Well I now know who writes for a living............................
Well I now know who writes for a living............................
Tom1200 said:In reply to SV reX :
From a personal standpoint; I always have my stuff proof read. For my recent promotion I had to update my resume and I had my wife proof read it.
On an off-topic note I don't know if you are still doing hiring but it's currently an employees market; we now have to make some allowances.
Tom, I hope you'll forgive me, but I'm going to pick on you here. Your use of the semicolon in place of a comma is one of my pet peeves. Semicolons typically precede explanations rather than indicating a pause or break in the sentence.
One of my coworkers routinely uses a semicolon in place of a comma, and it drives me crazy:
Bob wanted to come along, but couldn't make it.
EDIT: Bob wanted to come along; he had been looking forward to the trip.
The incorrect use of compound adjectives gets under my skin as well. I can (and do) drive a worn-out car, but I can't say that my car is worn-out. It's not. It is worn out.
I've used double spaces after sentences throughout this post because that's what I learned, and I believe it's easier to read, but I tend to let that slide when typing from my phone because I get lazy. When using a keyboard, it's double spaces every time.
The singular plural pronoun also grinds my gears. I know the world is changing, but even so, it's difficult to understand whether the speaker is referring to an individual or a group.
Verbing nouns is grating until I remember that people have fished and painted since long before I was born. I still object to casually using a noun as a verb out of laziness, but somehow manage to resist the urge to write letters to the editor about it.
Jerry From LA said:Ms Young,
I will worry about I, me, and myself when GRM stops splitting the infinitive. That is fingernails on blackboards to me. I'm donning the firesuit...
Personally I work very hard in all my writing to not split infinitives.
z31maniac said:Duke said:Jerry From LA said:Ms Young,
I will worry about I, me, and myself when GRM stops splitting the infinitive. That is fingernails on blackboards to me. I'm donning the firesuit...
That is one grammar rule I frequently break in the name of readability. I understand that it's wrong, and I won't flame you for calling it out.
But like ending a sentence with a preposition, avoiding a split infinitive often seems like the cure is worse than the disease.
The Chicago Manual of Style agrees since the 1983 edition, there is nothing wrong with a split infinitive. For the reason you mentioned, the cure is often worse than the disease in this case.
https://www.chicagomanualofstyle.org/qanda/data/faq/topics/SplitInfinitives/faq0001.html
I graduated high school in 1978. Refresh my memory (although I certainly didn't care then. English was my worst mark.) of what a split infinitive is, so I may join in the fun.
An aside- My grade 12 final Lit exam had several subject listed for a short essay. I chose, "What was Macbeths motivation?". I wrote, in full, "He was an shiny happy person."
Still passed.
In reply to DarkMonohue :
And I will push back that the I did indeed use it correctly...
I said "from a presonal standpoint" and then proceeded to explain..........yes there should have been a comma were the period was.............but as I explained earlier this is a forum and I don't put the effort into that I do when writing contracts.
Streetwiseguy said:An aside- My grade 12 final Lit exam had several subject listed for a short essay. I chose, "What was Macbeths motivation?". I wrote, in full, "He was an shiny happy person."
Still passed.
I would have flunked or given you a D......................Macbeath's motivation was nooky, read his wife ran the show......that makes him horny and stupid, not necccesarily a shiny happy person.
In reply to Tom1200 :
I see now that I made a mistake in my second example. It should have read something like this:
Bob wanted to come along; he had been looking forward to the trip.
The key here is that the portion following the semicolon supports the portion preceding it, and both could be written as complete sentences on their own.
To be extra clear, I'm not trying to beat anyone up here. You were just in the right place at the right time to use as an example. Forum chatter is obviously different from a more formal written conversation.
Tom1200 said:Streetwiseguy said:An aside- My grade 12 final Lit exam had several subject listed for a short essay. I chose, "What was Macbeths motivation?". I wrote, in full, "He was an shiny happy person."
Still passed.
I would have flunked or given you a D......................Macbeath's motivation was nooky, read his wife ran the show......that makes him horny and stupid, not necccesarily a shiny happy person.
I was trying to fail. I had something to prove to an English teacher...
