyphen when the second word is unhyphenated, e.g., Die Lumpen- und Arbeiterproletariaten

Die Luft ist kÃ¼hl und es dunkelt,
Und ruhig flieÃŸt der Rhein;
Der Gipfel des Berges funkelt,
Im Abend- unt/oder Morgen-sonnenschein.

white_crane · 5 October 2008

No wonder people think the English language should be simplified.

noirua · 5 October 2008

noirua said:
When a hyphenated phrase is coming up, and you are qualifying it beforehand, it is necessary to write, "He was a two- or three-year-old."

The above came from Lynne Truss, who is a renowned expert on the English language. It is correct.

There is a school of thought that advises, "where ever reasonable", the hyphen should be dropped, and the more recent Oxford Dictionary suggests it is heading for extinction.

2020hindsight · 5 October 2008

Well I must be old fashioned
Most certainly I would include a hyphen here for example (and I would argue it is crazy not to) :-

The ancient Roman bridge was a magnificent example of an efficient military sub- and superstructure construction.

i.e. " example of an efficient military sub and superstructure construction..". just doesn't look right to my eye. i.e. did the Romans make submarines ?

rederob · 5 October 2008

noirua said:
The above came from Lynne Truss, who is a renowned expert on the English language. It is correct.

There is a school of thought that advises, "where ever reasonable", the hyphen should be dropped, and the more recent Oxford Dictionary suggests it is heading for extinction.

Truss was a sports journalist who wrote a book on punctuation that became a best seller. She is not a grammarian nor any sort of expert on English language or writing.

The core of this thread is "lessons".
These differ markedly across English speaking nations.
I always "capitalise" after a colon: (sic) Americans do not not.
I place commas and periods outside quotation marks and Americans do not.

I use as little "punctuation" as possible.
Indeed, with technology it is possible to punctuate using only the style formats of software:
you see no capitals no periods and emphasis where and how i choose because reading is a visual form if the rules are consistent we will process them into our learning and retain them as we progress thus this sentence began in lower case bold but you already know that so long as we are consistent in what we do others will have little difficulty following this breaks down only when long and complex sentences are used however good writing can and should avoid that

The above is no different from "texting". Cohorts have their own rules and language for messaging each other. It's curious that they are willing to invest in learning "texting" language and rules yet often can't spell or punctuate.

rederob · 5 October 2008

2020hindsight said:
Well I must be old fashioned
Most certainly I would include a hyphen here for example (and I would argue it is crazy not to) :-

The ancient Roman bridge was a magnificent example of an efficient military sub- and superstructure construction.

No, you are probably intellectually challenged.
When a Roman Bridge can be a submarine I will defer to your hyphenation.

Stop creating non-senses from clear senses. Drop the extra hyphen and the above sense remains wholly unambiguous.

2020hindsight · 5 October 2008

english (English) needn't be perfect I agree. - especially if we use the benchmark that communication of an idea is sufficient. ( ala texting I guess - the fewer letters and punctuation marks the better - and cheaper).

changing tac a bit,
my son came back from kindy or first grade (forget) with a painting and a sentence "the good pirat stabbed the bad pirat" - and as with most of his paintings, there were swords and gore all over the place lol.

I calmly said " WOW that's great mate!" .. and then as gently as I could "err but you know pirat should be pirate yes?"

Straight away his enthusiasm was dashed - "I'm not gonna show you any more of my paintings dad" lol . I was suitably chastened, and never complained again.

Though I wouldn't be surprised if he spells it pirat to this day lol.

2020hindsight · 5 October 2008

rederob said:
No, you are probably intellectually challenged.

rob , there you go again .. namecalling.
I'm not gonna share any of my hypotheticals with you again lol.

PS it's an example for goodness sake.

Stop creating non-senses from clear senses. Drop the extra hyphen and the above sense remains wholly unambiguous.

Rob - I'm guessing that an ABC newsreader, or for that matter a person who is trying to speed-read a long technical report on bridges or Romans - or arguments on grammar for that matter - would agree that the hyphen helps make it crystal clear, and they don't run such a risk of being caught up with a double take on an ambuiguous meaning.

2020hindsight · 5 October 2008

PS Rob, you gentleman you , Lemme put it this way...
Suppose I go to the trouble of getting a ruling from an ABC reader.... or the English Dept of Uni of Sydney ... or some such ...
and suppose they ruled in my favour ...

a) would you accept that ruling , and
b) would you apologise for introducing personal insults into a discussion about grammar?

btw, if they ruled in your favour I'd stand corrected. Not sure I'd have anything to apologise over, but I's stand corrected I concede.

