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Post by Pete on Jun 6, 2008 21:32:51 GMT
Rick, I have to ask, what does "normative" mean that isn't better expressed by "normal", "standard" or even "the norm"? ;D By using the adjective normative, I mean to convey the sense it is more a process toward the norm than an unstoppable march to the norm. Normal, standard, and the norm seem so absolute. Rick, I understand what you are saying but I am not sure I agree that that's what you actually did, because you used the phrase "becoming normative", which already has the flavour of moving towards a new norm.
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Post by rickcarpenter on Jun 6, 2008 22:12:06 GMT
Rick, I understand what you are saying but I am not sure I agree that that's what you actually did, because you used the phrase "becoming normative", which already has the flavour of moving towards a new norm. To me, you just agreed with me, but to you, I'm sure you didn't. My 'becoming normative' is akin to traversing half of the remaining distance to the norm with each step, never actually getting there. Some will take to it wholeheartedly, and some literary Luddites will come ever closer but never actually surrender to the juggernaut. Rick
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Post by Verbivore on Jun 7, 2008 3:15:37 GMT
[...] It is not as though help isn't out there though. Here is the referencing system I use. I just wish my university had a similar such resource . Shouldn't they all? Vadim: Australian universities (at least the government-owned ones) use the Australian Government Publishing Service Style Manual for Authors, Editors and Printers - and the Harvard referencing system. Here is how bibliographic entries look when the (Australian interpretation of) the Harvard system is used: Article in a journal (Note "sentence case" for article title.) Balfour-Haynes, G (2008). 'I'd rather be out in the sun' in Winter Musings vol. 3 issue 2; Sydney: Verbivore Publishing. pp. 23-26.Book (Note "title case" for book title - but not MS-Word's idea of "title case" where absolutely every word is initially capped.) Balfour-Haynes, G (2007). New Words for Old Ideas; Sydney: Verbivore Publishing. pp. 2-13.Some universities do have, in addition, their own style recommendations; these are (a) rare and (b) completely useless, the latter because they've been cobbled together by (publishing) amateurs who usually just reiterate what they have seen elsewhere - but for which they can give no reasons or reasoning. Minor differences commonly embodied in these little house style guides include punctuational variants: some go for minimal punctuation, some for maximal - though most don't mention it at all. In my editing / design / layout work I serve three universities, each of which has its mini-guide to style. Although I always used to consult with the client on styling matters, I found that few knew - or cared - provided the style used was consistent, so now I do all such work to my own style (AGPS Style Manual + 'Oz' Harvard + Verbivore) - and all clients are happy. One discipline in Oz academia that tends to use the APA referencing system rather than Harvard is that of the social sciences; business, the arts, education, sports, and all other disciplines appear to use Harvard. Law, of course, has a system of its own.
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Post by Verbivore on Jun 7, 2008 3:29:24 GMT
And a style issue I missed above ...
Where a publication's subtitle is appended (after the usual colon), caps are minimised, e.g.
Balfour-Haynes, G (2007). New Words for Old Ideas: An advanced lexicon; Sydney: Verbivore Publishing. pp. 2-13.
(Note: None of the above 'publications' exist.)
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Post by Paul Doherty on Jun 7, 2008 4:04:59 GMT
Universities here seem to mostly leave it to individual departments (even individual lecturers) and thus some are good, some are bad. I've never come across distinctly British variations: most seem to use some combination of APA, ASA, MLA, Chicago, Oxford, Harvard, and Turabian, sometimes with their own little variations. But most sound like yours, Vv -- so long as it looks like they expect an academic paper to look, they don't worry too much about tiny details.
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Post by Pete on Jun 7, 2008 4:07:50 GMT
One discipline in Oz academia that tends to use the APA referencing system rather than Harvard is that of the social sciences; business, the arts, education, sports, and all other disciplines appear to use Harvard. Law, of course, has a system of its own. Two mentions of Harvard and a Harvard comma in one sentence. Nice!
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Post by Pete on Jun 7, 2008 4:08:50 GMT
(Note: None of the above 'publications' exist.) Pity. I was looking forward to a good read.
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Post by Pete on Jun 7, 2008 4:12:36 GMT
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time My own book's title is in that style, too: Taxation of Company Reorganisations. And it's the way I was taught to write titles. By the way, it's a riveting read and a snip at a mere £95! ;D
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Post by Pete on Jun 7, 2008 4:23:49 GMT
Rick, I understand what you are saying but I am not sure I agree that that's what you actually did, because you used the phrase "becoming normative", which already has the flavour of moving towards a new norm. To me, you just agreed with me, but to you, I'm sure you didn't. My 'becoming normative' is akin to traversing half of the remaining distance to the norm with each step, never actually getting there. Some will take to it wholeheartedly, and some literary Luddites will come ever closer but never actually surrender to the juggernaut. Rick Rick, thanks. I may be one of your literary Luddites so far as the use of "normative" is concerned, although I do change slowly. I have, for example, now stopped saying "forsooth" and "zounds". But I do like your reference to Zeno's Theorem.
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Post by Sue M-V on Jun 7, 2008 12:03:38 GMT
(Note: None of the above 'publications' exist.) Not exists, then? Sue
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Post by Gabriel-Ernest on Jun 7, 2008 13:44:22 GMT
It is the first time I have heard of sentence case and title case. The phrases don’t make sense and are ugly! Every sentence has at least one capital letter, and titles employ lower case; as has been shown by some of the discussions in previous posts. What is wrong with Lower Case and Upper Case? They seem perfectly understandable. Do publishers, editors and those of their ilk now use these new definitions?
It seems that some one/some people have decided that new expressions are required for No Good Reason. (Sue, M-V: I also enjoy capitalisation for fun, à la Winnie-the-Pooh! Me too! But people so often mis-understand them.) To quote Henry David Thoreau: “Beware any enterprise that requires new clothes.”.
G-E.
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Post by goofy on Jun 7, 2008 15:45:13 GMT
Sentence case and title case are useful because they describe the difference between how a sentence is capitalized and how a title is capitalized. These are standard typography terms afaik.
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Post by Paul Doherty on Jun 7, 2008 17:23:36 GMT
> What is wrong with Lower Case and Upper Case? <
Nothing, but they are not the same as sentence case and title case.
Microsoft Word (and most other word-processing programs, as far as I know) allows one to format a selection as:
- UPPER CASE - lower case - Sentence case - Title Case
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Post by Trevor on Jun 7, 2008 18:27:48 GMT
> What is wrong with Lower Case and Upper Case? < Nothing, but they are not the same as sentence case and title case. Microsoft Word (and most other word-processing programs, as far as I know) allows one to format a selection as: - UPPER CASE - lower case - Sentence case - Title Case And as a result book titles and the like, which traditionally have only the main words capitalised, are increasingly being shown with every word capitalised. So: The Long Dark Teatime of the SoulGets wrongly shown as The Long Dark Teatime Of The Soul
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Post by Verbivore on Jun 8, 2008 9:08:10 GMT
(Note: None of the above 'publications' exist.) Not exists, then? Sue Oh yoiks! Indeed. Sackcloth time.
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