In reply to DarkMonohue :
To be clear I took no offense whatsoever; nor did I feel picked on.........(punctuation added for effect)
In reply to Streetwiseguy :
I understand this sentiment............when I got a short story published I wanted to take it back to a particualr english teacher and show her...........our styles were the polar opposites and we clashed because of it..............shallow and petty as it is I took pride in the fact that I was a "published writer" and she was not.
Grammar, not literature. The T in often is silent.
Joining late as usual. And I only made it through page 5, so I apologize if I'm unknowingly agreeing with someone.
The two words / usages that drive me most crazy are "a training" and " trainings." One doesn't attend a training, one attends training. It's simply incorrect to put "a" in front of training. Similarly, the plural of training is training. Whether I've received a little bit of training or a lot of training, I've received training. If I'm receiving training in one topic, that's training. If I'm receiving training in ten topics, that's training.
Next is cyber security. Needs to be two words, as cyber security is different from physical security or financial security or social security, but Microsoft disagrees, and there's no way to turn it off in Word.
Next is a case in which I know the correct word, but I don't like it. A person who has been suspended from a rope by their neck has been hanged, but every cell in my brain says they've been hung.
I occasionally have to write formal reports at work. Our internal style police stomp on my fingers with their boot heels every time I present information in a bulleted list. Bulleted lists present information in fewer words, and are more easily understood because of the shorter phrases and increased white space. But I always get told to redo it in complete sentences and paragraphs.
And not that you care, but I'm a huge fan of the Oxford comma, mildly prefer two spaces after a period, despise missing articles, lose it over the misuse of sale and sell, and can't figure out why it's wrong to end a sentence with a preposition, especially since it's always wordier and awkward not to.
In reply to Uncle David (Forum Supporter) :
This may help you; in contracts we don't use bullets because we need to refer to individual lines and as such we need to have them labeled, so we use an alphanumeric system of some sort in place of bullets.
A friend of mine always capitalizes High School. Isn't that only done in the context of an individual school's name, e.g. Jefferson High School?
Worse yet: highschool. I always wonder whether people who combine the two words also use elementaryschool or even communitycollege.
Are we including spoken English in this discussion? I'm not gracious enough to accept T-glottalization, upward inflection, etc., among TV and radio presenters. These are trends up with which I will not put.
Streetwiseguy said:I had something to prove to an English teacher...
I did once too but, in hindsight, she was smart enough to not let it go beyond flirting and suggestive discussion.
Uncle David (Forum Supporter) said:Joining late as usual. And I only made it through page 5, so I apologize if I'm unknowingly agreeing with someone.
The two words / usages that drive me most crazy are "a training" and " trainings." One doesn't attend a training, one attends training. It's simply incorrect to put "a" in front of training. Similarly, the plural of training is training. Whether I've received a little bit of training or a lot of training, I've received training. If I'm receiving training in one topic, that's training. If I'm receiving training in ten topics, that's training.
Next is cyber security. Needs to be two words, as cyber security is different from physical security or financial security or social security, but Microsoft disagrees, and there's no way to turn it off in Word.
Next is a case in which I know the correct word, but I don't like it. A person who has been suspended from a rope by their neck has been hanged, but every cell in my brain says they've been hung.
I occasionally have to write formal reports at work. Our internal style police stomp on my fingers with their boot heels every time I present information in a bulleted list. Bulleted lists present information in fewer words, and are more easily understood because of the shorter phrases and increased white space. But I always get told to redo it in complete sentences and paragraphs.
And not that you care, but I'm a huge fan of the Oxford comma, mildly prefer two spaces after a period, despise missing articles, lose it over the misuse of sale and sell, and can't figure out why it's wrong to end a sentence with a preposition, especially since it's always wordier and awkward not to.
It used to be web site, but is now commonly used and accepted to be website, or depending on context just site.
Some pet peeves:
As an architect I cringe when I see "break metal" when I know damn well it is brake (formed) metal.
Nuclear pronounced as nuke-yuler.
Quiet being mistaken for quite.
Moot being mistaken for mute.
Could of. FFS.
Racism.
On the resume thing, I get the idea that some jobs dont require great writing skills, they just need to be good at the job. I get that. But I also think about it like this. Say you are a bricklayer and you know stuff like resumes arent your strong suit. Do you take the time to look online for what a good resume looks like, or make sure spell checker says it's okay, or get someone else to look it over and critique it? Do you put the extra effort in because this is important or did you just do what you know is probably a crappy job and say good enough and turn it in? So now what does that crappy resume say about you?
