Quotes from work

[Tante Shvester]

Actually, in Jewish prayer, we pray for rain only in rain season.  The rest of the time, we pray for dew (although in some traditions, they leave off the dew prayer, and in some, they pray for rain and dew, no matter the season.

[Annie Subjunctive]

in some, they pray for rain and dew, no matter the season.

They're only one step away from praying for moisture. Be vigilant!

How do you say moisture in Hebrew? Does it sound like being sweaty?

[rivka]

I know how to say water, dew, and rain (actually, I know at least two words for rain) in Hebrew. Oh, and snow! Not sure about moisture, though.

[BlackBlade]

Well, I think the "moisture" thing started, at least it seemed so in the places I always lived, as a way to encompass both rain and snow. But the fact that we already have the word precipitation is what always puzzled me about it.

Maybe people use the word moisture more often than precipitation.

[Annie Subjunctive]

If they use it to mean precipitation, though, I don't think that word means what they think it means.

[BlackBlade]

If they use it to mean precipitation, though, I don't think that word means what they think it means.

Well, I'm still trying to figure out when the heck Sundee is.

[Jonathon]

It's the day after Saturdee, silly.

[Annie Subjunctive]

For the warring descriptivist and prescriptivist within me:

The relationships between sounds and meanings are arbitrary, yet they define the world, and it may be painful to notice that the good old world is disappearing with what was earlier considered good language.

The descriptivist scores a blow.

[Jonathon]

I'm editing a piece by an author who is a chronic that dropper.

Oliver recalled when they “received the office of the lesser priesthood” the angel had made a “promise” he would be ordained “to the Presidency.”

Oliver Cowdery wrote both he and Joseph “received the high and holy priesthood” from these Apostles.

I'm adding in about five or six thats per page to help with readability. It's getting really annoying.

[dkw]

I worked with a Sr. Pastor who would take the thats out of other people's newsletter articles (and never used them in his own) because he thought they were a waste of space.

[BlackBlade]

Is that a grammatical problem, or just a stylistic one?

[Jonathon]

dkw: It probably goes back to traditions like Strunk & White's "omit needless words," which I think is vague and unhelpful at best and detrimental at worst. Just because you can technically omit something and still make sense doesn't mean you should.

BlackBlade: Those sentences aren't technically ungrammatical, so I would say that it's just a stylistic issue. People frequently delete that as a complementizer or relative pronoun, especially in speech, as in "He said he was going to the store." That's completely unambiguous and unobjectionable. When it becomes a problem, in my opinion, is when the next phrase or clause reads like a complement to the verb in the main clause, when it's actually part of a subordinate clause. They are what's called garden path sentences, where the sentence is technically grammatical but very easy to misparse.

[Nighthawk]

I'm editing a piece by an author who is a chronic that dropper.

Oliver recalled when they “received the office of the lesser priesthood” the angel had made a “promise” he would be ordained “to the Presidency.”

Oliver Cowdery wrote both he and Joseph “received the high and holy priesthood” from these Apostles.

I'm adding in about five or six thats per page to help with readability. It's getting really annoying.

I don't see anything wrong with.

[rivka]

 

[Tante Shvester]

I just adore Jasper Fforde sometimes:

"Good. Item seven. The had had and that that problem. Lady Cavendish, weren’t you working on this?’

Lady Cavendish stood up and gathered her thoughts. ‘Indeed. The uses of had had and that that have to be strictly controlled; they can interrupt the imaginotransference quite dramatically, causing readers to go back over the sentence in confusion, something we try to avoid.’

‘Go on.’

It’s mostly an unlicensed-usage problem. At the last count David Copperfield alone had had had had sixty three times, all but ten unapproved. Pilgrim’s Progress may also be a problem due to its had had/that that ratio.’

So what’s the problem in Progress?’

That that had that that ten times but had had had had only thrice. Increased had had usage had had to be overlooked, but not if the number exceeds that that that usage.’

Hmm,’ said the Bellman, ‘I thought had had had had TGC’s approval for use in Dickens? What’s the problem?’

Take the first had had and that that in the book by way of example,’ said Lady Cavendish. ‘You would have thought that that first had had had had good occasion to be seen as had, had you not? Had had had approval but had had had not; equally it is true to say that that that that had had approval but that that other that that had not.’

So the problem with that other that that was that…?’

‘That that other-other that that had had approval.’

Okay’ said the Bellman, whose head was in danger of falling apart like a chocolate orange, ‘let me get this straight: David Copperfield, unlike Pilgrim’s Progress, had had had, had had had had. Had had had had TGC’s approval?’

There was a very long pause. ‘Right,’ said the Bellman with a sigh, ‘that’s it for the moment. I’ll be giving out assignments in ten minutes. Session’s over – and let’s be careful out there."

(from The Well of Lost Plots)

[rivka]

I love that quote too. In fact, I believe I mentioned it here. It's a teeny bit more comprehensible with the italics.

[pooka]

Is TGC the galacticcactus?

[Annie Subjunctive]

This isn't a quote from work, it's just my own frustration: I have the hardest time typing the word language. This is exceedingly vexing for someone writing papers in the field of second language acquisition. Every single time I go to type it my fingers tie themselves up in knots and I end up writing lanugae or langague or some other ridiculous iteration. If I do it one more time, I'm going to punch myself in the face.

[Jonathon]

I usually end up with langauge.

[BlackBlade]

Well that's strange.  If I need to type out the word language just once, like in a sentence, I have no problem doing it.  I just tried writing out the word over, and over again, and after about four times it starts getting really hard!?

My attempts without any editing to follow,

language language language language language langeuage language language langeu language language language language language language language <---(felt like a mistake but I kept typing anyway) language language language language language languagel language language language language.

[pooka]

language.  Nope.  But then I couldn't type Nope.

[Kate Boots]

I know that I usually hate language peeving, but I really hate the use of "indicate" to mean "say", as in "Elder Brown indicated that President David O. McKay wished to see Eldon." It always gives me the mental image of someone communicating solely through hand gestures and facial expressions.

I just saw this and had to express my sympathy.  I used to have to transcribe my former boss's dictated notes from meetings.  In addition to sentences that defied grammatical punctuation, he almost always used "indicated" instead of "said". It was as if some teacher had told him not to use the word "say" and "indicate" was all he could think of to replace it.   "Mr. Smith's secretary indicated that Mr. Smith was out of the office."  I always imagined a conversation of winks and nudges.  Drove me nuts.

[Jonathon]

My feeling is not that they were taught not to use say, but rather that they're reaching for more learned words.

[Kate Boots]

Probably.  This guy tended to be very insecure about being surrounded by people who had more education than he did.  (It was at a university.)  I spent a year and a half typing out this stuff and had no discretion to change anything.

[Jonathon]

Ugh. That would drive me nuts too.