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Author Topic: Dear Expert  (Read 165648 times)

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Offline Jonathon

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Re: Dear Expert
« Reply #950 on: October 21, 2015, 12:45:31 PM »
Poo.

Any chance you could cut out the parenthetical bit and make it clear elsewhere in the text? Because as it is, the sentence is really saying two things:

  • a master sanitation cleaning schedule says what needs to be cleaned and when
  • these are the kinds of things that need to be cleaned and sanitized

I think this is one of the biggest causes of bad writing—trying to cram too much into one sentence. I don't really see a good way to solve that problem without splitting the two ideas up. If you really can't, then I'd probably do something like this:

Quote
A Master Sanitation Cleaning Schedule (MSCS) that identifies the areas of your operation, equipment, and utensils that need to be cleaned and sanitized and how often this needs to be done.

Which is pretty much what you started with, but with less bureaucratese in the second half.
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Offline Annie Subjunctive

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Re: Dear Expert
« Reply #951 on: October 21, 2015, 05:15:01 PM »
Yeah - I have to keep playing around with it, I guess.

The hardest part of jobs like this is that they give me policy documents and then I have to write a script out of them. If I get too carried away with paraphrasing they freak out because too much of their bureaucratese is gone, whereas if I don't change enough it makes for nigh incomprehensible training materials.
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Offline Jonathon

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Re: Dear Expert
« Reply #952 on: October 21, 2015, 05:22:05 PM »
I really wish they'd hire more professional writers instead of just having a bunch of bureaucrats write everything. Too many of them are way too possessive about their writing and really don't see how bad it is.
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Offline Tante Shvester

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Re: Dear Expert
« Reply #953 on: November 30, 2015, 11:38:25 AM »
Is there a name for the rhetorical device of addressing a person as "someone" instead of as "you" (or even "I"), as in:
 Someone forgot to take the trash out last night.?
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Offline Jonathon

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Re: Dear Expert
« Reply #954 on: November 30, 2015, 12:16:40 PM »
I don't know of a specific term for that device, though it's clearly indirect speech that's heavy on irony and sarcasm.
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Offline Porter

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Re: Dear Expert
« Reply #955 on: December 01, 2015, 10:25:27 AM »
What is the root behind cobblestone and cobbler?  Do we have any other related words?

What is the linguistic relationship between a cobbler (shoemaker), a cobbler (fruit-based desert casserole) and a cobbler (one who arranges things together in a haphazard or impromptu manner)?
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Re: Dear Expert
« Reply #956 on: December 01, 2015, 11:51:12 AM »
Apparently the etymology of and relationships between all of those words are somewhat obscure or unclear. Cobble might be a backformation of cobbler, which might come from cob, meaning 'small lump'. But even if they're all related, it's hard to see what the semantic connection is.
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Offline rivka

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Re: Dear Expert
« Reply #957 on: December 01, 2015, 02:07:06 PM »
No idea if it's actual, but I can see a fairly simple relationship between the last two. A fruit cobbler is not an orderly desert like a pie; it's stuff sort of dumped into a pan and baked. It's stuff cobbled together with fruit, if you will.
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Re: Dear Expert
« Reply #958 on: December 01, 2015, 02:26:49 PM »
Maybe it's not so much that it's hard to see as that it's not clear; a fruit cobbler might be an unorderly mess, or it could be that it looks lumpy like a cobblestone street. But there's no direct evidence one way or the other that I can find, so it's all speculative.
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Offline Tante Shvester

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Re: Dear Expert
« Reply #959 on: February 15, 2016, 07:43:39 AM »
There aren't very many words that end in -uggle.  Smuggle, snuggle, struggle, juggle and . . . that's all I've got. Well, there's "puggle", the made-up name of a dog, I think a beagle/pug mutt.  And "muggle", another made-up thing.  It's a funny-sounding thing, "uggle".  Do the -uggle words have a common language of origin?
Fighting thread drift with guilt, reverse psychology, and chicken soup.
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Re: Dear Expert
« Reply #960 on: February 15, 2016, 09:50:34 AM »
Smuggle and snuggle are apparently formed with the frequentative suffix -le, and struggle might be too. This suffix denotes repetition, sometimes with a sort of diminutive connotation. So snuggle comes from snug + le, smuggle was borrowed from a Dutch or Low German word formed the same way from a root meaning "to sneak",* and struggle's origins are unclear, but it may have come from Old Norse, German, or Dutch.

