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Post by Verbivore on Feb 2, 2020 9:09:19 GMT
The Roman month Februarius was named after the Latin term februum, which means purification, via the purification ritual Februa held on February 15 (full moon) in the old lunar Roman calendar. There’s far more detail on the etymology of February’s name here as well as a list of observances through the month; a brief statement / observation on the month’s pronunciation at the Pronunciation subhead, followed by a history of the month. Shamelessly borrowed from Wikipedia. Perhaps February suffers from “short-month” syndrome and so feels a need to overcompensate with frantic activity. Whatever … an etymological opener to the month, composed on 02.02.2020 at 20:20 (or does that work better as at 20:20 on 02.02.2020?). Perhaps I ought to prepare for my purification! (ce n’est pas possible!).
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Post by Dave Miller on Feb 2, 2020 9:54:23 GMT
I am gravely disappointed not to have known - and therefore to have missed - that yesterday was ice cream for breakfast day.
And I even have in stock some Cadbury Cream Egg ice cream ...
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Post by Twoddle on Feb 3, 2020 22:17:09 GMT
Whatever … an etymological opener to the month, composed on 02.02.2020 at 20:20 (or does that work better as at 20:20 on 02.02.2020?). The first fully palindromic date since 1st January 1010. Especially special because it works in the "normal" date system of day/month/year, the American system of month/day/year, and the reverse-normal, computery system of year/month/day.
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Post by Dave Miller on Feb 4, 2020 0:34:44 GMT
> The first fully palindromic date since 1st January 1010. <
Eleventh of November 1111 ?
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Post by Twoddle on Feb 4, 2020 9:37:29 GMT
> The first fully palindromic date since 1st January 1010. < Eleventh of November 1111 ? Er ... I was hoping someone would spot that.
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Post by MarkH on Feb 4, 2020 20:55:20 GMT
Sorry, just had to try to send this. conservativewoman.co.uk/punctuation-marks-come-to-a-full-stop-in-brexit-coin-row/Mark Punctuation marks come to a full stop in Brexit coin row By Weaver Sheridan - February 4, 2020 Facebook Twitter Pinterest WhatsApp THE controversy over the 50p Brexit commemorative coin took a dramatic twist yesterday when militant punctuation marks went on strike. They are protesting over the Government’s failure to employ an Oxford comma on the coin’s slogan, as highlighted by novelist Philip Pullman. One regular comma has been given a placement on the slogan, which says: Peace, prosperity and friendship with all nations. But Pullman says an Oxford comma is needed between the words prosperity and and. He is calling for the coin to be boycotted ‘by all literate people’. A spokesman for the punctuation marks’ union RAGE (Rebellion Against Grammatical Extinction) said: ‘Some say Pullman’s intervention is just self-indulgent nitpicking by a literary clever-clogs. Whether that’s true or not, the fact remains that three million of these coins have been minted and that’s three million jobs lost for our Oxford comma members.’ The spokesman accused the Government of discrimination in snubbing the ‘upper-class’ Oxford comma while employing a common comma as cheap labour. At a rally yesterday, an exclamation mark shouted: ‘Punctuation marks will not put up with being deprived of employment in this way! And, although we’re on strike, we will allow ourselves to be used in this article to emphasise the seriousness of that statement!’ Along with the Oxford comma issue, the strikers have a package of other demands. They want semi-colons upgraded to full colons and brackets to be given parity with parentheses. However, literary observers believe the punctuation strike will have little effect. Because of the worldwide growth of Twitter, text messages and emails amid a general dumbing down, punctuation is being employed less and less and there is a big question mark over its future. RAGE said: ‘it’s not just commas being culled – punctuation is under pressure on all sides. For many years, our brothers in the apostrophe sector have been fighting a rearguard action over their aberrant employment conditions. Meanwhile, our quotation mark comrades have been hit hard by cutbacks as writers choose single quotes over double.’ Some trace the punctuation decline back to ‘stream of consciousness’ writing such as James Joyce’s 1922 novel Ulysses. But the reality is that more and more youngsters are leaving school with few English language skills and the internet has given free rein to semi-literate wannabes who think they can write. A Government spokesman said last night: ‘Although the use of the Oxford comma is hotly debated, we believe its employment is generally seen as an optional stylistic device. Therefore, we can offer work to Oxford commas only on an ad hoc basis with a zero-hours contract.’ RAGE warned: ‘Action must be taken soon to save punctuation marks. We are vital for articles of every description – for instance, where the writer cannot think of a suitable closing paragraph, but can still inject some faux drama by ending on a set of ellipses . . .’
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Post by Dave Miller on Feb 4, 2020 22:46:08 GMT
Good fun. But (annoyingly) I notice that the final paragraph: (a) ends in an ellipsis, not a set of ellipses and (b) doesn’t actually end in the ellipsis, or indeed at all ...
(He said, correctly spacing the ellipsis.)
