Proofreading Service - Pain in the English
Proofreading Service - Pain in the English

Your Pain Is Our Pleasure

24-Hour Proofreading Service—We proofread your Google Docs or Microsoft Word files. We hate grammatical errors with a passion. Learn More

Proofreading Service - Pain in the English
Proofreading Service - Pain in the English

Your Pain Is Our Pleasure

24-Hour Proofreading Service—We proofread your Google Docs or Microsoft Word files. We hate grammatical errors with a passion. Learn More

Username

speedwell2

Member Since

February 3, 2004

Total number of comments

477

Total number of votes received

1465

Bio

Latest Comments

One Love

  • December 16, 2004, 4:40pm

Well, I originally intended to be ironic (that's what the smiley means), but the following excerpt from the lyrics is pretty clear:

"Let's get together to fight this Holy Armagiddyon (One Love!),
So when the Man comes there will be no, no doom (One Song!).
Have pity on those whose chances grows t'inner;
There ain't no hiding place from the Father of Creation."

To which I want to respond, "None of your Christian pity, thanks... and while you're at it, cancel that holy war, OK?"

I'm not giving a link to the lyrics site where I got this because it will massively infect your computer with spyware.

BCC

  • December 16, 2004, 4:34pm

This post has some good thoughts: http://www.painintheenglish.com/post.asp?id=58

I prefer "e-mail." "E-mail," with the capital E, would only be used if the word "electronic" would be capitalized in the sentence, and "email" is French for "enamel."

Ya’ese

  • December 16, 2004, 4:31pm

No, Jay. "Menopause" and "geripause" (I've never heard the second one) are not words for a woman past the "change of life." They're words for the "change" itself. You would never call a menopausal woman a "menopause."

Why so few diacritics in English?

  • December 16, 2004, 8:00am

It's used to represent the sound that "sh" represents in English.

Why so few diacritics in English?

  • December 15, 2004, 11:20am

Joachim, could the ess-tzed be part of the explanation for why Hungarian uses "sz" for the sound English writes simply as "s"?

Newfoundland Expression

  • December 14, 2004, 4:07pm

Oh, that's terrific! (thinks about going home and making something like this for dinner) :)

According to ME, you, him....

  • December 14, 2004, 8:29am

Oh, it's possible to have that construction in English--there's nothing grammatically wrong with it at all. Any English speaker would understand what you meant by it. But it is just not something that anyone would say under any normal circumstances.

The phrase "according to X" is really a way to bring the words of a third party into a dialogue. You might be talking on the phone, and say over the shoulder to your mom, "According to his wife, he left a hour ago." Or you might be writing a student paper, and say, "Women are 100% more likely than men to have had a hysterectomy, according to a study published last year."

I've also heard the phrase used to give a slightly ironic, skeptical tone to a comment, for example, "She is so in love that, according to her, that man can do no wrong." Compare, "She is so in love that she thinks that man can do no wrong."

Neither usage really lends itself to commenting upon yourself. The best you could do would be something like, "According to the article I wrote five years ago for the Journal of Psychological Studies, you're a certifiable nutcase."

BCC

  • December 13, 2004, 9:20am

Oh, it's a secretary question. Yippee :)

You would send "blind" carbon copies if you sent out copies of a letter to more than one recipient, but purposely omitted the cc: notation at the bottom. You might do this for a fundraising letter, for example, in which it would be inappropriate to reveal the list of people from whom you were soliciting donations. Another example might be if you were sending form letters of regret to the unsuccessful applicants for a position.

To me the real question is why we refer to "carbon" copies of "electronic" mail at all!

Bios

  • December 13, 2004, 9:08am

P.S. The proper Latin for "Speedwell" is "Veronica spp."

Bios

  • December 13, 2004, 9:05am

I got the impression that the writer was trying to use it in some specialized sense, but I didn't get the impression that he was using it in a well-understood sense (like a technical term). My best guess is that he was trying to "fudge" a specialized meaning out of the word. If I was editing the passage, I would ask if the author meant to refer to the performer's "presence," or to a certain convincingly realistic quality in the performance.

Questions

Taking the Name, in vain or in earnest September 23, 2004