|
Post by Little Jack Horner on Sept 11, 2019 15:46:11 GMT
I have recently been playing with a letter and word puzzle which involves tracking round a 4x4 letter grid to find as many words as possible. Proper nouns are not permitted nor, it seems, are proper adjectives (if there are such things) so petri as in Petri dish and bunsen as in Bunsen burner are disallowed. But sandwich and balaclava are allowed. Why is that? How long before Petri and Bunsen lose their capitalisation?
|
|
|
Post by Verbivore on Sept 11, 2019 21:50:53 GMT
LJH: I've often noticed such inconsistencies with the capitalisation of "proper adjectives" (I like the term!). When do they lose their initial caps? Randomly, it seems.
One of my regular puzzle types is a circular grid from which one must extract words of no fewer than four letters, no proper nouns, and "no plurals ending in 's' unless also a verb, e.g. hits." I've written to the puzzle-maker and some of the publishers (the puzzle is widely syndicated) to no effect: hits as a verb is singular, not plural. What?!
|
|
|
Post by Dave Miller on Sept 12, 2019 3:28:17 GMT
I think you’ve misinterpreted the instruction, Vv.
“Hits” would be banned as a plural ending in ‘s’, but is allowed as a verb. The instructions didn’t say anything about the verb form being plural.
|
|
|
Post by Twoddle on Sept 12, 2019 10:25:41 GMT
Slightly off topic, but it's long puzzled me why "I" is the only personal pronoun that's capitalised.
Even further off topic, it was pointed out to me recently that there's a professional tennis-player called Dominic Thiem, pronounced "Team". From now on, whenever a self-righteous prat tells you that "There's no 'I' in 'team'", you can correct him/her.
|
|
|
Post by Dave Miller on Sept 12, 2019 16:19:02 GMT
There's no "I" in team - I always think that's a silly thing to say. Each member of the team is an "I", so if none of us is in the team, what are we all doing here?
|
|
|
Post by Verbivore on Sept 12, 2019 21:13:42 GMT
There's no "I" in team - I always think that's a silly thing to say. Each member of the team is an "I", so if none of us is in the team, what are we all doing here? Agreed, Dave. The "there's no 'I' in team" thing is just another cheap motivational slogan for our slavemasters to make more money out of us.
|
|
|
Post by Twoddle on Sept 13, 2019 10:43:45 GMT
My standard reply to the "No 'I' in 'Team'" nonsense is that there are two "I"s in "Individual", which makes just about as much sense.
|
|
|
Post by Verbivore on Sept 14, 2019 11:53:38 GMT
Starting at 13:57, the credits in this video – from the Humphrey Appleby YouTube channel – roll from top to bottom. (That’s near the end of Part 4 of the series.) I’m accustomed to reading credits as they roll UP the screen; downward feels clumsy, awkward, unnatural to me. How do others find credits read best: rolling down or rolling up a screen? Are there cultural preferences / differences – such as in the manner of writing/reading: left–right, right–left, down/up, front–rear / rear–front … that might parallel or influence the different rolling-credits styles?
|
|
|
Post by Little Jack Horner on Sept 14, 2019 15:25:27 GMT
I don’t think I have ever seen credits running down the screen before. It would be very difficult if they ran at the usual speed. I suppose we’ll have to get used to it as broadcasters seem to have a penchant for adopting unhelpful innovations.
|
|
|
Post by Dave Miller on Sept 14, 2019 15:58:54 GMT
I definitely want credits to roll upwards. That allows the ‘normal’ reading method of getting to the end of a line and then flicking DOWN and left to start the next one.
I could perhaps manage to read upwards, but it would be slow and uncomfortable.
I’m reminded of pedestrian crossings in the USA, which are announced by letters painted on the road: first PED and then, some yards farther along the road, XING. (That’s American for crossING by the way.)
If you drive looking quite far ahead, though, it looks as though it says XING PED. On my first visit to the States, it took me ages to work out what a xing ped could be!
|
|
|
Post by Verbivore on Sept 14, 2019 20:25:50 GMT
Thanks, LJH and Dave. Now I know it's not just my perception.
|
|
|
Post by Verbivore on Sept 17, 2019 7:57:00 GMT
It's almost 18:00 on Tuesday 17/09/19 and I'm just home from work – for the last time.
Retirement descends upon me. Lordy!
(I tried retiring twice previously but failed miserably each time. Perhaps this time … .)
|
|
|
Post by Twoddle on Sept 17, 2019 8:21:54 GMT
Congratulations, Verbivore. Best wishes for a carefree retirement.
|
|
|
Post by Verbivore on Sept 17, 2019 10:43:28 GMT
Thanks, Twod :-)
Since my previous post I have calculated the number of words I've proofread at the newspaper job, and it amounts to more than 40,000,000* over nine years (that's equal to the entirety of the last print edition of Encyclopaedia Britannica). And I've worn out more than 100 blue pencils.
I am really looking forward to reverting to recreational reading, of which I've done little since reading for a living. After all, one can ingest only so many words in a day, and the proofreading leaves its legacy: Whatever I'm reading I want to emend; that really gets in the way of reading pleasure. Perhaps I'll need to practise caring less.
* If one considers that I read each article / page three times over the course of one edition, it's actually 120,000,000 words.
|
|
|
Post by Verbivore on Sept 17, 2019 11:25:17 GMT
|
|