Culs-de-sacOriginally posted by Tom R
Mothers-in-law
What I Really Hate: Random use of Capital Letters as though the writer works for a Publication which uses Headlines.
One of my photo's shows a cleaner's with one of those extraneous apostrophe's. The letter kerning and a shadow on the facade show where it was had been.
my Planner loves using "random" capital Letters and random Quotation "marks."
drives "me" Batty.
In the end, we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends. -Martin Luther King Jr.
My favorite misspelling, and I'm sure you've all seen it or woke up in a cold sweat worrying about it, was a power point presentation where the l was omitted from public. AND, I hate the little grammar Nazi in Word that doesn't like powerpoint as one word.
WALSTIB
Me personally, I'm anal about spelling. It is a pet peeve of mine when people talk in "text mode" while online (personals, blogs, fb, ms, etc.). I can't even do it, or else I would give an example........like "How R U 2day" type of stuff.
One thing I am horrible with, is my overuse of comma's. I'm also bad at punctuation. For example, should the word "comma's" in the above sentence have an apostrophe?! Who knows, who cares....that's why I have my stuff proofread.....
Ok dandy I think I just proved in this thread, that I am *that* person
I care, and perhaps I can help.
Commas, as used in the plural sense above, don't have an apostrophe, which is used to show ownership.
The apple's price is $1.00.
APPLES (not APPLE'S)
$1.00
Actual signage from our 24.7 hypermart:
Cat's that sleep well are healthier
Cats is plural, no punctuation needed.
In summary: to write about "more than one" of something, don't use punctuation. We'll cover it's and its later!
The Word grammar Nazi recognizes "powerpoint" as misspelled because it is a proper noun and its proper (and copyrighted) spelling is "PowerPoint."
Lame, I know.
"Where free unions and collective bargaining are forbidden, freedom is lost." - 1980 Republican presidential candidate Ronald Reagan
It's possible that such Capitalizations were being done by Someone from a primarily ethnic German Family and Grammar from the 'old Country' followed through over the Generations - IIRC, written German capitalizes all Nouns.
Also, such was the case in the earliest years of the USA's Republic. For example, read the original text of the USA Constitution.
Mike
One of the prime offen--I mean, perpetrators opened a local thread:
What does everyone do for a living? I am an Urban Planner.
Dunno about ethnic heritage. Might be Polish.
Current Language Usage does not require Capitalization of Every Single Freekin' Noun and Adjective in a Sentence.
dOn'T yoU HaTe RanDoM CApS? unReADabLe.
And how about quotes? My personal pet-peeve is the verbal use of the word quote for emphasis, Those Quote politicians Unquote really know how to screw up the world with their Quote bail-out Unquote packages!
“Death comes when memories of the past exceed the vision for the future.”
Ugh, seriously?! I've never seen that and would have to poke my eyes out if I did. Other than just now I mean
Thanks Veloise!! I'll try to remember that
Don't you just hate it when you start a new thread and notice after-the-fact that you used incorrect grammar?
BLASTED!
Occupy Your Brain!
Maybe on rare occasions. But on general principle I never spell Czech what I post on Cyburbia and usually leave, typos, misspellings, and awkward grammar unaltered.
(you like how I started that last sentence with a conjunction? It's something I find myself doing more and more the last few years.)
I've got a question. This thread is titled 'Attention grammar experts'
What is the difference between a grammar
and a grammar??
Last edited by Maister; 20 Dec 2012 at 8:38 AM.
People will miss that it once meant something to be Southern or Midwestern. It doesn't mean much now, except for the climate. The question, “Where are you from?” doesn't lead to anything odd or interesting. They live somewhere near a Gap store, and what else do you need to know? - Garrison Keillor
I would say the former is someone who knows the fundamental rules and logical principles and offers their expertise to those who seek it (and probably sometimes to those who don't), where as the latter would be someone who compulsively corrects everyone.
Edit: I just responded to a post that has been changed, so disregard if this no longer makes sense.
Occupy Your Brain!
On Cyburbia, in the on-topic forums, we change thread title names to sentence case, because thread Titles appear on the front Page of the site, and random Capitalization is so Common.
For some reason, planners really love to capitalize nouns, especially when it related to current planning or development review. A great example of this is the uncalibrated Smartcode.
On a different note, because of its academic bent, the town where I work also has more than its share of copy editors, a few of which are on our boards and committees. I think this is one of the many reasons why the planning process here takes so much longer than in other communities where I worked. Elsewhere, I'll present an element of a comp plan, and a committee will discuss its policy, Here, the copy editors and university faculty will also dig into semantics.
