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| Re: Oklahoma DMV violates civil rights during testing (306822) | |||
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Re: Oklahoma DMV violates civil rights during testing |
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Posted by Kew Gardens Teleport on Tue Apr 8 08:43:00 2008, in response to Re: Oklahoma DMV violates civil rights during testing, posted by JohnL on Mon Apr 7 22:39:25 2008. I sent a note to the editors of the style guide. I hope they amend the entry soon.If they fix that one, I might mention Ivory Coast to them. But microscopic mistakes aside, there's some great stuff in the Grauniad style guide, despite my regarding them as barbarians for favoring foetus and medieval over fetus and mediaeval (and I can scarcely forgive them for citing that abominable female on political correctness) -- here are some of my favorite entries: actor for both male and female actors; do not use actress except when in name of award, eg Oscar for best actress; one 27-year-old actor contacted the Guardian to say "actress" has acquired a faintly pejorative tinge and she wants people to call her actor (except for her agent, who should call her often). As always, use common sense: a piece about the late film director Carlo Ponti was edited to say that in his early career he was "already a man with a good eye for pretty actors" ... As the readers' editor pointed out in the subsequent clarification: "This was one of those occasions when the word 'actresses' might have been used" alter ego We have been known to spell it "altar ego" (to be used only as a headline on a story about an arrogant bishop) begs the question is best avoided as it is almost invariably misused: it means assuming a proposition that, in reality, involves the conclusion. An example would be to say that parallel lines will never meet, because they are parallel, assuming as a fact the thing you are professing to prove. What it does not mean is "raises the question" beleaguered overused, even when we spell it correctly bellwether sheep that leads the herd; customarily misspelt, misused, or both biblical references Genesis 1:1; II Corinthians 2:13; Revelation 3:16 (anyone calling it "Revelations" will burn in hell for eternity) brickbat only use if you know what a brickbat is cannabis people smoke cannabis rather than "experiment" with it, despite what politicians and young members of the royal family might claim company names A difficult area, as so many companies these days have adopted unconventional typography and other devices that, in some cases, turn their names into logos. [ ... ] Toys R Us (do not attempt to turn the R backwards) earlier often redundant: "they met this week" is preferable to "they met earlier this week" and will save space; "earlier this month" occurs almost every time we publish a paper on the first of the month, when it should, of course, be "last month" eerie weird; Erie North American lake; eyrie of eagles exclusive term used by tabloid newspapers to denote a story that is in all of them FDA what the former First Division Association now calls itself; you will need to say it is the senior civil servants' union or no one will know who you are talking about flagship a flagship is a ship, a "flagship store" would be a store where one bought flagships, and a "flagship local authority" is a cliche fuck Do not describe this as "a good, honest old-fashioned Anglo-Saxon word" because, first, there is no such thing as an Anglo-Saxon word (they spoke Old English) and, more important, its first recorded use dates from 1278 haemorrhaging is best avoided, even if you manage to spell it correctly, as it has become a cliche - in expressions such as "haemorrhaging cash" - and completely wrong as an adjective meaning big, eg "in the face of haemorrhaging financial losses" Holocaust Do not trivialise by comparing piles of cattle during the foot-and-mouth outbreak to the Holocaust, or through phrases such as "Belsen-skinny" which, incredibly, found its way into a story about Kate Winslet icon, iconic in danger of losing all meaning after more than 1,000 appearances in the Guardian in one year, employed to describe anything vaguely memorable or well-known - from Weetabix, Dr Martens boots and the Ferrero Rocher TV ads to Jimi Hendrix's final gigs, a plinth in Trafalgar Square and drains incident Be wary of this word, another - "attack" or "clash", for example - will often stand better in its place; within a couple of years of the massacre in Tiananmen Square the Chinese government was referring to it as an "incident" or even "alleged incident" ironic, ironically Do not use when what you mean is strange, coincidental, paradoxical or amusing (if you mean them say so, or leave it up to the reader to decide). There are times when ironic is right but too often it is misused, as in this typical example from the paper: "Santini's