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

Brus

Member Since

September 4, 2011

Total number of comments

316

Total number of votes received

612

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Latest Comments

“feedback” and “check in”

  • November 3, 2013, 3:27pm

Of course it is subjective, and I have no problem with that fact at all. In fact I like subjectivity. I explained why. Your point, that fearsome words like this are heard all the time in business contexts, explains why too. Management-speak (hyphenated) is horrible, too. Heard in a business context it must be borne, I suppose, by those who must put up with it. I don't. The noted journalist David Dimbleby, a scion of that noble broadcasting family, normally commissioned to do the commentary on televised state occasions, in today's Telegraph says "the language of management-speak has seeped into key bits of the BBC where it shouldn't exist" and writes of 'commissioning processes' and "people getting promoted for speaking the language of outreach" and generally makes it clear that he doesn't like it either. So I am in good company.
You are right about the capital letters: “Senior Management Team The College Governors" are the words which are capitalised and which in my view do not deserve capitals, as they are not names or titles. And 'The' is not a noun. “day responsibilities year feedback staff" are not capitalised, but I did not say that all the nouns were, indeed I mentioned the 'rather Germanic employment of capital letters on some, but strangely ... not all, of the nouns.
When we write of stuff about the royal family (not capitalised) in Britain (capitalised because name of country) we talk of the Queen (title) and the Duke of Edinburgh (title) but of princes and princesses and dukes and duchesses if they are not named, so not capitalised, gathering at the palace or the castle, or if named, Buckingham Palace or Windsor Castle, capitalised because named. Like Fettes College. Past prime ministers don't get capitals in general, but a particular named one does. In today's paper I see mention of "the former bishop of Rochester" (named) but also the Justice Secretary (named). So I argue that The College and Governors should not be capitalised, as it is too crawly, whereas Senior Management Team, also horribly crawly, I'll let you off with, because, as you say, they are a named unit. I would hate to be one of a named unit, wouldn't you?

“feedback” and “check in”

  • November 3, 2013, 1:09pm

It may be here to stay, but 'feedback' still induces slight nausea. It suggests the causes of borborygmus, the way 'human resources' suggests something from the movie 'Cocoon'. 'The feedback from the survey has been overwhelmingly positive' is much less horribly rendered by 'the response from the survey has been overwhelmingly positive'.
Proof read as two words? No, because read is the verb and proof is the object noun, as what it is you read, so 'read proof' is where you feel we would be going; proofread isn't right either, proof-read a pleasing compromise. That's why I put it. Also spellcheck gave it a no-no with a wiggly red line and for once I went along with it.

Not going to Gatwick in the near future, but I shall check the signs at Heathrow and Bangkok in the next few weeks, for check in and checkin and check-in when I'm checking in. If the flight is delayed horribly I could deliver a paper to fellow passengers on the use of hyphens, to pass the time, but they wouldn't like it. Oh no.

Pled versus pleaded

  • October 25, 2013, 5:26am

Poppa Bear, I read into "the bail was enlarged" the idea that the sum involved is increased, rather than the period extended. As one who once long ago and far away had employment all day in the office which worked with the payment of fines and bail, I cannot recall any instance of such a thing being done. If the first edition of the bail had proved sufficient there was no need to enlarge it, for if the alleged "skellum" had turned up again, what would be the need? And if, rather, he had done a runner, it would be a bit late anyway, and the thinking would be that it would be more appropriate to sling the poor wretch into the cells, as being an unreliable person to whom to grant bail at all, if he could be apprehended. So it is a mightily rare thing to have bail enlarged, I agree with you.

I am intrigued that you can tell how the language as printed is pronounced. It is early in the morning, however, and we are not firing on all cylinders yet. Perhaps it is more obvious once the first coffee is aboard.

As for me, I agree that the language as printed in the press is choc-a-bloc with malapropisms and poorly chosen prepositions. I put in a complaint at this site about the sloppiness of the use of 'into' and 'in to' and 'on to' and 'onto' used interchangeably, especially as found in news reports, and promised to cite the very next example I came across, and, do you know? I have not seen any since!
On your side, Poppa Bear, fellow old school mate. Can't easily ignore linguistic carelessness, like the spelling of 'English' as 'english', for example.

These nouns are masculine and feminine third declension Latin nouns whose plural nominative and accusative forms are -es in place of -is: we are not adding another -es, but -es instead of -is. So crises, parentheses, oases, diagnoses. You know this already, of course. So why irises, not irides, nor ires,. ? English iris, not Latin, then. So irises. Irides would baffle folk, so a no-no. Ires is not Latin and sounds daft. So say iris is English, and treat it accordingly when pluralising.

“This is she” vs. “This is her”

  • October 19, 2013, 8:16pm

Nothing snobby about the Queen's English. If the 'Queen' part of the term confuses you, Mr. Quincy, you should know that in England the current royal family are thought of as newcomers and upstarts, or at least feel that way: there are many amusing quotes about the Queen speaking of certain of the nobility as "much too grand for the likes of us". Remember Queen Victoria spoke with a German accent, and George I could not speak English at all. Ever. Meanwhile the nobility includes families whose lineage stretches back to the Middle Ages.

