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Post by Verbivore on Apr 14, 2018 23:10:33 GMT
Dave: What prompted me to create that strange sentence was an entry in a work publication on alternative and complementary therapies. The statement that I was presented with was:
Alana checks all over your body and does it over twenty times over an hour. […] She has being working with chakras for over ten years … .
I accepted the first over, replaced the second with more than, left the third, and replaced the fourth with more than. Still far from an ideal sentence, but I was working my way through a lot of similar drivel, and it had to be returned to the client for approval. (The client's copy was all of a quality similar to that we receive from hairdressers.)
The client couldn't understand that there were too many overs, and our production manager wondered why I was bothering and suggested I get over it. I created the cow/moon nonsense to illustrate my point about the (in)appropriate and excessive use of overs in the copy. I'm not sure I got my point over. ;-)
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Post by Verbivore on Apr 16, 2018 4:59:04 GMT
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Post by Verbivore on Apr 16, 2018 5:04:59 GMT
Three times recently during my copyediting of the newspaper – usually in adverts – I've had clients reject my -cum- emendments in expressions such as baker-cum-writer; the clients have insisted on their original come; they're obviously discomfited by cum. How sad that their minds are so small, dirty, and fearful of a three-letter word.
It's not baker-come-writer, it's baker-cum-writer.
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Post by Trevor on Apr 16, 2018 7:07:29 GMT
It's not baker-come-writer, it's baker-cum-writer.Is it? Frankly I'm astonished.
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Post by Dave Miller on Apr 16, 2018 9:54:30 GMT
It's not baker-come-writer, it's baker-cum-writer.Is it? Frankly I'm astonished. I've never seen the baker-come-writer form, but would readily accept baker-cum-writer. But then, I did do Latin at school, so know that it means “with”. I don't see what's “dirty minded” about cum that isn’t equally so, to the same mind, about come. Blessed be those who graduated summa cum laude, or live in Prestwich cum Oldham!
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Post by Little Jack Horner on Apr 16, 2018 10:09:55 GMT
I don’t think many English folk would have the same problem. There are several places in the UK with “cum” as part of the name, sometimes with, and sometimes without, hyphens (even for the same place). As Dave Miller says, it is Latin for with and apparently signifies an historical merging of two parishes. Other examples are: Salcott-cum-Virley in the English county Essex; Chorlton-cum-Hardy, a suburb of Manchrster; Stour-cum-Quy in Cambridgeshire; Shingay-cum-Wendy also in Cambridgeshire; and Ashfield-cum-Thorpe in Suffolk. There may well be others but five examples will have to do.
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Post by Verbivore on Apr 16, 2018 10:10:14 GMT
The complainants are mostly real estate agents, who traditionally (at least in Oz) have an atrocious handle on written English; second to those are the cosmic-twaddle merchants: "esoteric healers" and the like, of which the Byron Shire is Oz headquarters.
People in those occupations can't structure a sentence or spell anything much, but they "know" that cum is a "dirty" word and won't have it in their copy.
The second complainant today was a real estate agent who, when I emended her barn-come-shed to barn-cum-shed, exclaimed, "You can't write that in an advert". I sent her the pared-down text from the OED's entry on cum, but she wouldn't be swayed.
OED: cum – Latin preposition, meaning ‘with, together with’, used in English in local names of combined parishes or benefices, as Chorlton-cum-Hardy, Stow-cum-Quy, where it originated in Latin documents. Also in several much-used Latin phrases, as cum grano salis (or familiarly cum grano), lit. ‘with a grain of salt,’ i.e. with some caution or reserve; cum privilegio (ad imprimendum solum) with privilege (of sole printing); and in expressions, technical or humorous, imitating these, e.g. cum dividend (cum div.) relating to the sale or transfer of stock or shares together with the dividend about to be paid on them. Freq. used as a combining word to indicate a dual nature or function.
"Clients will think it's rude." I doubt that her clients would think it rude at all; she was merely projecting her own ignorance-based prudery. In the end I replaced her -come- with a solidus ( / ): barn/shed. That was acceptable to her.
None of those anti-cum clients seem to realise that the slang for semen is spelled both cum and come. D'uh!
I've almost given up on copyediting real estate ads, other than to emend the many egregious spelling errors of place names; one agent has managed to misspell the same place name five different ways in as many weeks, despite my having sent her a copy of the local council's street-and-locality directory names list.
End-of-year retirement beckons ever more strongly.
PS: It's a good thing Oz doesn't have a Scunthorpe, else the agents would be re-spelling that, perhaps with a k: Skunthorpe.
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Post by Verbivore on Apr 16, 2018 12:25:39 GMT
Faceache
I had a Facebook as it was the only means I had of contacting two friends (those being real friends, not Facebook "friends").
In light of the latest in the series of privacy breaches Facebook is guilty of, I have now deleted my account completely (though it will take a while for the changes to take effect at FB's end – or so they say).
I was at relatively little risk: I used only part of my full name, gave a false DOB and phone number, and used my work email as my FB contact point (and received bugger-all messages through it). I gave no work, schooling, or address details, and only ever posted one picture – a poster that I'd made a few years ago. My privacy settings were the tightest on offer (share nothing with / show nothing to anyone but myself and those two friends). When I downloaded my FB data, that confirmed what I thought I had and had not posted.
I don't intend to be one of Zucker's suckers any longer; that slimy little worm can drop dead as far as I'm concerned.
Delete Facebook!
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Post by Verbivore on Apr 24, 2018 22:22:14 GMT
Uranus smells like rotten eggsScientists have solved a "longstanding mystery", confirming Uranus smells bad. _____________________ Of course if one pronounces the planet’s name as YOU-ra-nus rather than your-AYN-us, the "joke" doesn't work.
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Post by Verbivore on Apr 24, 2018 23:33:12 GMT
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Post by Verbivore on Apr 24, 2018 23:35:42 GMT
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Post by Verbivore on Apr 24, 2018 23:37:34 GMT
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Post by Dave Miller on Apr 28, 2018 6:18:44 GMT
No response at all? Just so that you don't think you're being ignored, Vv, I'll mention that I, for one, did read and enjoy those articles. Thank you.
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Post by Verbivore on Apr 28, 2018 6:42:05 GMT
No response at all? Just so that you don't think you're being ignored, Vv, I'll mention that I, for one, did read and enjoy those articles. Thank you. Thanks, Dave. Glad you enjoyed them. :-) It's certainly been quiet here of late. Maybe others are scribbling away their time as I am – or doing something more productive.
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Post by Little Jack Horner on Apr 28, 2018 7:21:18 GMT
I also read and enjoyed your recent links, Vv, but I have been away from home visiting friends and relatives and have only just had time to do so. Thank you.
It’s a pity that there are so few posts these days although someone somewhere seems to be reading what others post.
As a trivial contribution, I can say that, while staying with my friends, I passed a village in Worcestershire called Bricklehampton. It seems this is the longest place name in England without any repeated letters. I hope everyone will agree about the importance of knowing this. It is, I think, more interesting than much of the information than that with which we are assailed by today’s news media.
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