Tech Writers Have a Rule About This
First, the comic:
The rule is this:
If someone can’t follow the instructions, the problem is in the writing.
Then someone adds, “But some people are idiots.”
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When to use an apostrophe to make a plural
Part of good writing is to be unambiguous. Sometimes you need an apostrophe to make a plural sound right. See the last word in this comic:
The apostrophe makes you pronounce it “prose” which is plural of “pro.” Without the apostrophe, it’s “pros,” which you might be inclined to pronounce “pross.”
This doesn’t happen very often. When I run into another example, I’ll post it.
A Correct “All Right”
I think one reason I’m slowing down on this site is that I find that I’m doing a lot of repeats. Of course I’m probably the only person on the planet who has read every single post, but still…
Well here’s one that doesn’t happen very often. I see the incorrect word “alright” so often and in such professional contexts, that I think we have an example of linguistic change here. I still don’t like it. “Already” is okay, though.
The correct form is two words: “all right.” Mom gets it correct here:
I mentioned a while back that if you want one word, use “arright.”
I’m Back!
A couple months back my back began to hurt and encouraged me to sort of retire from adding posts to this site. Well, my back is feeling better, tomorrow is Pi Day (one of my favorites), and I ran into a comic that was too linguistic-ey to resist. Here’s the comic:
I have to comment:
When you refer to our planet you capitalize the name depending on the context.
- In an ordinary sentence, with “the,” don’t capitalize the earth.
- When you have to leave off the “the,” capitalize the planet’s name. In a list, for example. Mercury, Venus, Earth and Mars are rocky planets.
- And when you’re referring to the stuff you can hold in your hand, it’s “earth” unless it’s the first word in the sentence.
Happy Pi Day!
A Plural I Never Thought About
The word “cochlea” is like the word “fish.” Singular and plural are the same. Here’s the text that made me think of this. It’s from Scientific American December 2022, page 46.
The primary structure of hearing in the skull is called a cochlea. Both of your cochlea would fit on the face of a dime with room to spare. If your cochlea were the same relative size as a bat’s, each would be about the size of a golf ball.
So there you have it!
Here are two pictures. I googled them. You’ve probably seen something like these:
