=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= EDline Vol. 3, no. 39 (27 September 1998) Editorial mailing list Published by the Electric Editors =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= Contents: Q & A---previous queries [2en] The Fully Monty [2ew] Dictionaries [2fd] Minding Ps and Qs [2fe] E-mail characters [2fg] Adjectives in US English Q & A---new queries [2fh] Family matters [2fi] Web addresses for dictionaries FYI [3de] Inscriptions e-zine Business matters---new postings [4bl] Accountancy fees for self-assessment [4bm] EA PENS unit in Bristol [5] Bookmarks [6] Just for fun [8] Administration =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= ---[2] Q & A --------------------------------------------------- ** [2en] The Fully Monty Date: Mon, 21 Sept 1998 From: Ruth Barlow, Rbarlow@tesco.net Ruth E. Thaler-Carter wrote > The reference to "up(ping) the monte" refers to a card game > (Three-card Monte) and has to do with raising the stakes or > making something more risky. Is that the same as upping the ante - where the ante is the stake in the middle of the gaming table? ----------------------- Date: Sat, 26 Sept 1998 From: Merle Read, ReadMA@aol.com I thought the expression was "up the ante". This thread is driving me up the wall! +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+ ** [2ew] Dictionaries Date: Tues, 22 Sept 1998 From: David Price, dprice@nccnet.co.uk Anyone who was interested in my recent enquiry about dictionaries [see EDline 3.33--3.35] and the definition of "scopophilia" may find it useful to look at a copy of the Guardian's Saturday supplement, the Editor, on 19 September. On page 16 "The Digested Read", there is a comparison of five dictionaries "to save you the burden of reading them". Strangely, "scopophilia" is not amongst the new words the Guardian felt it necessary to mention. +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+ ** [2fd] Minding Ps and Qs Date: Tues, 22 Sept 1998 From: Caroline Mackenzie, Contextcm@aol.com Geoff Barnett asked: > Perhaps someone can explain why, in my French dictionary, the > word for wig is given as perruque. Having consulted the Petit Robert, the word 'queue' is not used in the correct French word for a wig, which is in fact 'perruque' (from a 15th century Italian word 'perrruca', by the way). The original meaning of 'queue' is of course a tail and that has been used to refer to all sorts of tails, including Chinamen's pigtails (i.e. a Sino-hyphenated-American, I believe!) and grand pianos (piano à queue). But also we've found a reference to a tail-coat: 'queue-de-pie' (literally, a magpie's tail). Maybe the reference here is to those rather extreme baroque wigs: gravity-defying masses on the head and little curly tails in the nape of the neck! In which case, this is a word transported from one sense to another in order to be evocative or poetic. Does that clarify or muddy the waters? ! +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+ ** [2fe] E-mail characters Date: Wed, 23 Sept 1998 From: Margaret Corbett, mcorbett@dial.pipex.com Ev Charlton wrote: > I have printed off the 123 Promote! special keyboard characters > mentioned in Edline 3.33 as I now find myself regularly > conversing with Finland - umlauts, in particular, have suddenly > become essential. The instructions given certainly produce the > umlaut but only in the next space, not above the letter. This is > the case for both Email and HTML. As Finnish uses a number of > double letters, this is confusing to say the least. The only > solution I can come up with is to create a document in, say, > Word and then attach it to the Email - thus defeating the whole > object of Email. Does anyone have any better solution(s)? I find that I can Cut (or copy) any symbol character from Word (Word97 on a PC) and Paste it into my e-mail message. This is not all that useful one character at a time, but I suppose one could copy a string of useful characters, paste them into the message and delete the unwanted ones? That still seems a roundabout solution. Just a thought +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+ ** [2fg] Adjectives in US English Date: Tues, 22 Sept 1998 From: Kathleen Lyle, Kathleen@klyle.demon.co.uk Jane Kerr wrote: > Is there any rule about the inclusion or omission of the -al > ending on adjectives? My current text (US author) has: > > histologic variants > pathologic identification > histopathologic diagnosis > hematologic malignancies etc. > > (I think I'm right in saying that these would all have -al on > the end in UK English) but also: > > epidemiological evidence > > Is it simply a matter of authorial preference? I've never been able to understand this either. I assumed it was an American quirk until a colleague (American-born but working in Europe) told me she though the -ic ending was a British eccentricity. Now I am more