As far as plural pronouns for individuals goes, if a person tells you there is appropriate usage for that they are lying. It is on them to educate themselves.
In reply to gearheadmb :
If you are a bricklayer, you aren't turning in a resume. You are filling out a job application or you are talking to the boss about the job. A properly punctuated resume would be wasted because the guy doing the hiring probably isn't any better at grammar than the guy applying for the job.
I'm hiring. Give me two job candidates. One with a polished resume that doesn't know the job and one that can't spell for E36 M3 but knows the job. I'm hiring the one that knows the job and will happily help him with spelling if necessary. The resume is irrelevant.
If I was hiring an administrator, then the resume and the ability to spell and punctuate a sentence get a little more important. They still aren't the be-all and end-all. Given a choice between one that is a polished writer with zero experience and one that has extensive experience but is a borderline grammarian, I'm hiring the latter. The woman working for me now didn't come with a resume nor did I give her a writing test. That's not what I hired her for.
wae said:"VIN Number"
Also, the emoji has no place in a business setting.
Much like "VIN Number","ATM Machine" gets me. I saw this at a rest stop on the Ohio Turnpike last night:
(Feeling a little self-conscious about the order of quotes and comma above. Did I get it right?)
Tom1200 said:You might want to read my post on a 10 million dollar lawsuit
I did.
So if what your writing is two separate things...
Peabody said:Tom1200 said:You might want to read my post on a 10 million dollar lawsuit
I did.
So if what your writing is two separate things...
Oi...............I get why "you're" pointing my error but I'll fall back to my posting that I don't spend time proof reading my posts..........this place is a lunatic bin (it's why I'm here) full of contrarian logic and so I behave accordingly.
If folks think I'm a Moe-ron because of it, so be it.
Sarah Young said:msterbeau said:Grammar and spelling seem to be covered pretty well here, by people far more adept than I at the English language and all it's technical aspects.
Design, on the other hand, is my forte. But, if I start in on design-related things that annoy me, I will be here forever and probably end up in a mental health facility in the process.I don't want to push you too far, but maybe you could spare one design-related annoyance? I don't think anyone's shared one so far.
OK. Fine!! ;-) Since this is a car-related website and my profession is transportation (industrial) design, I will make it a car thing. Here are two design things that bug the f**k out of me. One specific and one general.
One - The C8 Corvette's rear. There are a number of design decision's made on the rear of this car that I think are awful. One, the width and visual mass of the whole thing. The justification is that the car needed to carry two sets of golf clubs because a lot of their customer base are more posers than real sports car enthusiasts. Really, so you ruin the proportions for that? Anyone driving one of these things likely has the money to have three or four cars in their garage. Can't one of those other ones be the golf club car? Two, The smiley face concavity of the rear wing and top of the deck. Concavity is used very sparingly in design because it often looks hollow and weak. Not traits you want have in your design. Three, the flatness of the rear glass and surrounding roof structure. More than anything else this drives me insane. Literal flatness and straight lines look visually concave. See annoyance two for why this is bad.
The broader topic that annoys me is the idea of "open source design". As if a design would be better if you just apply a bunch of minds to it instead of one. While the idea of open source has merits in some fields (Like software) where a bunch of eyeballs and brains will generally make a better product, design is not one of them. This is not to say that a little bit of input and critique from others won't make a design better, but the best, most creative and iconic designs came from the minds of one individual. In a design studio, there is always one sketch from one designer that becomes the holy grail for the whole team to work towards. Generally that designer leads the team, with input (of course) from management and other team members. But it's all channeled through and championed by one person. What happens in open source design? Incoherent messes like the Rally Fighter.
wae said:"VIN Number"
Also, the emoji has no place in a business setting.
Canada disagrees with your stance on emojis...
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/07/07/world/canada/canada-thumbs-up-emoji-contract.html
David S. Wallens said:A personal design thing that bugs me: graphics that are supposed to resemble handwriting.
For an example, my own BMX frame:
I just find it looking a bit weak. I bought my frame like 8 years ago, though, and S&M is still using that look so I guess they’re happy with it. I just wish it had bolder graphics.
I have no idea what that badge/plaque/scribble thing is supposed to be but if the relevent people recognize who it belongs to, I can't argue too much against it. A lot better than some things out there.
Ahem..
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