=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= EDline Vol. 6, no. 22 Editorial mailing list (digest version) Published by the Electric Editors =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= Contents: Q & A [2oq] 'La' Belle Epoque? [2or] 'Gender' versus 'sex' FYI [3gl] Call for Papers: ECDL 2001 Workshop on Electronic Books [6] Just for fun [8] Administration =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= ---[2] Q & A --------------------------------------------------- ** [2oq] 'La' Belle Epoque? Date: Fri, 1 June 2001 From: Jane Kerr, bywater@ntlworld.com "... during the so-called _la belle epoque_ ..." My instinct is that the "la" here is superfluous. What do you say? ---------------------- Date: Fri, 1 June 2001 From: Daniel Kamman, danielkamman@information-consultant.com The American Heritage Dictionary, 4th (current) edition at < http://www.bartleby.com/61/36/B0173600.html > apppears to agree with you, since they have, without "la" "belle e/poque. An era of artistic and cultural refinement in a society, especially in France at the beginning of the 20th century." < http://www.m-w.com > has a similar definition. ---------------------- Date: Fri, 1 June 2001 From: Rachel Kress, r.kress@fss.uu.nl Jane Kerr wrote: > My instinct is that the "la" here is superfluous. Mine too. the Sh OED has it without. I'd also drop the 'so-called' unless the author is suggesting some scepticism or am I getting to used to culling it from Dutch authors' texts? They use (to my mind) wrongly so often that I've had to catch myself before cutting even 'correct' uses. ---------------------- Date: Fri, 1 June 2001 From: Miranda Barker, Wordwiseed@aol.com Surely, yes. You wouldn't say 'the so-called the beautiful period'. ---------------------- Date: Fri, 1 June 2001 From: Sulaiman Adebowale, sulaiman.adebowale@codesria.sn I think your instincts are right. But in this case I won't put "belle epoque" in quotes or, my instinct, in italic. Italics okay if it is "during la belle epoque". ---------------------- Date: Fri, 1 June 2001 From: Rod Cuff, rod@wordandweb.co.uk Sulaiman Adebowale wrote: > ... I won't put "belle epoque" in quotes or, my instinct, in > italic. Italics okay if it is "during la belle epoque". ODWE specifies the italics. ---------------------- Date: Fri, 1 June 2001 From: Sulaiman Adebowale, sulaiman.adebowale@codesria.sn Rod Cuff wrote: > ODWE specifies the italics. Yes it does, but does it specify when you drop the "la"? The Chicago Manual (p259) has the following examples: Grand Sie\cle; _l'ancien re/gime_; the ancien re/gime... ---------------------- Date: Sat, 2 June 2001 From: Rod Stedman, rstedman@nexo.es I don't see anything wrong in principle with the bilingual redundancy of "the" and "la" together. To give another example, "the Alcantara bridge" in Toledo could be more fully rendered into English (from Arabic as well as Spanish) as "the the bridge bridge", but such repetition only worries the odd linguist. But as "belle epoque" is an established loan from French (and you don't need to be a linguist to be aware of some French grammar), here I'd agree about dropping the "la". ---------------------- Date: Fri, 1 June 2001 From: Susan Strobel, sstrobel@m2k.com Rod Cuff wrote: > ODWE specifies the italics. What is ODWE? ---------------------- Date: Fri, 1 June 2001 From: David Ibbetson, isserlis@home.com > What is ODWE? The Oxford Dictionary for Writers and Editors. Essentially it's part of the OUP style guide. (The other part is Hart's Rules for Compositors and Readers. I'll leave you to guess which dictionary they recommend.) +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+ ** [2or] 'Gender' versus 'sex' Date: Mon, 4 June 2001 From: Sabra Ledent, sbledent@sprint.ca I am editing a book of tables on U.S. politics, 8th ed. The tables are inconsistent in their use of the terms sex and gender. In the tables every possible combination appears: Sex above Male/ Female; Gender above Male/Female; Sex above Men/Women; Gender above Men/Women. I have checked out many sources (including my demographer husband) and there appears to be no one correct way of doing this these days. Suggestions would be appreciated. ---------------------- Date: Mon, 4 June 2001 From: David Ibbetson, isserlis@home.com * Men/Women refers to adults. Male/Female covers all ages. * Gender appears to be Politically Correct, Sex is semantically correct. ----------------------- Date: Tues, 5 June 2001 From: Nick Hudson, hudson@c031.aone.net.au David Ibbotson is clearly right, and I suspect that this battle is lost. For what it is worth (i.e. in case anyone is too young to remember the battle) here are some historical fragments. In the 1950s, Fowler's 1927 view was still generally accepted: that gender was a grammatical term (masculine/feminine) and sex a biological term (male/female). Fowler asserted that the use of gender for sex was 'either a jocularity -- or a blunder'. One of the early targets of the Feminist movement was 'role stereotyping', and they saw, correctly, that the issue was not sex role stereotyping, which was a simple matter of having different bits, but of social role stereotyping, e.g. doctors were he and nurses were she. They adopted the word 'gender' to cover this. It was a useful distinction. We could say 'in some families the gender roles are reversed' where it would have been odd to say 'the sex roles are reversed'. However, from this innocent beginning the word gender turned into a PC word for the biological difference. It has not gone the whole way yet - we do not 'have gender' with one another. But office building do 'provide facilities for both genders', which to me smacks of coyness. For years I fought against this usage, on the grounds that whenever I used the word in its grammatical sense, I had to say 'grammatical gender'. In practice, however, it