Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire The Greengrocer's Apostrophe

It seems to me that the conventions vary from field to field as well. Your background in aviation could promote 8's, and mine in chemistry could promote 8s.

I agree about the Oxford comma being necessary. Jack, Jill, Dick, and Jane is a different story than Jack, Jill, Dick and Jane.

Hah, and I hear I thought those commas were Catholic nun commas.

We'd get red marks on our papers if we didn't use them properly. Too many red marks and one was likely to get a ruler or a pointer broken over one's knuckles.

It's almost like correct mathematical notation.

I was educated by nuns, brothers, and priests - in that order (pun intended) as well. Religion aside, you LEARNED stuff.

I was taught to place a comma before the “and” preceding the last item of a series. My adult daughter and son told me several years ago that English teachers were moving away from that.

I probably use it about 50% of the time so over time I’m half right. 😁

Lot's of stuff crap that is acceptable in common speech has also become acceptable in "writing and journalism".

"Since" and "because" are becoming synonymous. One is an expression relating to time passed and the other is an expression of "the result of". But, it's OK (okay?) to use them interchangeably now it seems.

Wasps build nests in posts!

I'm enjoying this conversation. Interesting.

Good one hotrod.

Thanks.
I really support the Oxford comma because it makes things clearer

For mangled English then and than bring mixed up is pure idiocy. A close second is using less for fewer

So does this mean we should flatten everything near the Darièn Gap with A-10s, or A-10's, or plain old A-10Bs?

As for the less and fewer conundrum, it's pretty simple: "Fewer" is for things you can count, and "less" is for things you can't.

The Atlantic has LESS water than the Pacific. Bob vowed to eat FEWER hamburgers.

A peeve of mine is using "that" instead of "who" when referring to people. "Wabigoon hates those WHO fart in church." "That" is for objects and such. "The dog THAT barked."

I need to sale some things. They are all for sell.

You could flatten everything with an A-10's gun, or if there was a bunch of A-10s, a bunch of A-10s' guns.

Well done, JOG.

Does anyone use 'whom' any more? I've rarely heard it. I never did figure out the whom vs who rules...and I never thought it was important enough to find out.

Rocky, actually that book's title is Eats, Shoots & Leaves. Book (and movie/play titles) are in italics. Book chapters and poems are inside quotation marks.

What drove me nuts back when I was writing for half-a-dozen magazines, and a book every couple years, was how many different editors used different style books. Many were also stuck in the era when they went to school.

One that drove me particularly crazy was the "copy editor" for a company that published several magazines, who'd graduated from a midwestern high school, the spent a little time at a now long-defunct business school. Her main reference was an ancient collegiate dictionary which contained some variety of style manual, perhaps the Chicago version (which continues to evolves, as do many others, due to the Internet.)

A good example was a hunting article where I mentioned poring over a topographic map. She changed poring to pouring, which has a completely different meaning. After reading the magazine I e-mailed her, pointing this out--and the next time I used pored or poring she put it inside quotation marks....

John

I lazied out on that, John. Just easier to use the quote marks. I'll take the penalty for capitalization.

NASA used to use the Associated Press Style Manual (and perhaps still does.) I tossed that one when my copy was 30 years old, and when the AP started going completely sinister-leaning.

Looking up at my book shelf I see style and usage manuals by Strunk & White, Fowler, Partridge, Johnson, Ehrlich, and Webster's. Plus the usual dictionary, thesaurus, and word books. Sixteen volumes, all told. Naturally, I still manage to screw something up at depressingly regular intervals. When I wrote for money, I'd spend a LOT of time trying to get exactly the correct phrasing or punctuation. But now I seldom bother. There are only a handful of people on the 'Fire who'd know the difference, anyway. Or care.

Rocky,

Yep, we still have a bunch of printed style manuals and dictionaries--but these days I often just go to the Internet versions, which like Internet loading data are updated far more often than printed manuals!

Luckily, only write for two magazines anymore, Sports Afield and Rifle Loony News. The editor of SA, Diana Rupp, knows her stuff--and I'm married to the editor of RLN, which makes any editorial discussions" easy!