Tottenham won 2-0 at Nottingham Forest, ironic really with the north London club having a big interest in Forest's Republic of Ireland midfielder Andy Reid ..." (not that sport are the only, or biggest, offenders). As Kingsley Amis put it: "The slightest and most banal coincidence or point of resemblance, or even just-perceptible absence of one, unworthy of a single grunt of interest, gets called 'ironical'." The idiotic "post-ironic", which Amis would be glad he did not live to see, is banned just deserts not just desserts, unless you are saying you only want pudding Kirkcaldy not Kirkaldy, a town in Fife, not Fyfe law lords may be female: we don't say "law ladies" lobby take great care when using this term: unless you are writing about, say, the parliamentary lobby or US lobby system, it will at best sound vague and patronising, and at worst pejorative or offensive ("the Jewish lobby"). If you are talking about specific pressure groups, say who they are London's do not say "London's Covent Garden" (or London's anything else); it is Covent Garden, London luvvies a silly cliche, best avoided Mafikeng now spelt thus, though it was Mafeking when it was relieved Meat Loaf sings meatloaf doesn't sing 'mythematics' Here is an easy three-point guide to sidestepping common "mythematics" traps: 1 Be careful in conversions, don't muddle metric and imperial, or linear, square and cubic measures. Square miles and miles square are constantly confused: an area 10 miles square is 10 miles by 10 miles, which equals 100 square miles 2 Be extremely wary of (or don't bother) converting changes in temperature; you run the risk of confusing absolute and relative temperatures, eg while a temperature of 2C is about the same as 36F, a temperature change of 2C corresponds to a change of about 4F 3 When calculating percentages, beware the "rose by/fell by X%" construction: an increase from 3% to 5% is a 2 percentage point increase or a 2-point increase, not a 2% increase nation Do not use when you mean country or state: reserve nation to describe people united by language, culture and history so as to form a distinct group within a larger territory. And beware of attributing the actions of a government or a military force to a national population ("The Israelis have killed 400 children during the intifada"). Official actions always have opponents within a population; if we don't acknowledge this, we oversimplify the situation and shortchange the opponents Oxford comma a comma before the final "and" in lists: straightforward ones (he ate ham, eggs and chips) do not need one, but sometimes it can help the reader (he ate cereal, kippers, bacon, eggs, toast and marmalade, and tea), and sometimes it is essential: compare I dedicate this book to my parents, Martin Amis, and JK Rowling with I dedicate this book to my parents, Martin Amis and JK Rowling oxymoron does not just vaguely mean self-contradictory (we said "investment without the risk" is an oxymoron: it isn't) an oxymoron is a figure of speech in which apparently contradictory terms are used in conjunction, such as bittersweet, "darkness visible" (Paradise Lost), "the living dead" (The Waste Land); one of Margaret Atwood's characters thought "interesting Canadian" was an oxymoron proactive do not use this hideous jargon word with a hyphen. Or without one quiz a suspect is questioned, not quizzed (however tempting for headline purposes) refute use this much-abused word only when an argument is disproved; otherwise contest, deny, rebut rice paddies tautologous, as padi is the Malay word for rice; so it should be paddy fields or simply paddies Richter scale expresses the magnitude of an earthquake, but now largely superseded by the moment magnitude scale routeing/routing They are routeing buses through the city centre after the routing of the protesters San Serriffe island nation profiled in the Guardian on April 1 1977 sans serif typeface seal pups not "baby seals" for the same reason we don't call lambs "baby sheep" semicolon used correctly (which occasionally we do), the semicolon is a very elegant compromise between a full stop (too much) and a comma (not enough). This sentence, from a column by David McKie, illustrates beautifully how it's done: "Some reporters were brilliant; others were less so" see colon some do not use before a figure: if you are not sure, about or approximately are better, and if you are, it sounds daft: "some 12 people have died from wasp stings this year alone" was a particularly silly example that found its way into the paper very usually very redundant Wales avoid the word "principality"; not a unit of measurement ("50 times the size of Wales) well-known as with famous, if someone or something is well-known, it should not be necessary to say so Xmas avoid; use Christmas unless writing a headline, up against a deadline, and desperate |
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