One copy editor that's on a few committees will take drafts of our work and reword them, often adding hyphens in compound words and terms that are normally unhyphenated. Thus, we see public-transit system, land-use plan, solar-panel array, unified-development code, and so on. They mean well, but I've devoted more time than I should to "dehyphenating"..
Growth for growth's sake is the ideology of the cancer cell. -- Edward Abbey
When writing code, I capitalize nouns when that noun is also listed in the definitions chapter.
"I'm very important. I have many leather-bound books and my apartment smells of rich mahogany"
** who's
When referring to a walking talking human being, "who" > "that"
** This person
Singular person. "They" is plural.
Could also use "the contributor" or "our humble correspondent" or, if you know it's just one person but not sure who, "s/he" (colloquial).
/rant
In grad school I submitted a paper reviewing a local community's environmental regs. Extensive paragraph quotes from the document, appropriately indented and italicized, to distinguish from my own words. My prof editorialized on my use of this stylebook, giving me a B. Um, I've worked in publishing. You have not.
"They" in this context is a gender-neutral pronoun.
Growth for growth's sake is the ideology of the cancer cell. -- Edward Abbey
Igender neutral pronouns!
Occupy Your Brain!
Yup, I know; it's a usage that's taking over. Looked it up.
Epicene they
It still grates, like hearing "you guys" when the subjects are female. Or a diatribe about dancing and how men twirl women, but if the gal resists, "they" are "a" bad dancer. Huh?
While looking for stuff, Me also found this.
I used to subscribe to a publication that had an editor who didn't edit. One particular frequent contributor wrote articles that were riddled with extra "apostrophe's" and quotation "marks" and had exclamation "point's" at the end of most declarative sentences! They all made it into print.
My current peeve is that/which. Use "that" for a restrictive clause, and "which" for a non-restrictive clause. Another way to look at it is use "that" if you need the clause in the sentence, and "which" if you could just as easily leave the clause out. E.g. I live in the house that is at the end of the street. To identify my house in the sentence you need the clause "that is at the end of the street." My house, which is red, is at the end of the street. Don't need the clause about the color, so use "which."
Now you know, which is good.
IME its standard to use bad grammar in planning. I've often had superiors edit my reports to take out what I learned to be good grammar - like active voice and breaking up run-on sentences.
Children in the back seat can cause accidents - and vice versa.
Which irritates me off, too.
A nuisance may be merely a right thing in the wrong place — like a pig in the parlor instead of the barnyard.
You've been reading my local newspaper online!
"He defended the cause of the poor and needy, and so all went well. Is that not what it means to know me?" Jeremiah 22:16
A FB buddy (historical dance caller) suffered a great loss two days before Thanksgiving: his live-in GF abruptly died. With more than 800 friends, they crawl out of the woodwork to offer support on his wall. Some of it is...well, let's just say the counselors need counseling.
One of my favorites: a woman on a spin cycle who goes on and on about Trader Joe's crunchy dehydrated onions. Friend posts something about how the ten page-form for cremation is too daunting for him (he is functioning remarkably well, considering) and she'll post another comment about where he can run go buy frozen chopped onions, or freeze-dried, or... I want to slap her silly. "Onion woman, go get that form and fill it out for Friend." When she raised the issue of "was the deceased Jewish," and Jews don't do cremation, and even if she didn't practice if her mother was born Jewish she's still a Jew, and her soul would be forced to wander for eternity, and.would.not.stop, Friend finally very gently shut her down.
Another of his "supporters" is a "grief counselor" who cannot type a sentence without at least "three" sets of quotation marks. Sample:
Thanks for sharing... Interesting observation, on "making arrangements"; then, "having the individuals... NOT show! Also, on "grieving"... I'd NEVER, considered that perspective; or, nomenclature of terms... before! As to "The Hobbit", I first read the book when it came out years ago, used to be: a "subscriber" to "The Shire Post"; and own a copy... of the animated cartoon! Have enjoyed, both immensely on repeat reading and viewing. Going to "see" the THREE HOUR feature, might be "a challenge" for me... Thanks for you observations, on the movie. I won't "shout" SPOILER ALERT, as I "care not"; reading about "strengths" and "weaknesses" of the live action and CGI film, will BRING AWARENESS to me, on "what" to "watch out" for!
I want to push him "into the pyre" along with "psycho onion woman."
(On the bright side, his FB friends set up a virtual cash shower to pay for the final arrangements. What a nice thing to do.)
I like how you indented and italiczed there. Have you ever worked in publishing?
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