How Google’s Autotype Contradicts Orwell’s Advice
https://www.chronicle.com/blogs/linguafranca/2018/12/13/how-googles-autotype-contradicts-orwells-advice/ [www.chronicle.com]
2018-12-17 03:30
tags:
ai
email
language
ux
In a Lingua Franca post headed “Elimination of the Fittest” five years ago I poured scorn on Orwell’s insistence that you should “never use a metaphor, simile, or other figure of speech which you are used to seeing in print.” Silly, I said. There must always be some phrases that are currently the most popular. Banning them ipso facto would pointlessly whittle away the language, phrase by phrase, forever.
I didn’t propose going to the opposite extreme and championing clichés, of course. Yet as Gmail filled in that phrase for me, I realized that it was automating exactly what Orwell recommended against. The program lies in wait for the beginning of a letter sequence that it is used to seeing in Gmail messages, and fills in the rest for your approval, constantly tempting you toward familiar phrases.
A Moment of Sympathy for the Old Fogeys and Snoots
https://www.chronicle.com/blogs/linguafranca/2018/10/28/a-moment-of-sympathy-for-the-old-fogeys-and-snoots/ [www.chronicle.com]
2018-10-28 23:02
tags:
language
Such sympathizing doesn’t happen often, so I thought I’d admit to it and explain, since if you have regularly read my posts on usage you may be rather surprised. I was reading a newspaper headline in which can not was used where (as I see it) cannot was clearly meant. But for some reason I was prompted to carry out a small investigation, and I realized I may have been harboring a false belief.
Who’s Polluting Whose English?
http://www.chronicle.com/blogs/linguafranca/2018/04/10/whos-polluting-whose-english/ [www.chronicle.com]
2018-04-25 17:28
tags:
book
hoipolloi
language
The quiz is stolen — or, as Brits would say, nicked — from Lynne Murphy’s entertaining and enlightening new book, The Prodigal Tongue: The Love-Hate Relationship Between American and British English. Murphy grew up in America and since 2000 has been teaching linguistics at the University of Sussex in Brighton, England. That makes her the perfect person to chronicle the differences and similarities between the language as it’s used on either side of the Atlantic.
Of Time and the Pig
http://www.chronicle.com/blogs/linguafranca/2018/01/14/of-time-and-the-pig/ [www.chronicle.com]
2018-01-15 13:41
tags:
language
I would categorize most of the expressions targeted by Lisa Binion and John McIntyre as emphatic redundancies. If you are among the most mindful writers, you tend to avoid them. Sharpshooting them in your own or someone else’s prose can be a moderately satisfying pastime, like picking little pieces of lint off a sweater, or unitalicizing the commas after each book title in a list.
Suspicion, Italian Style
http://www.chronicle.com/blogs/linguafranca/2017/12/11/suspicion-italian-style/ [www.chronicle.com]
2017-12-13 00:54
tags:
ideas
language
The New York Times reports on the currency of a new Italian term, dietrologia. From the Italian dietro, meaning “behind,” the word points to a longstanding Italian predilection not to believe what one is being shown or told. There’s always something behind it, another door to another room where another truth is being concealed (and very possibly yet another door).
New job title: dietrologist.
BuzzFeed Has Style Too
http://www.chronicle.com/blogs/linguafranca/2017/10/26/buzzfeed-has-style-too/ [www.chronicle.com]
2017-10-29 21:08
tags:
factcheck
language
media
Of course there is correct style for BuzzFeed writers; they can’t just follow their buttholes on such matters.
Sad React
http://www.chronicle.com/blogs/linguafranca/2017/10/04/sad-react/ [www.chronicle.com]
2017-10-05 21:40
tags:
hoipolloi
language
social
text
I didn’t realize I was wondering what an emoji might sound like if said out loud, but now I know.
Unapplied Linguistics
http://www.chronicle.com/blogs/linguafranca/2017/09/20/unapplied-linguistics/ [www.chronicle.com]
2017-09-21 21:01
tags:
development
language
life
ux
A collection of unhelpful informational messages.
Blessed Are teh Copy Editors
http://www.chronicle.com/blogs/linguafranca/2017/07/16/blessed-are-teh-copy-editors/ [www.chronicle.com]
2017-07-18 17:23
tags:
business
factcheck
media
But there are still consequences for making mistakes. First of all, print editions aren’t dead yet, and the appearance of minor factual errors and boo-boos such as the buy-a-vowel caption below (in The Philadelphia Inquirer) is not only embarrassing but has the effect of subtly eroding the confidence readers have in the publication’s coverage of important things.