Now, as for your "it is I" construction the clue is in French grammar and its labelling: "C'est moi" - 'ce' is the nominative subject, 'est' is the verb, and folk get stressed wondering what 'moi' might be, as it is nominative but it is not the subject, but the complement, and French uses the disjunctive pronoun 'moi', or 'toi' or 'lui' or whoever. The English form of this pronoun is similar to the accusative form: 'me, you, him, her, them' and so on. So we say "It's me" and that's why.

Have you met any English professors? You say the ones you've known can't communicate. The ones I've known communicated frightfully enthusiastically and well. That was long ago and far away. They raved most earnestly about literature, and showed little enthusiasm for grammar. Literature is not about grammar, and literary figures are not there to provide us with models of sound English sentence structure and grammatical forms, but about many things above and beyond this. I recall studying Chekhov as part of my A-level English many decades ago, but in fact the man penned his stuff in Russian, so we were in fact studying the drama form, not the language used. We had no need to read Russian to follow the plot of our studies.

So, Mr. Quincy, I have advised before and do so again, if you are ticked off for saying "it's me" then you must rise up, I say, to your full height, look your interlocutor in the eye, and say with hauteur, "I use the disjunctive pronoun, of course". So put that arrow in your quiver.

May I place forward for your delectation:
"opus", a piece of work, and "opera", works, from Latin 'opus, operis', = (piece of ) work, (n).
"genus", a sort or kind and "general", of a sort, from Latin 'genus, generis' = sort (n).

Although your point is not the same with the following neuter Latin nouns, necessarily with irregular genitive because 3rd declension where there is no 'rule', we see a pattern forming nevertheless, with English derivative:
capital, from caput, capitis (n) = head, itinerary, from iter, itineris (n) = journey,
littoral, from litus, litoris (n)=coast, nominal from nomen, nominis (n)=name,
oral, from os, oris (n)=mouth, face, rustic,rural from rus, ruris (n)=countryside
temporary from tempus, temporis (n)=time, vulnerable from vulnus, vulneris (n)=wound. The final -is which is genitive singular is replaced with -a to form nominative (and accusative) plural: capita, genera, itinera, litora, nomina, opera, ora, rura, tempora, vulnera.

But only opus and genus spring to mind as words used in English in the way you suggest for corpus.

Good man, Jayles: you can't beat a misspent youth. You too, Warsaw Will: that Latin master was an Oxford man, you can tell.

Plural forms of words borrowed from Latin

  • October 16, 2013, 12:42pm

Okay, Will. Now, my researches reveal that he was the one we've all heard about from the 1939-1945 war. Now, the Roman Empire in the west was all over by the 6th century, and in the east they used Greek. Your man used Italian except at work. Er, he wasn't Roman in the Latin-speaking sense, which is, rather obviously, what I meant by my jocular comment. The number suggests that he was not exactly one of the early Latin popes, rather than one of the later, Italian (and indeed on one occasion Polish, and another German ...) ones. That is what I meant, you see, and indeed, so it proved. That his home, born and bred, was 20th century Rome does not suggest to me that his Latin should be of the highest calibre. I was jesting anyway.

Jayles, this problem with this particular word is that it makes one appearance only in one of two potentially useful textbooks and they forgot to put it in the vocabulary list at the back (Cambridge Latin Course, which I used only rarely anyway), nor is it in the compact Latin dictionary (Cassell's) at hand. As it ends in -es and the expression 'suas merces' is retained in the memory, the error is an easy one to forgive, since you did not let on that you were quoting another speaker addressing not me but an audience of plural people. The detective work is the point of the Latin, and it was based on a false assumption.

Pope not much good at Latin, hey? You can tell from his number XII that he probably wasn't Roman, so that may explain it. sed infallibilis est, dicis. Case dismissed, Jayles. I had not appreciated that you had elected to nick your Latin stuff from other chaps' writings, and your A grade I mentioned earlier is withdrawn, as your work is not original. Jolly good fun, all this bollocks, hey? We used to say hey? all the time in South Africa. It means nothing, beyond a whimpering plea for someone, almost anyone really, to agree with whatever crap has just been uttered. How we laughed in those days! They just don't get it anymore these days. To illustrate, we were in there at the invention of hang gliding - no one does this wonderful, mad thing any more, or at least round here. (But I'll tell you what - I am going to Vang Vieng in Laos in January to participate in a cool game called tubing, where you float down the river in a rubber inner tube, for miles, calling in along the way in numerous riverside bars to pass the day away. Such fun! It is the safest time of year to do this mad sport where the death toll is alarming, but we can't all live forever, can we now? Hey?)
It is postulated by the cognoscenti that the rot in education set in in 1989 when the crazies took over this important field somehow, and my experience says that's right. Some daft new theories of education were constructed by mad people, and daft people took them, the people, seriously enough to take the theories seriously too.
I'm the guy who gave you your vote, by the way, for that last bit of yours. You are so right about merces being singular when it looks plural in this instance. I had forgot this thing - too long out of the loop, I fear. non infallibilis sum, quod papa non sum.