Dear Expert

[Jonathon]

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:

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.

[Annie Subjunctive]

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.

[Jonathon]

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.

[Tante Shvester]

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.?

[Jonathon]

I don't know of a specific term for that device, though it's clearly indirect speech that's heavy on irony and sarcasm.

[Porter]

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)?

[Jonathon]

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.

[rivka]

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.

[Jonathon]

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.

[Tante Shvester]

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?

[Jonathon]

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".

[rivka]

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.

[Jonathon]

I do! Ask away.

[rivka]

Current AP opinion on the name bell hooks, please.

[Jonathon]

I can't find anything on it, though I'm not very familiar with AP style. I just have access to the stylebook online.

[rivka]

Hmm. No section on capitalization of names, with Bell Hooks and E.E. Cummings as examples?

Pretty sure there used to be one.

[Jonathon]

Ah! I couldn't find an actual stylebook entry, which seems strange to me, but I did find this Q&A:

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.

[rivka]

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!

[Jonathon]

No problem.

[Farmgirl]

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.

[Jonathon]

AP style is definitely "saving". But just because it's in the stylebook doesn't mean every writer or copyeditor knows that.

[Tante Shvester]

On the memo at work, it's Daylight Saving's Time.

[Jonathon]

Hey, look: even the official AP Twitter account gets it wrong.

[Ela]

Ha. 

[Farmgirl]

Hey, look: even the official AP Twitter account gets it wrong.

  - 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.