XP: Written Word/English Language&Reading Material

[Jeff Grossman]

"The cellars are deep enough that, historically, they do not get very warm in the summer."

 

[Jayson Cohen]

originally posted by robert ames:

originally posted by Jayson Cohen:

originally posted by Pavel Tchichikov:

originally posted by Jayson Cohen:
Split infinitives don’t bother me. They make sense almost by definition by putting the adverb where it belongs to convey the correct meaning, which can be ambiguous otherwise.

a dear friend of mine just published the following

"The cellars are deep enough to historically not get very warm in the summer"

You are welcome to propose a rule that would prevent misuse and abuse, and would limit it to cases where it "makes sense almost by definition."

We've been trying that with gun ownership.

There is more to it though. English may not be my native language when it comes to suitability for poetry due to a wealth of rhyming possibilities and symmetrical structures, but it ain't half bad. This thing that you say makes sense just turns it ugly, at least to my highly trained musical ear.

That’s a terrible sentence with or without the adverb. I would never have published such a sentence or had it survive editing. Please tell me JG didn’t publish this sentence.

A better sentence:

Because the cellar is deep enough, historically it remains relatively cool in the summer.

Or more awkward to my ear but still better than the original.

Because the cellar is deep enough, historically it does not get very warm in the summer.

in the interest of cutting out unnecessary words, trash the word 'historical' from both sentences. and for whatever temperatures are experienced in the future, the historical record will be irrelevant. the temperature will be driven by the physics of heat transfer.

As you (probably) know, the ultimate temperature at a certain depth depends strongly on the temp profile at the surface as a function of time as a boundary condition, which is another way to say I agree the word historically could be dropped except that one loses the implication that history may not repeat itself if one does drop that adverb.

 

[robert ames]

originally posted by Jayson Cohen:

originally posted by robert ames:

originally posted by Jayson Cohen:

originally posted by Pavel Tchichikov:

originally posted by Jayson Cohen:
Split infinitives don’t bother me. They make sense almost by definition by putting the adverb where it belongs to convey the correct meaning, which can be ambiguous otherwise.

a dear friend of mine just published the following

"The cellars are deep enough to historically not get very warm in the summer"

You are welcome to propose a rule that would prevent misuse and abuse, and would limit it to cases where it "makes sense almost by definition."

We've been trying that with gun ownership.

There is more to it though. English may not be my native language when it comes to suitability for poetry due to a wealth of rhyming possibilities and symmetrical structures, but it ain't half bad. This thing that you say makes sense just turns it ugly, at least to my highly trained musical ear.

That’s a terrible sentence with or without the adverb. I would never have published such a sentence or had it survive editing. Please tell me JG didn’t publish this sentence.

A better sentence:

Because the cellar is deep enough, historically it remains relatively cool in the summer.

Or more awkward to my ear but still better than the original.

Because the cellar is deep enough, historically it does not get very warm in the summer.

in the interest of cutting out unnecessary words, trash the word 'historical' from both sentences. and for whatever temperatures are experienced in the future, the historical record will be irrelevant. the temperature will be driven by the physics of heat transfer.

As you (probably) know, the ultimate temperature at a certain depth depends strongly on the temp profile at the surface as a function of time as a boundary condition, which is another way to say I agree the word historically could be dropped except that one loses the implication that history may not repeat itself if one does drop that adverb.

straws have been grasped. but enough of this--it just leads to dumb and dumber.

 

[Jayson Cohen]

straws have been grasped. but enough of this--it just leads to dumb and dumber.

That’s in the “unwatchable movie” category for me.

 

[Oswaldo Costa]

I'm intrigued by the claim that the Oxford comma may be responsible for the ambiguity, or at least pause, that exists in "my mother, Mother Teresa, ..." when "my mother Mother Teresa" would give even more pause given that she supposedly remained celibate her entire life.

 

[Jonathan Loesberg]

originally posted by Oswaldo Costa:
I'm intrigued by the claim that the Oxford comma may be responsible for the ambiguity, or at least pause, that exists in "my mother, Mother Teresa, ..." when "my mother Mother Teresa" would give even more pause given that she supposedly remained celibate her entire life.

I'm not sure what you think erasing the comma achieves other than a mistake in punctuation. One brackets appositives with commas. Thus "my mother, Mother Theresa," does seem to state that Mother Theresa is your mother. Eliminating the comma just states the same thing incorrectly. As to her being celibate her whole life, that just makes the statement likely false, which, since it is unlikely that the author of the sentence believes that he or she is Mother Theresa's child, is what creates the grammatical ambiguity. Of course, most ambiguities pointed out by opponents of serial commas are also created by manifestly unlikely appositives.

 

[Oswaldo Costa]

originally posted by Jonathan Loesberg:

originally posted by Oswaldo Costa:
I'm intrigued by the claim that the Oxford comma may be responsible for the ambiguity, or at least pause, that exists in "my mother, Mother Teresa, ..." when "my mother Mother Teresa" would give even more pause given that she supposedly remained celibate her entire life.

I'm not sure what you think erasing the comma achieves other than a mistake in punctuation. One brackets appositives with commas. Thus "my mother, Mother Theresa," does seem to state that Mother Theresa is your mother. Eliminating the comma just states the same thing incorrectly. As to her being celibate her whole life, that just makes the statement likely false, which, since it is unlikely that the author of the sentence believes that he or she is Mother Theresa's child, is what creates the grammatical ambiguity. Of course, most ambiguities pointed out by opponents of serial commas are also created by manifestly unlikely appositives.