Dracula, Strunk, and Correct English Usage
http://www.chronicle.com/blogs/linguafranca/2017/05/23/dracula-strunk-and-correct-english-usage/ [www.chronicle.com]
2017-05-25 07:03
tags:
factcheck
language
Do not place your trust in either of these men.
I could go on, but you can see where I’m headed. Strunk’s rules appear to be as fictional as Count Dracula.
Suffixery
http://www.chronicle.com/blogs/linguafranca/2017/04/27/suffixery/ [www.chronicle.com]
2017-04-28 14:20
tags:
language
Why did noun-ery get so popular as a humorous, or perhaps semi-humorous, construction?
Truly Weighty Words
http://www.chronicle.com/blogs/linguafranca/2017/04/24/truly-weighty-words/ [www.chronicle.com]
2017-04-25 21:09
tags:
media
retro
tech
But the linotype was nothing like a typewriter. It required special training. It was big, and hot, and operated by pressing keys on a keyboard of 90 different characters.
For Sale: Baby Shoes. Never Said.
http://www.chronicle.com/blogs/linguafranca/2017/03/29/for-sale-baby-shoes-never-said/ [www.chronicle.com]
2017-03-30 19:50
tags:
book
factcheck
history
ideas
language
Now, after reading Garson O’Toole’s new book, Hemingway Didn’t Say That: The Truth Behind Familiar Quotations, I realize that the misattributions were a result of “Host” — one of the 10 mechanisms by which, according to O’Toole, so much false attribution happens nowadays.
Just Try That With Your Bootstraps
http://www.chronicle.com/blogs/linguafranca/2017/03/07/just-try-that-with-your-bootstraps/ [www.chronicle.com]
2017-03-08 20:07
tags:
history
hoipolloi
language
physics
But the fact that pulling oneself up by one’s own bootstraps is, in reality, impossible, is too telling a part of this phrase’s origins to ignore.
Context for first citation:
Mr. Murphee was being critiqued for his claim to have invented a perpetual-motion machine.
How Dangerous Are Danglers?
http://www.chronicle.com/blogs/linguafranca/2017/02/20/how-dangerous-are-danglers/ [www.chronicle.com]
2017-02-22 16:29
tags:
language
The point of taking a critical and questioning approach to prescriptive usage rules is to determine which ones are worth following because they are helpful in creating clearer, less ambiguous, and/or more aesthetically pleasing prose; which ones are worth following at least some of the time because they are shibboleths that may get our writing (and us) judged as not good enough; and which ones are not worth following because they are out of date, not widely held or known, etc. I think the advice about avoiding danglers falls into the first category.
For Want of a Copy Editor the Sense Was Lost
http://www.chronicle.com/blogs/linguafranca/2017/02/16/for-want-of-a-copyeditor-the-sense-was-lost/ [www.chronicle.com]
2017-02-17 23:01
tags:
academia
compsci
language
paper
When a Russian mathematician collaborates with a French computer scientist on a paper published by Elsevier in the Netherlands, what language do they choose?
Their paper was published in 2005 as “Decision problems for semi-Thue systems with a few rules” (Theoretical Computer Science 330: 145–169). The mistake there is using a few instead of few.
Futurist Shock
http://www.chronicle.com/blogs/linguafranca/2017/02/15/futurist-shock/ [www.chronicle.com]
2017-02-17 18:45
tags:
future
ideas
language
life
Reference books now encode futurist as one whose business is futuring. An aspect of futuring is visioning.
‘Better’ Days Are Here
http://www.chronicle.com/blogs/linguafranca/2017/02/07/better-days-are-here/ [www.chronicle.com]
2017-02-09 13:08
tags:
hoipolloi
language
Is ‘Mens’ Becoming a Word?
http://www.chronicle.com/blogs/linguafranca/2017/01/26/is-mens-becoming-a-word/ [www.chronicle.com]
2017-01-30 02:38
tags:
language
If Only I Could Tell You
http://www.chronicle.com/blogs/linguafranca/2017/01/05/if-only-i-could-tell-you/ [www.chronicle.com]
2017-01-07 20:23
tags:
language
The lone verb that has an irrealis form is be. All other verbs use the simple past tense form known as the preterite.