Fancy punctuation

rogersgeorge on January 19th, 2012

I begin with a punctuation comic. It’s from a web comic I like, Of the Fittest.

(I think I've actually seen art like this...)

Most of the punctuation marks we normally use are on the keyboard. Sometimes, though you can class up your writing with some punctuation that’s a little harder to enter than striking a single key. The American Standard Code for Information Interchange has defined “numbers” for many characters that are not on your keyboard, but are used in writing, such as accented letters and math symbols. Here are a few that (in my opinion) are worth learning.

Many word processing programs and utilities attempt to make it easy to enter special characters by defining special keystroke combinations or letting you pick them from a chart. On a Windows computer, however, you can enter the ASCII codes for any character (even the ones on the keyboard) directly from the keyboard, no matter what software you happen to be using. (I have found a few programs with limited editing capabilities that don’t accept these codes. One that comes to mind is Pidgin, an otherwise excellent instant messaging program.)

Here’s how it works: Hold down the Alt key while you type the four-digit code number on the numeric keypad. If you use a laptop that doesn’t have a separate numeric keypad, look for the key that changes some of the keys on the right side of the keyboard into numeric keypad keys. Mac computers don’t seem to be able to do all the special characters (for example, the times sign), but you can get most of them with the Option key and certain letter keys. Here’s a chart, one among many on the internet.

Dashes

Alt-0151 is the code for the M-dash. Use this to make a break in your thought, such  as an interruption. A pair of them can be used like parentheses when the parenthetical remark is more important than a mere aside; you want to emphasize the remark. Here’s an excellent example from Carl Sagan’s book, The Dragons of Eden:

The advances we have made in the last few million years cannot therefore be explained by the ratio of brain to body mass, but rather by increasing total brain mass, improved specialization of new function and complexity within the brain, and—especially—extrasomatic learning.

Use the slightly shorter N-dash (Alt-0150) to show a range of the “from…to” variety.

Store hours: 7–9

Accents

I think the most common accented letter in English is é, e with an acute accent over it. The code for é is Alt-0233. You know that work history document you use when you’re job hunting? It’s a résumé, not a resume, even though you’re probably wanting to resume your career. Class up your résumé and job applications by getting this word right. Hmm. Would you like me to write a lesson with a few résumé-writing tips? Shoot me an email or comment.

The dieresis is falling into disuse, but if you want to be really classy and write “coöperate,” the ö is Alt-0246. You use it to show that two vowels next to each other are pronounced separately. Sometimes you see a hyphen instead of a dieresis: co-operate.

This isn’t an accent, but since we’re thinking about résumés, if you swing in academic circles, you might call it a curriculum vitæ. The code for æ is Alt-0230. Of course, if you swing in academic circles, you probably already know that, right?

Math

Sometimes you need to write a multiplication expression, perhaps describing the dimensions of a rectangle or piece of lumber. The code is Alt-0215. A two by four is 2×4, not 2×4, or (horror of horrors) 2X4.

Somewhat less often you want the division sign. It’s Alt-0247.  Doesn’t 365÷7 look a lot better than 365/7? for one thing, you’re sure it’s not a fraction.

That will do for now. I suggest you make a little chart and attach it next to your monitor. You’ll memorize the ones you use in no time.

 

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Special post for Wednesday, Jan 18, 2012

rogersgeorge on January 18th, 2012

I’m not sure how to turn this blog off, or back on again, so this is my version of going dark to support the cause opposing the SOPA and PIPA bills. I think the bills and their ilk are the product of two special interests: media industries that (IMO wrongly) fear financial loss and loss of control, and “security” interests who want to monitor and control the distribution of opinions in what amounts to limitation of free speech. I happen to think the bill is unworkable, but that’s another issue.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Please don’t read any of the rest of my site today. I hope you feel some sense of loss at not getting your daily dose of curmudgeonly grammar, which is my choice of free speech.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Some more small mistakes

rogersgeorge on January 17th, 2012


These are some items that have been piling up in my solecism folder. I use the term “small mistakes” advisedly. You shouldn’t make any of them.

  • Lego has no plural. The company that owns the word says always to use the singular; never say “Legos.” It’s their football, they make the rules.
  • Prescribe means you must; proscribe means you must not.
  • Eager means looking to the future with happiness; anxious means looking to the future with fear. You should be eager, not anxious, to meet up with your girlfriend.
  • Imply means to suggest; infer means to guess. Okay, an educated guess.
  • Compose goes from the parts to the whole; comprise goes from the whole to the parts. Thirteen colonies composed the early USA; the early USA comprised 13 colonies. Never say “is comprised of.”
  • Who is for people; that is for things. I am the one who tells you about grammar. A computer screen is a thing that you look at.
  • Affect is a verb; effect is a noun. Yes, I know about the exceptions. If you do too, you don’t need to be told about this mistake anyway. A mistake has the effect of making the person seem careless, but it won’t affect me.