didn't work out too badly. There are too many other double meanings in our language to be particularly concerned about this one. It is, however, worth noting that the problem only exists in languages whose gender structure is rudimentary. In English, gender marches with sex: 'he' is both masculine and male, 'she' both feminine and female, and 'it' covers the rest. The exceptions ('she' may be a ship, for instance) are so rare and freakish that we rarely need to distinguish sex from gender, and can use these words for different manifestations of the same biological condition. French is different. French has no 'it', all nouns are masculine or feminine, and masculine nouns can denote male, female or sexless objects. We get oddities like 'Madame le medecin'. This means the the distinction between gender and sex is integral to the language, and absolutely clearcut. Ten years ago, I would unequivocally have said, in answer to Sabra Lement's original question: 'The topic is biological difference, not even social difference, still less grammatical, so it MUST be sex. Today, I would grind my teeth and recommend 'gender'. This is particularly so when designing forms, because some witty people always fill in 'Sex' boxes with the word 'Yes'. ----------------------- Date: Tues, 5 June 2001 From: Michele Clarke, michele.clarke@btinternet.com My preference would be for Gender/Male/Female. ----------------------- Date: Tues, 5 June 2001 From: Alex Grey, prufrock@quista.net Sabra Ledent wrote: > The tables are inconsistent in their use of the terms sex and > gender. And David Ibbetson wrote: > Gender appears to be Politically Correct, Sex is semantically > correct. No, with respect, this is not so. "Sex" refers to biological distinctions between males and females, whereas "gender" refers to cultural distinctions or an internalised sense of role which is socially, although not literally, regulated by one's sex. So, e.g., being a mother would be sex-related, whereas being "maternal" would be gender-related. Ideally, you should use the content of the tables to decide whether the data relates to sex or gender, although this may lead to consistency problems, of course, so, all of the above having been said, you may need to fall back on the credentials of "gender" as a word which is widely used to be PC. HTH, Sabra, but note that I am in the UK, so may be out of step with current practice in your market. ----------------------- Date: Tues, 5 June 2001 From: David Ibbetson, isserlis@home.com Alex Grey wrote: > "Sex" refers to biological distinctions between males and > females, whereas "gender" refers to cultural distinctions or > an internalised sense of role which is socially, although not > literally, regulated by one's sex. Not to my generation. To me "gender" is a grammatical concept. (Recent research suggests that being "maternal" is linked to a low level of testosterone in one's mother's womb. (See, for example, the current BMJ.) But, as I understand it, this is hypothesis rather than fact.) ----------------------- Date: Tues, 5 June 2001 From: Susannah Driver-Barstow, sdrvr@ulster.net Interesting problem you've got. I agree with Alex's point that the content of the material should indicate which term is correct, as they don't mean quite the same thing, even though they are becoming interchangeable for some, maybe most, people. To my mind, keeping different meanings for the different terms is useful (sex as a biological category, gender as a cultural one), even though in life the two can overlap (children raised to appear as members of the "opposite" sex, sex change operations-- and we wouldn't use "gender" in those instances, would we?). Back to your editing question, despite the growing interchanging of the 2 terms, I'm sure you're right to think there's something off with having them appear interchangeably in this book. Do you have any idea what the author was thinking? Is there some distinction he or she is trying to get at? ---[3] FYI ----------------------------------------------------- ** [3gl] Call for Papers: ECDL 2001 Workshop on Electronic Books Date: Mon, 11 June 2001 From: Monica Landoni, monica@dis.strath.ac.uk Call for Papers: ECDL 2001 Workshop on Electronic Books The goal of the ECDL 2001 workshop is to stimulate discussion among the various stakeholders in the E-Book field, including publishers, librarians, HCI researchers, software and hardware companies, and academics. The field offers a mix of opportunities and challenges for all involved, with each stakeholder relying on others in a complex set of relationships. There is much to explore. Suitably revised and extended versions of papers presented in the workshop will be published in a special issue of JoDI, the Journal of Digital Information following its normal refereeing procedure. Contributions are solicited on, but not limited to, following topics on Electronic Books: design of electronic books; models for electronic books; electronic commerce and electronic books; new roles of publishers, books stores and libraries; electronic books for teaching and learning; new devices for reading electronic books; electronic books and electronic journals differences and commonalties; emerging standards for electronic books; evaluation of electronic books. All submissions must be received by 10 July, 2001. For more information on the workshop please refer to: < http://www.ecdl2001.org/ > ---[6] Just for fun -------------------------------------------- Piffling trifles, no. 7 There are only four words in the English language which end in "-dous": tremendous horrendous stupendous hazardous ---[8] Administration ------------------------------------------ EDline provides the opportunity for an online discussion of matters editorial and editorial business. 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