Tuesday Rambly Bits

[gnomi]

-- After meeting mabfan today for lunch, I went into Park St. station, where they're installing the new Charlie Card/Charlie Ticket machines. I asked the guy in the booth whether there was some mechanism for turning tokens into Charlie Tickets, since the T is still sending tokens as refunds when you send in an on-time-service claim. He said that the Charlie Card machines take tokens as payment.

-- I am bizarrely annoyed by people who use a comma to set off an apposive phrase but don't put in the second comma. For example:

Bob, the man I met yesterday has not called me back.

This actually impacts affects readability, and that ticks me off.

Yeah. I'm a punctuation nerd. I'm comfortable with that.

-- Pi-Con was a lot of fun. When I have more brain, I may type up a brief con report. Panels went well, for the most part. Spending an hour talking to terri_osborne about SG-1 and SGA was way, way fun. And the Small Press and Self Publishing panel (which I was on with saraphina_marie was also fun, as well as informative and well attended (it was my best-attended panel).

-- Me to eal: The birth control pill is the Mussolini of women's cycles.

-- tapuz and laurens10 gave me Hebrew magnetic poetry for my birthday. I am now trying to figure out where in my cube is the best place for various and sundry Hebrew sentences to randomly appear. Not that anyone in the office other than me (and visitors from the home office) would understand them, but they amuse me.

Comments

appositively annoying

[violetcheetah.livejournal.com]

i run into the one-comma appositive thing all the time at work, and it drives me up a tree, too. given that i believe the most important thing grammar does is make things coherent, any time i have to go back and read a sentence three times to figure out what the writer meant, i get cranky.

[xochitl42.livejournal.com]

I agree entirely with your appositive comment, but what caught my eye is this:

This actually impacts readability, and that ticks me off.

Do you approve of "impact" as a verb? It grates against the very core of my English language-loving soul, but I have been wrong before. If you do approve, can you cite a non-American Heritage Dictionary source for this usage? (American Heritage drives me up a wall, for a number of reasons that are too silly to go into here.)

[gnomi.livejournal.com]

Do you approve of "impact" as a verb?

Actually, I hate it. And I can't believe I used it that way. Blame the fact that I've been reading developer-written design docs all day.

I know it's becoming more and more common, but still I hate it.

[mabfan.livejournal.com]

Ha ha! You got caught using "impact" as a verb! Ha ha!

[xochitl42.livejournal.com]

Be nice! Be nice! One of the reasons I hate that usage is because it comes out of BAD marketing, and from bad marketing types who think that mangling the language in that fashion is "cool" or "hip." Aaargh!

I sympathize with you, gnomi! I do! You would never have done this if you hadn't been exposed to stuff written by people whose resistance to such terrible language abuse is nonexistent!

[mabfan.livejournal.com]

I was just amused because Nomi tends to be a strict linguistical prescriptivist, whereas I am more of a descriptivist myself. And it's interesting that mentioned the American Heritage before, as they are prescriptivist, meaning that they shouldn't have impact as a verb, whereas the Merriam-Webster (which is more descriptivist) might.

[xochitl42.livejournal.com]

The reason I mentioned American Heritage is because at another job, a snarky little graphic designer questioned my correction of "impact" as a verb. She had the gall to ask me with a self-serving little smirk, "so, you're telling me that the American Heritage Dictionary is wrong?"

And I looked her straight in the eye with that molecular obsidian edge I get from my no-nonsense Aztec ancestors that more or less conveys the sense that I don't necessarily have any compunctions about removing your still-beating heart and said, "Yes. I am."

She did cross me again, but not for a very long time.

[gnomi.livejournal.com]

The American Heritage (the 3rd edition, at least, which is the one I have here at my desk) has a long usage note on the use of "impact" as a verb. They're not for it.

Each generation of critics seems to select one particular usage to stand as the emblem of what they view as linguistic crassness. Thirty years ago it was the use of contact as a verb, but opposition to that form has more or less disappeared, and attention now focuses on the verbal use of impact meaning "have an effect, affect." Eighty-four percent of the Usage Panel disapproves of the construction to impact on, as in the phrase social pathologies, common to the inner city, that impact heavily on such a community; and fully 95 percent disapproves of the use of impact as a transitive verb in the sentence Companies have used disposable techniques that have a potential for impacting our health. But even these figures do not reflect the degree of distaste with which critics view the usage: in their comments some Panelists labeled the usage as "bureaucratic," "pretentious," "vile," and "a vulgarism."

So she was wrong that the American Heritage Dictionary sanctions the use, as well.

[xochitl42.livejournal.com]

...that lying little twerp. Grrr! She was a nasty one, that one. One of the reasons I'm quite happy to no longer be there...

[madfilkentist]

My Merriam-Webster Collegiate Dictionary (10th edition, 1993) has "to have an impact on; impinge on" as one of the meanings of "impact," without any qualification. I've never had a problem with that use of the word.

[gnomi.livejournal.com]

And here we have a beautiful illustration of the difference between descriptivist and prescriptivist dictionaries. Merriam-Webster is a descriptivist house -- they describe how the language is being used. Amercian Heritage is a prescriptivist house -- they describe how the language is "supposed" to be used, according to the prescriptions of the language experts.

I'm a prescriptivist, for the most part. And, thus, I prefer the American Heritage for usage information.

[gnomi.livejournal.com]

...and I have now edited the above to better reflect my choices for vocabulary.

[tsuki-no-bara.livejournal.com]

oh god, i hate that comma thing too. hebrew magnetic poetry is nifty, tho.

[michelel72.livejournal.com]

Oh, the missing closing appositive (or "apposive") clause comma! Infuriating!! That pretty much always sends me into a frothing rage! Since I see it pretty much everywhere, I remain a pretty angry person. :>

Unless their actual intent is specifically addressing Bob regarding some unnamed third person. Which it pretty much never is.

Mussolini jokes. Good times, man.

[jenwrites.livejournal.com]

I'm proud to have Mussolini in my pocketbook, and in my ovaries :)

[zsero.livejournal.com]

Bob, the man I met yesterday has not called me back.

What's wrong with that sentence? Do you think it's TMI? That Bob might not be interested in whether some stranger calls you?

:-)

[sorek.livejournal.com]

I've always thought you'd do well in programming. In sane languages, having a "for" or "while" loop without terminating said loop (using "end loop" or closing brace or whatever is used) generates an error. Same with html, xml, etc.

I never realized impact was not a verb. Good to know.

[vettecat.livejournal.com]

Totally agree about the lonesome comma... argh!

[(Anonymous)]

Yes! Amuse the home office!

[twitch124.livejournal.com]

er, that was me. Not like there's many choices :)