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Post by Verbivore on Feb 5, 2020 0:53:58 GMT
Guest Mark: Thank you for such an interesting post. Dave: Ellipsis point noted and agreed.
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Post by Verbivore on Feb 5, 2020 1:03:07 GMT
Besides other factors (internet, [anti]social media, etc.) how can children be well schooled when their schools can't even spell their addresses correctly?
Today I packaged and sent collections of books to 71 primary schools in my region. To find their addresses I visited each school's website, where I encountered a total of 43 misspelled streets or locations – and even one school had misspelled its own name! One despairs for the future of literacy.
Of course, I included a note of the misspelling(s) to each offending school. (One might think that the state education department, which issues the website templates, might insist on correct spelling, but no.)
Grump. Grump. Grump.
I shall now return to working on my car-restoration project: far less frustrating!
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Post by Verbivore on Feb 5, 2020 5:48:30 GMT
[...] or indeed at all ... (He said, correctly spacing the ellipsis.) It appears to me, through reading style guides and US publications, that the preferred US style for the ellipsis is three, separate, spaced periods, thus . . . . In Oz it's most definitely a single glyph – thus … – made on a Mac by pressing the Option key (the equivalent of Alt on Windows) and the semicolon key. Perhaps (just guessing) a correct ellipsis can be similarly invoked in Windows (and Linux?) by keying Alt–semicolon. I do find the . . . style ugly, and in using that there's the possibility of the "ellipsis" being damaged by an automatic line break, which cannot happen with a … .
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Post by Dave Miller on Feb 5, 2020 6:21:42 GMT
I was thinking also of the “space then ellipsis” to represent continuation of a sentence: His gaze fell on the gun ...
versus the “no space then ellipsis” to represent continuation of the word: I couldn’t give a f...
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Post by Verbivore on Feb 5, 2020 7:26:17 GMT
I was thinking also of the “space then ellipsis” to represent continuation of a sentence: His gaze fell on the gun ...versus the “no space then ellipsis” to represent continuation of the word: I couldn’t give a f...Would that be the Noël Coward flying variety involving a galloping mule? ;-) Apparently for space considerations the OED employs just two dots – unspaced – for an ellipsis ( ‥). OED doesn't actually define an ellipsis as any particular number of dots and/or spaces. (In narrow-column newspapers, ellipses, while retaining three dots, often eschew side spacing for reasons of typographic necessity.) The Oxford Guide to Style (2002), incorporating Hart's Rules, states: In punctuation, an ellipsis is a series of points (…) signalling an omission. Omitted words are marked by three full points. […] Some reference works, such as the Oxford English Dictionary, compress entries by employing two- rather than three-point ellipses. This style should not be adopted as a matter of course […]Following is an example from the OED 2nd edn, CD version – so no restrictive space requirements – though perhaps the content is directly lifted from the print version. ellipsis (ɛˈlɪpsɪs)
Pl. ellipses (-siːz). Also 7 elipsis, 8 elleipsis, pl. ellipsises. [a. L. ellīpsis, ad. Gr. ἔλλειψις: see ellipse.]
1.1 = ellipse. Now rare. 1570 Billingsley Euclid xii. xv. 376 This section is a Conicall section, which is called Ellipsis. 1656 Hobbes Six Less. Wks. 1845 VII. 316 If the section be an ellipsis‥you may use the same method. 1677 Moxon Mech. Exerc. (1703) 272 The Ellipsis or Oval ABCD. 1692 Bentley Boyle Lect. 229 The planets‥could not possibly acquire such revolutions‥in ellipses very little eccentric. 1696 Whiston Th. Earth i. (1722) 14 Comets' Ellipses come near to Parabola's. 1705–30 S. Gale in Bibl. Topogr. Brit. III. 47 A fine bowling-green cut into an ellipsis. 1854 Tomlinson tr. Arago's Astron. 119 It had traversed‥an ellipsis.My Style Manual for authors, editors and printers (the Australian government style guide) echoes the advice of the Oxford Guide to Style, as does my Cambridge Australian English Style Guide.In contrast, my Chicago Manual of Style (14th edn, 1993) describes an ellipsis as three spaced points [ . . . ].
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Post by Verbivore on Feb 6, 2020 7:12:37 GMT
What's the consensus: is the term general consensus tautological? The OED gives the definition of consensus as: "General agreement or concord", so does general consensus mean general general agreement or ~concord? I encounter general consensus frequently, and a few moments ago on the Beeb five times over two articles.
When I was editing a newspaper I always deleted the general in the expression.
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Post by Little Jack Horner on Feb 6, 2020 9:55:04 GMT
Maybe a consensus is a full agreement but a general consensus is a rough agreement. I think that is how I would use the distinction — but I am not sure.
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Post by Dave Miller on Feb 6, 2020 10:40:19 GMT
I suppose you can have a consensus among a small group of people, but a general consensus across the wider population? “General” used as in “general knowledge”. I still think it’s ugly, though.
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