2020hindsight · 5 October 2008

Rob,
ahh when in doubt ask "the boss". My wife recently did a course on this stuff. Textbook? "The Style Manual" Edn 6 put out by the Australian Govt Attorney-General's Dept. As close as you'll get to the official Aussie Bible yes?

Here's what it says about hanging hyphens...
"full- and part-time positions" (specified as ok)
but potentially ambiguous,

- and the way to avoid this ambiguity is not - as you would suggest, to say
"full and part-time positions" (not ok - well, not even mentioned, presumably not ok)

but to say
"full-time and part-time positions" (specified as ok)

PS this is directed at anyone else but Rob - maybe someone who can smile at an attempted joke, even if it's a failure.

I wonder how they'd say ..

"the new brewery worker positions were half full- and half part-time." lol

PS at risk of being thrown into jail, I post the copyright page (as an acknowledgment ) ... It's not like those photocopied books you buy in Taiwan, lol - that even copy the copyright page - you'll notice that you can contact the Commonwealth Copyright Administration if you have "inquiries concerning reproduction"

Wysiwyg · 5 October 2008

The telephone text message era may well be spawning an increase in "condensing" of what one has to communicate.Punctuated compensation for poor grammar is on the rise!

Why write - "full- and part-time positions" with a hyphen when without or better still "full-time and part-time positions" is more descriptive, accurate and smmoootthh.

rederob · 5 October 2008

2020

Learn to read for comprehension, and then enjoyment.
You are clearly challenged by the former.
I am not saying it is wrong to use the extra hyphen in your examples.
When they add nothing to the sense, why use them?
Furthermore, if one writes well there is little need for disambiguation, and punctuation can be kept to a minimum.

2020hindsight · 5 October 2008

rederob said:
2020

Learn to read for comprehension, and then enjoyment.
You are clearly challenged by the former.
I am not saying it is wrong to use the extra hyphen in your examples.
When they add nothing to the sense, why use them?
Furthermore, if one writes well there is little need for disambiguation, and punctuation can be kept to a minimum.

rederob,

ok ok - continue the lecturing parent tone if you wish / must... (some people have trouble getting out of that gear ...)

but in the end I have to conclude , concerning those questions on post #489 , that

a) would you accept that ruling , ........NO; and
b) would you apologise for introducing personal insults into a discussion about grammar? NO.

we move on...

rederob · 5 October 2008

2020
You are challenged in comprehending rather simple concepts.
You "conclusions" have no basis.
Your posts are a mish mash of styles, suggesting you have little capacity for consistency.
Apart from some excellent links, your contributions to this thread seem otherwise self-serving.
You could open your mind to other perspectives.
English is in a constant state of flux.
I enjoy being able to write in different styles without changing the sense I wish to convey.
I am not offended by poor grammar nor spelling.

2020hindsight · 5 October 2008

rederob said:
2020
You are challenged in comprehending rather simple concepts.
You "conclusions" have no basis.
Your posts are .. etc.

well rederob

you are challenged in comprehending simpler concepts still..

namely that the "Style Manual for authors, editors and printers" - as published by the Commonwealth Govt Attorney-General's Dept - as taught to proof readers - disagrees with you.

In fact your option "full and part-time positions" is apparently wrong.

good luck with your spin-doctoring of that one...

rederob · 5 October 2008

To begin, the "Style Manual" is authored by the Department of Finance and Administration and is printed by John Wiley & Sons Australia.
I used the Manual for about 10 years when preparing material for publishing by the then Australian Government Publishing Service.
It's an excellent reference book.
Like any manual it provides for consistency if followed to the letter.

There is a case for hanging hyphens, but they are used too frequently by pedants who stick to an application rule rather than a sense rule.

An example:
"A survey found that creative tendencies were not evenly spread throughout right- and left-handed populations."

As the survey was of people, we need to differentiate the "right" from those who could be wrong, yet mostly used their right hands.

It is my preference not to hyphenate "right or left-handed" or "full and part-time" unless an ambiguity is probable.

noirua · 6 October 2008

rederob said:
Truss was a sports journalist who wrote a book on punctuation that became a best seller. She is not a grammarian nor any sort of expert on English language or writing.

The core of this thread is "lessons".
These differ markedly across English speaking nations.
I always "capitalise" after a colon: (sic) Americans do not not.
I place commas and periods outside quotation marks and Americans do not.

