Signs from the River/Road Trip 2010: Free Verse

I don't think that the people at the Riggins One Stop realizes that their signs are so ... free verse or philosophical. Another couple of syllables and they would be haiku.

I'm not even going to address what TEAL would say about the signs.

Editriss at Large

You know you have a problem when you want to start editing the graffiti. This lovely "conversation" was found in the subway system at Times Square.

What is with the unnecessary quote marks? Where is the punctuation at the end of the second sentence? Plus, it is "you're" for "YOU ARE," not your, people.

REALLY! Is it expecting too much for our vandals to be literate?

Editriss at large

Dear Hartford Hospital Facility/Grounds Department Administrators,

I recently spent some time at your facilities. Thank you for the large signage which helped me find my way to your various care units and parking garage.
I know that you have more important priorities than worrying about the spelling and grammar on your signs, like oh, making sure that people get to the right admitting entrances and not causing accidents in the parking lots,

BUT THIS IS UNACCEPTABLE!
Sincerely,

Auntie Nettie,
Editriss at large

Vacation Photos - Fauna aka My Visit to Manland

My vacation was primarily spent in the company of family, which these days is predominantly female. To offset all the estrogen that my poor father was being exposed to, we took a special trip one day to "Manland." Officially known as the Sportsman's Warehouse of southern Utah, this is a HUGE building, jammed packed with fishing, hiking, and camping gear, with an emphasis on hunting. A GINORMOUS emphasis on hunting. Lots and lots and lots of HUNTING.

It was literally staring you in the face!

I'm not usually a chicken when it comes to this stuff,

but in here you have to gobble it up.

The bears in "Manland" are not cuddly.

Though, they are technically "stuffed animals."

The special hour or so that we spent in "Manland" gave me a new insight into a lot of things. I have a new understanding of what every straight man who ever went shoe shopping with a female companion must be feeling. Equal parts utter panic, nausea, dread, fear, loathing, and a serious "fight or flight" reflex. I promise, now that I know how this feels, that no straight man in my life will have to accompany me to a clothing goods store -- EVER!

I also got another insight into my parents -- one that's hard to juxtapose with years of childhood. Intellectually, I know they grew up when hunting and camping was more common, and weren't unfamiliar with handling firearms. It's another thing to see them browsing, "window" shopping as it were, for possible future heirlooms.

Their reaction to me?

Be a "deer," and go amuse yourself in the aisles.

Yes, I know that's an elk and a moose. I even was able to identify their various calls on the nature videos that were being shown in the "media" section. Thank you very much. I'm not TOTALLY nature incompetent!

My thanks to the staff of "Manland" for not throwing me out for acting like a total East Coast snob and tourist. I did try to be discrete with the camera. However, the Grammar Police Girl that I am, I just had to snap this one.

COME ON ALREADY!!!

In honor of Mother's Day: Spell Checking

In honor of Mother's Day, this clip is for the former English teacher and proof-reader of many of Auntie Nettie's papers, good o' Mom. In the days before word processors and Word-esque programs, my spell checking devices were Mom and the dictionary. While built-in spell checkers do help, this poem* is the perfect example of why not to trust the software.

(Maybe instead of flowers I should have gotten Mom a bouquet of red PENS.)

The the impotence of proofreading
By Taylor Mali
http://www.taylormali.com/

The full text of the poem can be found on youtube.com or Taylor's site.

*Oh, and Mom ... sorry about the PG-13 rated words/connotations.

Remember, they are because of "misspellings."

Grammar Oddity of the Week

The next in our weekly series, brought to you courtesy of The New York Public Library Desk Reference, Fourth Edition.

Page 418:
No other words in the English language rhyme with the words month, orange, silver, or purple.

Page 427:
The Hawaiian alphabet has only 12 letters: the five vowels and the consonants H, K, L, M, N, P, and W.

ALOHA!

What I wouldn't give for a tropical view right about now.

Teaching Items of the Week

I was asked by people on the 'Net to continue my series of educational posts. So, et and voila: today's entry on proper capitalization, italization, and underline-zation of titles, etc.

I wholeheartedly believe in not reinventing the wheel. Therefore, when someone else can pull together a style guide, I will borrow from it ad nauseum.

Let me reiterate. I did NOT create this style guide. I am pilfering from others who thought long and hard about what would best serve the institution for which they write. They in turn borrowed from a variety of other sources. Go buy your own reference books from an independent bookseller or a big huge chain store which I will not name.

This [excerpted series of notes] is intended to help standardize the way [the institution] use the English language in [their] publications. It is based on a number of sources, including The Chicago Manual of Style, The New York Times Manual of Style and Usage, The Associated Press Stylebook, D. Kern Holoman's Writing About Music, and the good old English Dictionary (American Heritage College, Third Edition). The blend of these sources results in our own "house style." While there are exceptions to all rules, the goal is for our publications — catalogs, newspapers, brochures, pamphlets, etc. — to conform to one style.

A final note: Usage changes with time. New words come into the language, or th emeanings of old ones change. (Today, "web" means something different to most people than it did 20 years ago.) For much of this, there's no absolute "right" or "wrong" (to go back to "web," you'll see Web site written many ways in different publications: Web site, web stie, website, Website). We're not aiming to be "right;" we're aiming for consistency.

[For the record, the institution has this for “web” and other electronica]

W: Web site; Webmaster; World Wide Web
E: e-mail (only capitalized at beginnings of sentences)
O: online

Newspapers and magazines:

If a newspaper includes 'The' in its masthead, then 'The' should be capitalized. If, like the New York Post, 'The' is not included in the newspaper's title, then 'the' should not be capitalized. The complete title is rendered in italics.

An article in The Junkyard Journal. An article in The Journal.
A report in the New York Post… A report in the Post.
As a corollary, if "Magazine" is included in a magazine's title, it should be capitalized. If, as in the case of New York magazine, it is not, then it should be neither capitalized nor italicized.

Titles of works and parts of works

• Acts/Scenes: Capitalize and use numerals (Act 2, Scene 2)


• Articles, chapters, etc.: titles in quotes (e.g."Luxury in Hard Times" was the cover story of The New York Times Magazine.


• Books: titles in italics; chapters in quotes.
  
• Courses, class names: capitalize only if unique title, not generic subject (Arts in Education; music history, Classical Music in an Age of Pop; dance notation)
  
• Musical works (see Musical Terms section below)
  
• Newspapers, magazines: titles in italics (capitalize "the" if officially part of the masthead: An article in The New York Times; a report in the New York Post). Similarly, capitalize and italicize "magazine" if part of the title of the periodical: PC Magazine surveyed 100 laptop users. New York magazine has good theater listings.
  
• Organizations: capitalized (but do not capitalize "the" in an organization's name)


• Performance series: capitalize only; no quotes or italics: Lincoln Center's Great Performers series.


• Plays, movies, TV shows: titles in italics: The Merchant of Venice; 60 Minutes


• Recordings, CDs: capitalize but do not italicize if generic; italicize if descriptive title (his recording of sonatas by Bach; his recording The Art of the Countertenor)


• Roles: capitalize only, no quotes or italics. (He played Romeo in the production of Shakespeare's classic love story.)

Musical Terms
Most of the style rules regarding musical terminology are consistent with D. Kern Holoman's book Writing About Music, so if something doesn't appear in this manual, please refer to it. (One notable exception: Capitalize Op. when abbreviating opus.)

TITLES OF WORKS

Generic titles are not italicized, only capitalized (Beethoven's Symphony No. 2 or Beethoven's Second Symphony; Chopin's Piano Concerto No. 1).

Generic titles include, but are not limited to, symphonies; sonatas; concertos; suites; trios, quartets, quintets, etc.; names of dances (e.g. waltzes, mazurkas); fugues; inventions; canons; masses; etc.