That’ll do for now, class. Go and sin no more. Wait! Here’s a test. See if you can tell which picture goes with which word. These words are fairly abstract, and my picture choices are subjective, so if you can defend your choice, count it as correct. I also don’t guarantee that all the words are represented, or that each picture represents only one word.

           
Click for full size

Maybe one of you WordPress gurus can tell me how to make these pictures go side by side.

Getting verbs right part 1

rogersgeorge on January 15th, 2012

Back when I was actively studying Greek, I kept a Greek verb conjugation under a piece of plate glass on my desk. The sheet was about the size of half a sheet of newspaper, the print was small, and it was filled with the forms a Greek verb could take. Greek verbs have tenses, voices, and moods that English verbs don’t have, not to mention several ways of making those forms from different roots. And don’t get me started on accents! We can say pretty much anything in English that an ancient Greek could say, but for some forms we have to use circumlocutions (a phrase instead of a single word) and we don’t count those as verb forms in English. (Want an example? They have a mood called the optative. It expresses a wish. We translate a verb in the optative of, say, “to sit,”  with something like “would that I were sitting.” )

A microscopic part of Greek verb forms

English still has plenty of subtleties to confuse the careless and unwary. Here is one:

Subjunctive mood. You use the subjunctive when you talk about something contrary to reality. Here’s a correct headline from Scientific American recently:

What if There Were no Gravity?

(I could quibble and say they shouldn’t use a “there is” or “there are” construction, but that’s a topic for another time.) Does gravity exist? Yes. Therefore the condition of no gravity is contrary to reality, so they used the subjunctive form of the verb.

You would be incorrect to say “What if there was no gravity.” Ahem, notice that I used “would be” rather than “will be.” I’m suggesting that in real life you always get it right.

Here’s a rule of thumb: You’ll usually use the subjunctive when you see “if” in the sentence. Most verbs in English don’t have a separate form for the subjunctive, so we tend to forget about it. But the verb “to be” does, and we use it when we want to have a subjunctive form. So watch out when you use that verb.

Remember the drinking song, which has it correct: “I wish I were single again, again, I wish I were single again. If I were single, my pockets would jingle, I wish I were single again. “

Three small mistakes

rogersgeorge on January 13th, 2012

(My apologies to those of you who got the unfinished version of this post a couple days ago. I clicked the wrong button, and I could not stop the RSS feed.)

So many of these little mistakes exist, I would make you cross-eyed if I tried to cover more than about three at a time, and you would forget most of them anyway. So here are three, and they are similar. That should help you remember them. They all involve using unnecessary words.

I call these sorts of things the Hard Part of Writing, by the way, because they are items that require you to think about what you’re writing to get them correct.

Rule 1. When you use “additional,” be sure you need it. I recently read an article about being persuasive. Among the article’s good advice was a comment to use a headline, and then write a paragraph that supports the headline with additional details. What’s wrong with that? A headline does not have details. It’s a headline! The details are not additional. So:

Write a headline, then write a paragraph that supports the headline with details.

That’s not only cleaner, it’s truer.

Rule 2. When you use “different,” be sure you need it. You encounter this mistake when you see writers make informal lists. “Ten different people friended me  after I told my doggie story.” Get rid of that “different,” and you have a cleaner sentence. It goes without saying (if you think) that you wouldn’t be writing about ten of the same person. Since they have to be different people, you don’t have to say so.

Ten people friended me after I told my doggie story.

I could have used “circled me” in the example, but then it would have been a hundred people, and some of them would have been really different, if you know what I mean.

Rule 3. The third little mistake is saying what you’re going to say. Perhaps you see these unnecessary words most in expressions such as “I’d like to say (thank you for all these wonderful gifts)…”  and “I just want to say that (you’re the best audience ever)…” These introductory expressions are unnecessary. (I was going to say “totally unnecessary” but “totally” is as unnecessary as “different”). They are a way of stepping back from actually saying what you have on your mind by saying that you’re going to say it. Just say what you want to say.

Thank you for all these wonderful gifts. You are the best audience ever.

More personal, direct, and straightforward, isn’t it? Since this is the Hard Part of Writing, I have an assignment for you: Write a short paragraph of nice things about someone, and see how many unnecessary words you can leave out. You have permission to send it to them.