Juggle is apparently unrelated—it's from the Old French jogler, meaning "to play tricks", and is ultimately from the same root as jocular.


*This smug root is the same root that gives us Smeagol, which can be translated as "Sneaker".
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Offline rivka

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Re: Dear Expert
« Reply #961 on: March 04, 2016, 10:50:02 AM »
Do any of y'all have a current account for the online AP Stylebook, or a print copy from 2015 or later? I have a specific question.
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Re: Dear Expert
« Reply #962 on: March 04, 2016, 10:55:29 AM »
I do! Ask away.
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Offline rivka

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Re: Dear Expert
« Reply #963 on: March 04, 2016, 12:18:51 PM »
Current AP opinion on the name bell hooks, please.
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Re: Dear Expert
« Reply #964 on: March 04, 2016, 12:46:32 PM »
I can't find anything on it, though I'm not very familiar with AP style. I just have access to the stylebook online.
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Offline rivka

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Re: Dear Expert
« Reply #965 on: March 04, 2016, 01:18:09 PM »
Hmm. No section on capitalization of names, with Bell Hooks and E.E. Cummings as examples?

Pretty sure there used to be one.
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Re: Dear Expert
« Reply #966 on: March 04, 2016, 01:48:15 PM »
Ah! I couldn't find an actual stylebook entry, which seems strange to me, but I did find this Q&A:

Quote
Q. What's AP style for lowercase names for people? We sometimes come across artists who prefer to use lowercase names or nontraditional capitalization for their names. AshlE? What's the rule on that? – from Aurora , Colo. on Tue, Oct 15, 2013
A. AP generally uses the preferred spelling of the artist, as in k.d. lang and e.e. cummings. Nontraditional capitalization is also observed for performers and others: rapper DMX.

Ironically, E. E. Cummings did not actually prefer the all-lowercase style.
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Offline rivka

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Re: Dear Expert
« Reply #967 on: March 04, 2016, 01:57:34 PM »
Right, it was his publisher who did.

Interesting. It appears AP has changed in the last few years, as has the NYT.

Thanks for looking that up for me!
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Re: Dear Expert
« Reply #968 on: March 04, 2016, 02:12:06 PM »
No problem.
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Offline Farmgirl

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Re: Dear Expert
« Reply #969 on: March 10, 2016, 06:44:15 PM »
So I read on a grammar blog today that it should be properly (more accurately) called "Daylight Saving Time" not "Daylight Savings Time".

If so, is this not noted in AP Style? Because every headline or article I have read this week has it as Savings.
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Re: Dear Expert
« Reply #970 on: March 10, 2016, 07:07:30 PM »
AP style is definitely "saving". But just because it's in the stylebook doesn't mean every writer or copyeditor knows that.
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Offline Tante Shvester

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Re: Dear Expert
« Reply #971 on: March 10, 2016, 09:07:29 PM »
On the memo at work, it's Daylight Saving's Time.
Fighting thread drift with guilt, reverse psychology, and chicken soup.
Sweet! Law of Moses loopholes! -- Anneke
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She grew on him like she was a colony of E. coli and he was room-temperature Canadian beef. -- anonymous

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Re: Dear Expert
« Reply #972 on: March 11, 2016, 12:06:39 PM »
You underestimate my ability to take things seriously!

Offline Ela

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Re: Dear Expert
« Reply #973 on: March 11, 2016, 03:13:23 PM »
Ha.  :D


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Offline Farmgirl

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Re: Dear Expert
« Reply #974 on: March 13, 2016, 01:34:07 PM »
Hey, look: even the official AP Twitter account gets it wrong.

 ;D - and it looks like they got royally reamed by their followers for their mistake.  Glad to see it! They need to be held accountable since so many use them to set the standard.
"Farming looks mighty easy when your plow is a pencil and you’re a thousand miles from the corn field." - Dwight D. Eisenhower

Being a farmer is not something that you do—it is something that you are.


If I could eat only one fruit, I wouldn't choose the blueberry. It is too small. I'd go with watermelon. There is a lot to eat on a watermelon. - Tante