confused than I was before. I have heard someone try to explain a difference between the -ic and -ical forms but I didn't understand the explanation and have therefore forgotten it. ------------------------ Date: Tues, 22 Sept 1998 From: Norman Grossblatt, NGrossbl@nas.edu It seems to be authorial preference leavened by a modicum of editor input now and then. I prefer the short form when both words exist and mean the same thing (that's Fowler's advice), but most of my authors are scientists, mainly in the life sciences, and many of them reject "biologic" in particular as some sort of outrage, although they often don't notice the other short forms. Many of them, apparently oblivious, use the short and long forms of a given word in the same passage! The New Shorter OED dates both "biological" and "biologic" to the middle 19th century and defines "biologic" as "biological". More and more journals in the sciences are showing a preference for the short forms, including "biologic". Among other usage "authorities" with a stated preference for the short form, as between "-ic" and "-ical", are Eric Partridge, Bergen Evans, Wilson Follett, H. W. Fowler, and the Council of Biology Editors' "Scientific Style and Format". With regard specifically to "biologic" vs. "biological", they are joined in preferring "biologic" by the Merriam-Webster Third New International Dictionary, the "unabridged" Random House Dictionary, and Dorland's Illustrated Medical Dictionary. There are all sorts of anomalies in this business. Scientists who don't object to "analytic geometry" have told me that "analytic chemistry" is impossible because "analytic" and "analytical" mean different things. "Botanic garden" and "botanical garden" are each used in the official names of many important scientific institutions in the United States. And so on. The most common "rule" seems to be to use the word that is accepted in its field. I can't (refuse to?) adhere to that rule. ------------------------ Date: Tues, 22 Sept 1998 From: Caroline Mackenzie, Contextcm@aol.com I had a long argument with an American friend about this and we consulted our respective Bibles (the OED and the Webster) and we were both right. In US English, they put an -al after -ic and in UK English, we don't. QED.....? +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+ ** [2fh] Family matters Date: Mon, 21 Sept 1998 From: Neville Hankins, nevhankins@compuserve.com My nephew was recently casitgated by both his mother and girl- friend for using the word 'incentivised' in a report (they thought 'motivated' was better), and my brother was also recently castigated by his PhD supervisor for using the word 'transitioned' (condemned as manager-speak garbage). They sought my advice - the fools. While there may indeed be better alternatives for these two words, I was reluctant to condemn them out of hand without further research. In my experience, particularly that gained from querying words in academic philosophy books which do not seem to appear in the more common dictionaries, and only occasionally in major sources such as the OED, authors (read philosophers, mainly) are not above inventing their own words because the existing ones do not quite mean what they want, or they wish to make a distinction to avoid censure by their peers. Sometimes they will condescend to put such words in inverted commas. The common attribute of all these words is that they are logical and look and sound like 'real' words which one would expect to find in a dictionary. As my male relatives are not philosophers, I should advise them to think again and not follow the American habit of creating verbs from nouns. But has anyone ever encountered 'incentivised' or 'transitioned' in a sensible context? (Perhaps I should also explain that my nephew works in Singapore and my brother in Brisbane: are these words examples of the new South-West Pacific English?!) +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+ ** [2fi] Web addresses for dictionaries Date: Tues, 22 Sept 1998 From: Liz Goodman, fullmeasure@bigpond.com Does anyone know a Website address which takes you directly into a dictionary? The other day I had a job that the managing editor said he would like to have edited according to Collins, but otherwise the Oxford would do. I have the Oxford and a dozen others, but not Collins. I wasted maybe an hour of my time (not the client's) hunting around on the Net and got a lot of stuff I don't need. So I gave up and reverted to the Oxford. Can anyone help? ---[3] FYI ----------------------------------------------------- ** [3de] Inscriptions e-zine Date: Thurs, 24 Sept 1998 From: Ian Kingston, ian@ikingston.demon.co.uk The following Web site/e-zine may be of interest to EDline subscribers: > Inscriptions is the weekly e-zine of news, notes, job > opportunities, contests, markets, message boards and humor for > writers. A Web version is also available at > > < http://members.aol.com/maidenfate/Inscriptions.html > > > To subscribe to the text-only version of Inscriptions, send the > following command to MaidenFate@aol.com in the BODY of e-mail: > > SUBSCRIBE Your e-mail address > > Editor > Pamela Wilfinger > MaidenFate@aol.com ---[4] Business matters ---------------------------------------- ** [4bl] Accountancy fees for self-assessment Date: Wed, 23 Sept 1998 From: Silvia Berlincioni, silvia@ndirect.co.uk My question is: how much do your accountants charge for your Self Assessment tax returns? I've only just started using one, after becoming sick of dealing with Inland Revenue staff who never seem to agree with each other on anything. My accounts are pretty simple: invoices, interest from banks on the plus side; expenses, capital allowances and pension fund on the minus side. I'm not able to work my tax out this time, but I think it should be very easy for a professional. My accountant has just quoted me 275 GBpounds plus VAT, which sounds a bit crazy. How do other people fare? +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+ ** [4bm] EA PENS unit in Bristol Date: Fri, 25 Sept 1998 From: Paul Nash, paulnash@zetnet.co.uk To any indexers who also do copy-editing: Has anyone heard of the Environment Agency's "Publishing and Editing National Service (PENS)" in Bristol? Apparently they undertake editing, proofreading, indexing, and repag work for govt depts and Stationery Office. Do they contract freelances? (I ask because I have just lost a repag job of one of my own indexes to them!) ---[5] Bookmarks ----------------------------------------------- Date: Fri, 25 Sept 1998 From: Ian Kingston, ian@ikingston.demon.co.uk science.komm science.komm is 'an internet site dedicated to supporting research communication'. It is essentially a large collection of links to various journals, publishers and resources in the sciences. Editors will probably find the links to specialist dictionaries useful. The URL is: < http://www.sciencekomm.at/ > ---[6] Just for fun ------------------------------------------- Run that by me again? no. 4 Date: Sun, 27 Sept 1998 From: Iain Brown, i_brown@compuserve.com A warning notice: ! Men working ---------------------- Date: Wed, 23 Sep 1998 From: R Anderson, r.anderson@lancaster.ac.uk Re: 'split infinitive' ["Run that by me again? no. 1] To judge by the replies, it seems that the greatest crime is to dare to correct someone. Glad my teachers at school corrected me or I would be walking around in ignorance. Surely it's better to be corrected when wrong than to suffer the results of the 'political correctness' of not being 'judgemental'? Right and Wrong DO exist. +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+ "Beguiling ideas about science", no. 24 I am not sure how clouds get formed. But the clouds know how to do it, and that is the important thing. +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+ "It CAN be done", no. 8 Everything that can be invented has been invented. ---Charles H. Duell, Commissioner, U.S. Office of Patents, 1899 ---[8] Administration ------------------------------------------ EDline provides the opportunity for a weekly online discussion of matters editorial and editorial business. * POSTING MESSAGES TO THE LIST All messages to be posted to the list should be sent to Iain Brown, at: i_brown@compuserve.com Include as the subject line, "EDline [topic]", where [topic] is the subject under discussion. 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[7] Miscellaneous -- odds and sods * Administration All messages of a subscription or administrative nature should be directed to Jane Kerr, at: bywater@zetnet.co.uk with "EDline ADMIN" in the subject line. * To subscribe to Grapevine To subscribe to Grapevine, the discussion list concerned with matters computing, please e-mail Electric Editors at: ElectricEds@bigfoot.com with [Subscribe Grapevine] in the subject line. * To subscribe to LANGline To subscribe to LANGline, which discusses modern languages, translation and editing in non-English languages, please e-mail Electric Editors at: ElectricEds@bigfoot.com with [Subscribe LANGline] in the subject line. * Homepage and back issues: Visit the Electric Editors at: < http://www.ikingston.demon.co.uk/ee/home.htm > Back issues of all three mailing lists are available on the Mailing Lists archive page. --------- ** The views expressed in this mailing list are strictly those of the individual contributors, and do not necessarily reflect the views of the moderators or of the Electric Editors. ** Articles (c) 1998, by individual contributors Design (c) 1996, 1997, Iain Brown Compilation (c) 1998, The Electric Editors =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= END OF EDline 3.39 Next issue: 4 October 1998 =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=