Author Topic: New column-type thingy (Read 112400 times)

Jonathon · « **Reply #500 on:** September 25, 2012, 01:37:47 PM »

Penny for your thoughts?

rivka · « **Reply #501 on:** September 25, 2012, 01:47:33 PM »

I agree with some bits, disagree with others, and am still chewing on the rest.

Jonathon · « **Reply #502 on:** September 25, 2012, 01:49:52 PM »

Okay. I'd be interested to hear what you think once you've chewed and digested it.

Jonathon · « **Reply #503 on:** September 26, 2012, 02:46:07 PM »

I posted an addendum that I suspect you'll appreciate, Rivka.

Jonathon · « **Reply #504 on:** October 01, 2012, 07:26:58 PM »

Funner Grammar

Jonathon · « **Reply #505 on:** November 08, 2012, 04:22:13 PM »

Names, Spelling, and Style

rivka · « **Reply #506 on:** November 08, 2012, 08:31:06 PM »

This (and some related issues) comes up a LOT on GR, where I often get the fun job of arguing with authors about our policies regarding punctuation and spacing in author names.

Needless to say, I agree with you.

Jonathon · « **Reply #507 on:** November 08, 2012, 08:46:32 PM »

Thanks!

Tante Shvester · « **Reply #508 on:** November 08, 2012, 09:41:00 PM »

How do you feel about apostrophes or tildes or umlauts and the like?

Jonathon · « **Reply #509 on:** November 08, 2012, 09:44:07 PM »

Accent marks are absolutely part of someone's name. Ruth asked about apostrophes in someone's name, and I agreed that they're part of a name too (even though I secretly think that they're kind of ridiculous).

Tante Shvester · « **Reply #510 on:** November 09, 2012, 08:07:26 AM »

I think they're sillier in first names than in last names.

In science fiction and fantasy, authors lay on heavy apostrophes in the alien names. I don't like those.

pooka · « **Reply #511 on:** November 09, 2012, 08:38:20 PM »

I think if it stands for a glottal stop, it is legitimate.

Tante Shvester · « **Reply #512 on:** November 10, 2012, 11:06:15 PM »

O-glottal stop-Brien?

Jonathon · « **Reply #513 on:** November 20, 2012, 02:49:47 PM »

The Enormity of a Usage Problem

rivka · « **Reply #514 on:** November 20, 2012, 03:48:53 PM »

I am hard-pressed to come up with a sentence in which I would preferentially use enormousness. I like enormity much better.

Jonathon · « **Reply #515 on:** November 20, 2012, 03:58:52 PM »

Agreed. And judging from Google Ngrams, pretty much everyone else agrees too.

Tante Shvester · « **Reply #516 on:** November 20, 2012, 09:55:22 PM »

I kind of like that I know the "real" meaning of enormity. It.makes me feel superior to regular folk.

pooka · « **Reply #517 on:** November 20, 2012, 09:55:38 PM »

Enormousness sound odd. Too many coronals. I use enormity to refer to overwhelming tasks that I should do but don't, which is the opposite of wicked.

Jonathon · « **Reply #518 on:** November 20, 2012, 10:07:55 PM »

Quote from: Tante Shvester on November 20, 2012, 09:55:22 PM

I kind of like that I know the "real" meaning of enormity. It.makes me feel superior to regular folk.

In all honesty, I think this is the only reason for preferring the "wickedness" meaning.

Quote from: pooka on November 20, 2012, 09:55:38 PM

Enormousness sound odd. Too many coronals. I use enormity to refer to overwhelming tasks that I should do but don't, which is the opposite of wicked.

I don't think it's too many coronals. Plenty of words have lots of coronals. I thought maybe it was the /əsnəs/ at the end, but other words have that too. I think maybe it just sounds odd because it's almost never used, and it's almost never used because everyone uses enormity instead.

rivka · « **Reply #519 on:** November 20, 2012, 10:42:27 PM »

Quote from: Jonathon on November 20, 2012, 10:07:55 PM

I think maybe it just sounds odd because it's almost never used, and it's almost never used because everyone uses enormity instead.

I agree.

Also, I don't need this to feel superior to hoi polloi. That's what less/fewer is for.

dkw · « **Reply #520 on:** November 21, 2012, 06:08:13 AM »

Huh. It never would have occurred to me to use enormity to refer only to great size. I would use enormousness. I guess I'm one of the outliers on this one.

Jonathon · « **Reply #521 on:** November 21, 2012, 10:00:56 AM »

No one is saying that enormity should refer only to great size, just that it can also refer to great size.

dkw · « **Reply #522 on:** November 21, 2012, 02:11:05 PM »

No, I mean only in the sense of the only meaning it has in the particular sentence. If I was looking for a word to refer only to the size of something, I wouldn't use enormity.

I would use it if I was describing the bigness of the badness, not if I was only describing bigness.

Jonathon · « **Reply #523 on:** November 22, 2012, 09:56:26 AM »

Part of my point is that people often use it to describe not only bigness, but momentous bigness or overwhelming bigness. And there's often some sense of badness, though not necessarily wickedness or immorality, like when someone talks about the enormity of the problem of poverty in India. (I don't remember the exact wording, but one of the example sentences was something along those lines.) Enormousness doesn't fit those senses very well.

pooka · « **Reply #524 on:** November 23, 2012, 01:50:40 PM »

So it's nothing todo with -ous, -ity, and -ness?