h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

I find myself wondering if this can really be the "Guide to Earth" if you keep using words like "fortnight", which is not in universal usage across the globe. Just a pedantic thought.

Crikey. What do you call two weeks in, er, wherever you live, then?

And yes, that is fairly pedantic, especially when Microsoft has released its Encarta Dictionary of English and is using English spelling not American and claiming it to be global...

But pedantry is OK. I presume you know what a fortnight is, though?

We call two weeks, uh, two weeks over here, Mark. It sounds crazy, but it's true.

And on a related note, wasn't someone just having a conversation about Microsoft establishing their own standards without telling anyone what they are?

Yep, imagine that, we just call it 2 weeks. I dunno where all the word fortnight is in common use, really. I just know it isn't here in the US. Strangely enough, two weeks is still fewer letters than fortnight and the same number of syllables. I would thus venture that it's not a shortcut word, just a holdover from old times that didn't get held over here. Ah, well.

As for Microsoft, there are any number of things you could say about them. Expecting them to get a dictionary right seems kind of a stretch.

Well, seeing as two weeks is obviously a common standard, I've changed it: thanks for the suggestion. Interestingly "fortnight", which is in very common usage in England, is also in the Oxford American Dictionary... but that doesn't mean you use it, of course, just that it is, technically, correct American English too.

Interesting stuff.

Oh, yeah. There's nothing that says it's incorrect usage. Just hardly anyone *says* that word here. It's still in my Merriam-Webster, and it doesn't say "(usu Br)" or anything like that. But I think it may eventually. It is a very old word, all it can say is "before 12th c".

Anyway, if anyone notices I imagine you could get a flurry of British vs. American bs in here. You just can't please some folks.

LOL CrazyOne you should have said British & Australian vs. American bs. (just to be pedantic) coz it's common here too.
I dont think a country that is so fond of the phrase 'four score and ten years' should be counting letters ;^)#


I think fortnight derived as a shortened form of fourteen nights.

;^)#

Strictly for accuracy's sake, it's "four score and seven years ago", but it's not really that popular. It's only bit of the speech most people know.

*wanders off "...our forefathers brought forth...more perfect union...all men...created equal..."*

Ooops sorry.


;^)#

Isn't pedantry illegal and punishable by imprisonment?
Or I am confusing it with something else?

Yeah, four score and seven years ago, and that's taken from a speech given 136 years ago. Nobody really says "score" to mean "twenty" anymore, although the term "scores" to just mean "many" is heard occasionally. I wouldn't suggest one go around saying "Scores of user pages are created hear at h2g2 every day." It's just ever so slightly archaic, it seems to me.

And they'd spell it "here". Sorry about the rampant pedantry, but *points finger* he started it!

'Scores of people' & 'in their scores' would be in fairly common usage here in Oz - different strokes for different folks as they say.


;^)#

What M$ have actually done is released a "universal" English dictionary with a massively American bias. Whilst I think that is okay spelling-wise (ie: color vs colour), there are references to US only things that are much better explained elsewhere. I can't remember what they are so it can't have annoyed me that much.

Well of course, we Brits talk about "two pints" while you Pilgrim sons and daughters call that quantity a "quart". So to avoid colonial wars, why don't we settle on "quartnight?"

Or even better I could change the page to reflect a month of h2g2. Think I'll do just that...

Roll on the decimalisation of time, that'll sort 'em out.

Ahh yes the centihour, milliyear and, of course the kiloday (pron killa)

;^)#

Yeah, I'd sure like to killa few days here and there.

LOL - I guess its a 'half empty vs half full' thing - I was thinking of killerdays.

;^)#