Is This a Nit Pick?
The word in question is “contentious.”
Such a shift of Earth is called “true polar wander”, but the evidence for this process has been contentious.
http://astrobiology.com/2021/10/did-the-earth-tip-on-its-side-84-million-years-ago.html
Contentiousness is a human emotion or behavior. It’s not something that inanimate objects such as evidence do.
So I say the sentence should say:
Such a shift of Earth is called “true polar wander”, but the evidence for this process has been a source of contention.
What do you think?
Here’s a picture from the article:
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How Not to be a Tech Writer
Okay, some of you no doubt know that I’m a technical writer by trade; this site is a hobby. Well, this comic is about a writer, but definitely not a technical writer! This is about the opposite of everything I stand for. I say that writing should be clear, concise, correct, complete, and useful.
—and grant writing is a branch of tech writing. harrumpf!
Request the essay mentioned on the right of this page to see details about those five principles. You can also do a search of those five words in the search box.
Watch Your Subject!
Do you see the mistake: Panel 2:
“We/us … men” is called an appositive, meaning they are equivalent. That makes the pronoun part of the subject, so it should be “we,” not “us.”
You know that, right?
A Good Typesetting Rule, I think
I saw this in a comment in one of my favorite newsletters (October 10, 2021, if you care to look it up), A word A Day.
In typesetting, it is sometimes better to use a symbol rather than a superscript number to indicate a footnote, particularly when your content is mainly numbers to begin with, like math or dates. For dates, it is conventional to use an asterisk for someone’s date of birth and a dagger for a date of death.
Craig Little, Mahwah, New Jersey
My practice has always been to use superscript number for footnotes when you have a lot of them, and an asterisk, dagger, and double dagger when I have three or fewer.
Where are you Based?
Your base is IN a place, folks, unlike how this is written:
Hopkins was the head of an old American shipbuilding firm based out of Groton, Connecticut.
https://nautil.us/issue/107/the-edge/the-disneyfication-of-atomic-power
Mr. Hopkins was in Japan at the time, so he was out of Connecticut, but his company was (is) in Groton, Connecticut.
Get your prepositions right! Harrumpf.
PS—Same for “centered.” You are not centered around. You are centered at or centered in.