You've made my point (the part of it that was serious) more succinctly, since blaming the serial comma for the ambiguity of "my mother, Mother Teresa" makes no sense when a comma is required (whether one roots for Oxford or Cambridge).

 

[Jonathan Loesberg]

I would say that if the comma on the other side of Mother Theresa, demanded by the serial comma, were eliminated, that would eliminate the ambiguity. Appositives need to be set off by commas, so the three items would more clearly be a list. I would also say that in either version, the sentence's meaning is clear, as is the case with most supposed ambiguities created by the absence of the serial comma. In the few cases where real ambiguity occurs, that's what revising is for.

 

[Oswaldo Costa]

originally posted by Jonathan Loesberg:
I would say that if the comma on the other side of Mother Theresa, demanded by the serial comma, were eliminated, that would eliminate the ambiguity.

Gotcha.

 

[Jay Miller]

originally posted by Jayson Cohen:

originally posted by Jeff Grossman:

originally posted by Jayson Cohen:
Yet another half-hearted defense of not using the Oxford comma. Ho hum.

It's not half-hearted.

It's flimsy.

You are right. There is nothing worse than whole-hearted and flimsy. Reminds me of both US national politics and the press lately.

It is whole-hearted, flimsy, and absurd.

As are all attacks on the OC.

 

[Peter Creasey]

Eavesdropper?...

Eavesdrop started off literally: first it referred to the water that fell from the eaves of a house, then it came to mean the ground where that water fell. ... Eventually, eavesdropper described someone who stood within the eavesdrop of a house to overhear a conversation inside.

. . . . . Pete

 

[Peter Creasey]

From Merriam-Webster as used beginning in 1990...

curated adjective
cu·​rat·​ed | \ ˈkyu̇r-ˌā-təd, ˈkyər-; kyu̇-ˈrā- \

Definition of curated

: carefully chosen and thoughtfully organized or presented

Straight-forward and handy.

. . . . . Pete

 

[Oswaldo Costa]

originally posted by Peter Creasey:

From Merriam-Webster as used beginning in 1990...

curated adjective
cu·​rat·​ed | \ ˈkyu̇r-ˌā-təd, ˈkyər-; kyu̇-ˈrā- \

Definition of curated

: carefully chosen and thoughtfully organized or presented

Straight-forward and handy.

. . . . . Pete

My objection was about esthetics, not correctness. The term comes from the Latin, of course. In the 1950s, my father was a Brazilian diplomat in Italy and we were shown around the Vatican collection its caretaker, a member of the Roman Curia, and his title was Curator. From there the term expanded to all caretakers of museum collections, and from thence, still forgivably, to any Tom, Dick or Harriet who puts together a fine arts exhibition. But, to me at least, to go further than anointing Tom, Dick or Harriet in order to generate vulgar chic is on an esthetic par with using varietal for variety, a usage which dictionaries, ever eager to pander to widespread usage by the lowest common denominator, have also anointed.

 

[Jonathan Loesberg]

You shouldn't have given in so easily, Oswaldo. Even the Merriam Webster shows the definition of the verb to curate as a thing one does to museums or shows. It is true that, since the beginning of the 21st century, the word has stretched to pertain to putting together menus and such. I regard this as like taking the phrase to beg the question as meaning to raise the question, but the degradation is of more recent date and can still be usefully buked and scorned, along with using the word wordsmith for writer.

 

[Christian Miller (CMM)]

Not long ago, I read on a restaurant website about the dishes or menu that the chef had "curated". And all this time I had been under the impression it was the chef's job to actually make the food.

 

[Peter Creasey]

Jonathan, what has surely already occurred to you is that people see terms like you are referring to used constantly as a normal course of business. The fact that the current usage of these terms is a "degradation" is something people have no way of knowing unless they, for example, visit a website like here which has grammatical usage carefully policed.

Meanwhile, the degraded usage of these terms is an effective resource so ignorance is bliss.

. . . . . . . Pete

 

[Oswaldo Costa]

originally posted by Jonathan Loesberg:
You shouldn't have given in so easily, Oswaldo. Even the Merriam Webster shows the definition of the verb to curate as a thing one does to museums or shows. It is true that, since the beginning of the 21st century, the word has stretched to pertain to putting together menus and such. I regard this as like taking the phrase to beg the question as meaning to raise the question, but the degradation is of more recent date and can still be usefully buked and scorned, along with using the word wordsmith for writer.

Curating to mean a fancy version of choosing has become so disseminated that it has become entirely subjective whether one can buke and scorn it as a semantic mistake. So, one must fall back on the esthetic stance. When I wrote that I loathe the usage, I meant exactly that, not that the usage was wrong.

 

[Larry Stein]

I find the use of "curate" rather than "choose" or "select" to be totally pretentious when applied to food and wine. I wanna barf every time I see that.

 

[Jeff Grossman]

The usage is not wrong, merely pretentious.

ETA: Larry, you and I posted at the same time!

 

[Rahsaan]

To be fair, this use of the word 'curate' is usually done in the context of someone trying to sell you something. And in those cases, it is a helpful signal that the product is something to avoid!