When not referring to a specific title, do not capitalize: Mozart's symphonies; Beethoven's sonatas, etc.

Movements of works are not capitalized: The first movement of Beethoven's Ninth Symphony.

Descriptive titles are italicized when the name was given by the composer (Gershwin's Rhapsody in Blue; Symphonie Fantastique by Berlioz); otherwise, nicknames follow in parentheses and quotes: Schubert's Symphony in B Minor ("Unfinished") or Schubert's "Unfinished" Symphony.

Songs and Arias - In quotes ("Summertime" from Porgy and Bess. They all sang "God Bless America.")

KEYS, PITCHES, ETC.
Major, Minor: Both are capitalized only in titles (Sonata in C Major, Concerto in E Minor; hyphenate only if in adjectival use: E-Minor Concerto). If not part of a title, capitalize the pitch name, but lower case "major" and "minor": He transcribed the work from E minor to G minor.

Sharp, Flat: Do not capitalize in titles; do not hyphenate unless adjectival or compound (Sonata in B flat; Nocturne in C-sharp Minor)

Pitches: Capital letters, spell out "sharp" and "flat" (B flat, C sharp)

Opus numbers, Kochel numbers, etc.: Abbreviate, with a space between the period and the number (Op. 46, No. 2; K. 449, etc.; an exception is BWV, which takes no periods).

PERIODS OF MUSIC HISTORY
When referring to a specific era in musical history, the name of the period is capitalized: Baroque music; Classical; Romantic; etc. However, classical music is lowercased when referring less specifically to music of the Western European tradition (classical music as opposed to rock music). Do not capitalize medieval music, or modern or contemporary music.

SPELLING OF COMPOSERS' NAMES

Use accent marks in names. Use transliterated, Americanized spellings: Rachmaninoff (not Rachmaninov); Tchaikovsky; Prokofiev; etc.For names with "von," usually the "von" is dropped: Weber, not von Weber; Gluck, etc. (There are exceptions, however: von Bülow, for example.)

Grammar Oddity of the Week

The next in our almost weekly e-mail series, this time brought to you courtesy of bossdj.

This is a real sentence.

Buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo.


I can't diagram it to save my life, so click here for the explanation.

See? I'm not making it up.

Grammar Oddity of the Week

The next in our almost weekly e-mail series, brought to you courtesy of The New York Public Library Desk Reference, Fourth Edition.

Page 437:
The word facetiously has all the vowels, including Y, in order.

Page 447:
Charlotte Bronte and William Wordsworth asked their publishers to correct the punctuation in their manuscripts.

Page 444:
F. Scott Fitzgerald once said, “Cut out all those exclamation marks. An exclamation mark is like laughing at your own jokes.”

Makes you wonder what F. Scott would say about emoticons and texting!! LOL

Grammar Oddity of the Week

The next in our weekly e-mail series, brought to you courtesy of The New York Public Library Desk Reference, Fourth Edition.

Page 435:
There are nine different ways to pronounce the letters OUGH. All are contained in the sentence “A rough-coated, dough-faced, thoughtful ploughman strode through the streets of Scarborough; after falling into a slough, he coughed and hiccoughed.”

Page 392:
Although the @ has no name in the United States (it’s just called the “at symbol”), other countries call it “monkey’s tail,” “little snail,” “cat’s tail,” or “spider monkey.”

Makes you wonder, where'd we be @ without that at symbol?

And yes, I know that's grammatically wrong. I did it apurpose.

Grammar Oddity of the Week

The next in our series, brought to you courtesy of The New York Public Library Desk Reference, Fourth Edition.

Page 447:

“Watch out for spell checkers! If you ran the following sentence through your computer’s spell checker, it would tell you that nothing was wrong:

I have bin trying too improve my spelling for sum time now cents my secretary always says that it isn’t two grate.”

Page 445:

Ancient Greek texts had no punctuation and no spaces between words.