I use as little "punctuation" as possible.
Indeed, with technology it is possible to punctuate using only the style formats of software:
you see no capitals no periods and emphasis where and how i choose because reading is a visual form if the rules are consistent we will process them into our learning and retain them as we progress thus this sentence began in lower case bold but you already know that so long as we are consistent in what we do others will have little difficulty following this breaks down only when long and complex sentences are used however good writing can and should avoid that

Unfortunately your sentence does not make much sense, because it has no punctuation.

2020hindsight · 6 October 2008

rederob said:
To begin, the "Style Manual" is authored by the Department of Finance and Administration ..

True, I decided not to clarify that one further - thinking it a trivial point - didn't think Joe would thank me for filling up the post back there with more than 3 pages scanned from that book - I thought, rather than confuse, I would refer only to the Attorney General's Dept - which is mentioned in one of those scans - as being the Dept from whom you must apply for permission to reproduce - which lead into that line, intended to be a light hearted joke.

I thought it was a nice segue into said joke - nice change of direction from your insults of others being intellectually challenged.

Yes, the "Client Agency" is the Dept of Finance and Administration.
Either way, it's the Commonwealth Govt is it not?

And does that make any significant difference to the argument?

I used the Manual for about 10 years when preparing material for publishing by the then Australian Government Publishing Service.

OK, your credentials are superior to mine. Conceded.

Still, that book mentions my example, but doesn't mention yours. So I'm not sure which way the Dept would rule here, your interpretation or mine.

I enjoy being able to write in different styles without changing the sense I wish to convey.
I am not offended by poor grammar nor spelling.

Still maybe you could keep working on that tolerance you mention..

Let's agree that neither of us were "wrong" then.
I'll continue to write it ...

"full- and part-time positions"

and you keep up your verstaility with presumably the option to use any one of those three options

"full and part-time positions"
"full- and part-time positions"
"full-time and part-time positions"

Speaking of segue...
I'm gonna segue into another topic of conversation....
In checking the spelling of segue (not a word I often commit to print - only ever hear it on ABC radio let's face it)
I ran across this phrase - which I thought was pretty poetic...

"Daylight segued into dusk" Susan Dworski

or if you prefer - the challenge for pop groups etc ...

"How do the world's most celebrated adolescents [sc. the Rolling Stones] segue into middle age?"
(lol try premature three-quarter age)

Segue
To move smoothly and unhesitatingly from one state, condition, situation, or element to another.

2020hindsight · 6 October 2008

I'll continue to write it ...
"full- and part-time positions"

PS and wysiwyg will continue to write ...

"pre-Antidisestablishmentarianism and post-Antidisestablishmentarianism"

(whereas I would be 12 syllables further down the document wys lol)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antidisestablishmentarianism

Antidisestablishmentarianism (listen to British sample (info), American sample (info)) is a political position that originated in nineteenth-century Britain, where antidisestablishmentarians were opposed to proposals to remove the Church of England's status as the state church of England forwarded principally by both Payne and Tuffin.

The movement succeeded in predominantly Anglican England, but failed overwhelmingly in Roman Catholic Ireland – where the Church of Ireland was disestablished in 1871 – and in Wales whose four Church of England dioceses were disestablished in 1920, subsequently becoming the Church in Wales. Antidisestablishmentarian members of the Free Church of Scotland delayed merger with the United Presbyterian Church of Scotland in a dispute about the position of the Church of Scotland.

The term has largely fallen into disuse; however, the issue itself is still current (see Act of Settlement 1701).. etc etc .

likewise :-
pre- and post-floccinaucinihilipilification

where floccinaucinihilipilification means "to value something at nothing" - much like the sub-prime meltdown really

Longer words typically have been coined by specific authors in relatively modern times, or are obscure technical names. For example, floccinaucinihilipilification, first used in prose by William Shenstone in 1741, is 29 letters long, but was thought to have been coined as a nonsense word by a single person or small group of students at Eton. It is rumoured that this was intended to mean "to value something at nothing" or to describe a lack of value.

rederob · 8 October 2008

2020hindsight said:
PS and wysiwyg will continue to write ...

"pre-Antidisestablishmentarianism and post-Antidisestablishmentarianism"

likewise :-
pre- and post-floccinaucinihilipilification

where floccinaucinihilipilification means "to value something at nothing" - much like the sub-prime meltdown really

For the sake of good English I would hope that PS and wysi do not capitalise "antidisestablishmentarianism".
Also, floccinaucinihilipilification is not a verb, so does not mean "to" anything.
Thus endeth the lesson.

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