Proofreading Service - Pain in the English
Proofreading Service - Pain in the English

Your Pain Is Our Pleasure

24-Hour Proofreading Service—We proofread your Google Docs or Microsoft Word files. We hate grammatical errors with a passion. Learn More

Proofreading Service - Pain in the English
Proofreading Service - Pain in the English

Your Pain Is Our Pleasure

24-Hour Proofreading Service—We proofread your Google Docs or Microsoft Word files. We hate grammatical errors with a passion. Learn More

Username

richard-brodie

Member Since

March 29, 2005

Total number of comments

5

Total number of votes received

9

Bio

Latest Comments

Murphy’s Law

  • April 5, 2005, 4:35pm

Your use of the definite article is incorrect. "Murphy's Law"" is equivalent to "the Law of Murphy", therefore "the Murphy's Law" contains an implicit reduncancy, since it would be equivalent to "the the Law of Murphy".

Plural s-ending Possessives

  • April 1, 2005, 6:01pm

I'm guessing with a name like Romano, you're of Italian extraction. So if I were you I'd use Romanoes, even if that's technically incorrect, if only because Romanos looks an awful lot like a Mexican name ;)

P.S. this is not to imply that I have anything against Mexican names - my ganddaughter's last name is Mendoza - just that it would give an erroneous indication of your nationality.

What Rhymes?

  • March 31, 2005, 1:59am

Of all the common English words ending in -ple, two others besides purple have no rhymes

disciple
temple

Six have only one rhyme:

maple - staple
apple - grapple
couple - supple
people - steeple
scruple - quadruple
dimple - pimple

One has three rhymes:

ample - sample, trample, example

One has four rhymes:

triple - nipple, ripple, cripple, stipple

Neither the two doubly feminine words:

principle
multiple

nor the one triply feminine word

participle

have any rhymes.

L

  • March 30, 2005, 12:11am

It has been suggested that "beforehand" is an adverb, and that "beforehandedly" is therefore redundant. However, there are two kinds of adverbs. The first kind, without the -ly suffix, does not immediately preceed the verb. It is more of a stand-alone clarifier than a direct
modifier. For example, in

"He placed the kindling crosswise to the rest of the wood."

"crosswise" is of this type. We cannot say

"He crosswise placed the kindling."

But neither can we say:

"He crosswisely placed the kindling."

because the rule is that -ly needs to be added to an adjective (or a noun), not to an adverb.

(and conversely we cannot answer the question "How did he place the kindling?" with "Crosswisely.")

So we need some intermediate suffix that will convert the original type 1 adverb into an adjective, so that we can then legitimately make it into a type 2. To do this we adapt a pattern used to convert a verb into an adjective. The verb "advise" becomes an adjective by adding "d", and then pronouncing the result with three syllables rather than two, to differentiate it from the identically spelled past tense. Finally we get to the adverbial form "advisedly", and hence "crosswisedly", and hence "beforehandedly".

Tsunami

  • March 29, 2005, 10:48pm

It's just fine to import words into the English language, as long as they are modified to be compatible with our basic spelling and pronunciation conventions. Even though "tidal wave" connotes, in the mind of the average English speaking person, nothing more than a huge wave (without regard to the technicality of how it may have been produced), nevertheless I can see the value of being able to differentiate between waves produced by tidal forces and those produced by seismic activity.

Yesterday I heard more than one reporter on PBS/NPR - which seems to have a preponderance of commentators with British and other foreign accents - pronouncing tsunami without the leading "t". And that is the way it should be. The consonantal blend "ts", appearing at the beginning of a word, is not native to the English tongue. The spelling of this word should be "sunami".

Another example is "Sri Lanka". When that country's name was changed from the perfectly fine "Ceylon", English ought not to have been affected. "sr" at the beginning of a word does not belong in our language any more than does "ts", and from what I understand, the two words are closely related variants meaning nearly the same thing anyway.

Do we call the country whose capital is Berlin, "Deutschland"? Of course not. We call it Germany.
And conversely, Do the Germans refer to us as The United States. Of course not. They say "Die Vereinigte Staaten". And somehow we manage not to take offense at that.

And when the Japanese, upon importing the English word "computer", chose to say "konpyuutaa" do we get all bent out of shape? Of course not. So why the hell is it we think that we have to accomodate to alien pronunciations?