Archive for the ‘Punctuation’ Category
August 18, 2023
A typo in writing — CARPTENTER, with an anticipation of the T in CARPENTER — which was then not caught by a proofreader, so that it got published looking like CARP-TENTER ‘someone or something for tenting carp’, but written solid. Exposed by Michael Palmer on Facebook on 8/15. The published display, with the beginning of the accompanying news article:
US Senator Sherrod Brown August 15 at 11:09 AM: Today our Butch Lewis Act saved the pensions of 5,400 carpenters in Southwest Ohio, restoring full benefits with NO cuts. When work has dignity, workers can take comfort that the pensions they’ve earned over a lifetime will be there for them when they retire
And then, of course, the playful Facebook comments, starting with Michael Palmer’s initial salvo:
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Posted in Compounds, Errors, Homosexuality, Masculinity, Punctuation, Semantics of compounds, Silliness, Typos | Leave a Comment »
May 28, 2023
That’s the right-angle knife ‘the knife with a 90º angle (between handle and blade)’, not the right angle-knife ‘the correct knife with an angle’; hyphens can be your friends.
But right angle knife is what the ABLE-T company (more on them to come) calls one of its “affordable adaptive tools” that help to afford independent living to people with disabilities. Like me.
My right angle knife was a gift yesterday from Elizabeth Daingerfield Zwicky; I field-tested it at dinner last night for slicing celery, and it’s truly wonderful. (I had simply abandoned slicing and chopping celery and carrots — I eat a lot of celery and carrots — because it had become too difficult and painful for my sad afflicted hands.)
[Linguist’s note: I don’t often get a chance to use transitive afford (to) ‘provide or supply (an opportunity or facility)’ (NOAD) — with an oblique object marked by the preposition to — so it was a pleasure to deploy it above.]
The actual object:
(#1) I know this just looks preposterous, but you need to see it in use
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Posted in Argument structure, Furnishings and tools, My life, Punctuation, Syntax | Leave a Comment »
February 18, 2022
From my 2/13/22 posting “On punctuation”:
Encountered recently in an interview, by writer I, of actor X, about X’s approach to their craft. The exchanges below are about punctuation, specifically in scripts; X reads other things, of course, but scripts are the central reading material of an actor’s life, the stuff they use to transform, through a collaboration with a director and other actors, into performances.
… punctuation can be a stumbling block, so they take it out. I’s note at this point:
This seems to be the master key to understanding X’s highly idiosyncratic line readings.
This is David Marchese interviewing the actor Christopher Walken in The New York Times Magazine, in print 2/13/22, p. 14.
Now, on Walken.
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Posted in Acting, Actors, Movies and tv, Punctuation | Leave a Comment »
February 13, 2022
Encountered recently in an interview, by writer I, of actor X, about X’s approach to their craft. The exchanges below are about punctuation, specifically in scripts; X reads other things, of course, but scripts are the central reading material of an actor’s life, the stuff they use to transform, through a collaboration with a director and other actors, into performances.
If you’ve read the interview, you’ll know who X is, but I’ll conceal their identity for the moment, to let their remarks on punctuation wash over you. It would be an interesting exercise to hear the views of the writers of those scripts and the directors of their performances.
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Posted in Acting, Actors, Punctuation | 3 Comments »
July 14, 2020
Following up on NO PENGUINS (my 12/4/19 posting here), another adventure in food signage, also initially presented almost entirely without context. This one takes us into the mysteries of punctuation, t/d-deletion in English, and the food practices of modern America.
The impetus:
(#1)
This is available as a symbol conveying NO PENGUINS, meaning that penguins are not allowed in the signed area or will not be admitted to the signed area (under a penalty of some sort). The slash is the slash of exclusion.
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Posted in Diners, Language and food, Punctuation, Signage, Style and register, Variation | 4 Comments »
October 29, 2019
Today’s Wayno/Piraro Bizarro collabo, with punctuation:
(#1) (If you’re puzzled by the odd symbols in the cartoon — Dan Piraro says there are 5 in this strip — see this Page. And stay tuned for a Bizarro, rather than Hindu-nationalist, interpretation of the initials BJP.)
Two linked things: the syntax of the sign on the hot dog cart; and the potential ambiguity of Sloppy Joe’s on the sign, as a possessive in standard spelling or as a plural in a very popular non-standard spelling.
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Posted in Language and food, Linguistics in the comics, Punctuation, Signage, Signs and symbols | 3 Comments »
April 3, 2017
(Reference to a dangerous sexual practice, but mostly in the spirt of fun. Use your judgment.)
Today’s alarming Bizarro::
(#1)
(If you’re puzzled by the odd symbols in the cartoon — Dan Piraro says there are 2 in this strip — see this Page.)
Amidst much silliness about how punctuation saves lives — Let’s eat father and all that — comes this even greater silliness with the road sign STOP AHEAD (conveying that there is a STOP sign ahead on the road), alluding to a bit of language play I first heard as a child:
What’s that on the road ahead? / What’s that on the road — a head?
(or with in rather than on).
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Posted in Language of sex, Language play, Linguistics in the comics, Punctuation | 1 Comment »
March 13, 2017
From a posting by Randy Murray to the Facebook page “THE ERRORIST MOVEMENT – Correct grammar, with humour”, where he comments, “apostrophes mean so much”:
(#1)
At first glance, this ad would seem to fall into four big topic areas on this blog: dubious commercial names; It’s All Grammar; vulgar slang; and phallic play (in particular, word play). To which I add: the conventions on the form of hashtags, e-mail addresses, and web addresses (URLs). But first, I have to tell you that this particular Dick’s Pizza is a fabrication.
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Posted in Double entendres, Language and animals, Language of advertising, Language play, Movies and tv, Names, Phallicity, Punctuation, Puns, Spelling, Taboo language and slurs, Usage advice, Usage attitudes | 4 Comments »
November 18, 2016
Punctuating possessives and plurals in writing English is something of a minefield; possessive plural forms like ladies’ and women’s are especially tricky, and quite a few writers of English would prefer to see the system both rationalized and simplified — in particular to use the apostrophe to signal “grammatical morpheme s” and to place it regularly before the s. That gives us the “greengrocer’s apostrophe”, as in two eggplant’s.
It also gives us possessive plurals like kid’s, as in this ad photo for CheapesTees:
(#1)
But wait, there’s more.
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Posted in Language in advertising, Punctuation | Leave a Comment »
October 15, 2016
The Unshelved cartoon from the 12th, passed on by Betsy Herrington on Facebook:
The GN takes a truly extreme (One Right Way) position that like can be only a verb, a bizarre view that results in her seeing the library poster as being incorrectly punctuated. (Ok, when in doubt, blame it on the punctuation.) She doesn’t even recognize the preposition use (Which one of these things is not like the others?), not to mention the many uses of like that are set off intonationally in speech and consequently should be punctuated with a comma — no doubt she dismisses these as simply incorrect, “not English” — in particular, quotative like (I asked when she was going, and she was like, “In a minute”) and discourse particle, or discourse marker, like, as in the library’s poster.
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Posted in Discourse, Linguistics in the comics, Peeving, Punctuation, Quotation | 1 Comment »
