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

Good thinking BBS.

The new humour section could be called m2g2h2, where M stands for "Maybe Mickey-taking"

I'm sure Mark Moxon would like the M bit

.... or even better "Mostly Mirth"

Should not þat be
"Mostly Mirþ" ?

The thorn (þ) and eth (ð) as well as the sharp s (ß)were once quite important parts of the alphabet but they have gone largely due to typesetters wanting simpler lifes.

Thorn was used to spell the word we now spell 'the'-- 'þe' which with wear and tear on type began to look like ye.

Eth or more porperly edh is used where the 't' sound in 'th' is really a 'dh' that is to say it is voiced. Most of us do not have an ear properly trained to be able to notice this distinction but it is evidently inportant in Iceland where the eth is still in use. You can here the sound in the English word 'Them,' for instance where if you take the effort to listen closely, you will hear that you start voicing the vowel before you sound the consonant

The sharp s was commonly used in words like 'Boßton.' With the same type of wear and tear and poor pressing, it most often looked like Bofton.

Things got worse because as the type wore down with the thinner parts breaking off first, the type ended up mixed in the drawers and ultimately these special letters were discontinued to the relief of the typesetters.

Incidentally, to a typesetter there are far more 'letters' in the typecase than 26. Consider that letter combinations like 'fl,' 'fi,' 'ae,' and 'oe' as well as other ligatures and swashes appear on the same slug and so must be treated as if they were separate letters.

Unfortunately, this lovely fictional, albeit satiric, artlcle can't go into the guide because of the guide's guide lines. I, for one, think that this whole emphasis on fact is just another cross for us to bear, but there it is.

Can we sinbin this thread and get this thing off the bottom of the stack?

Please! It's depressing trecking to the back of the line to find things that have been ignored for so long.

Barton

you just summerized what was said in the pevious 20 odd postings, well done

Or to put it another way, the owners - often so-called press barons - of the sweatshops that early printers worked in were too mean to cast replacements when the lead matrix used by hand typesetters to mould type began to wear out. It was a money thing. They would have had to employ people to do the work.

Most of the problems you mention were overcome with the introduction in the early part of the 20th century of typesetting machines - Linotype, Monotype, Ludlow etc. These machines used virtually indestructable metal matrixes for casting type.

I guess it was lucky this yarn hasn't been moved out of PR or people wouldn't have read all this excellent new information.

Yes, and congratulation for using mean for what mean used to mean as opposed to what mean means today,

Barton

Well, actually, I mean, mean still means what mean used to mean, mostly. But, mainly, mean doesn't mean what mean used to mean when mean meant mean and not nasty. Well, no, I guess nasty could mean mean, too, but only in the sense of dirty or substandard, of which the last meaning is what mean means or rather what mean used to mean.

Am I right? Is that what you mean when you say mean?

Too giddy. Too tired.

I AM the weakest link! G'dnight.

Barton

"The word 'mean' can be used to mean many things in many ways. In the sense I used the word mean it means miserly, stingy," types a person who is not bright enough to realise he is not bright enough to realise he is not bright.

We could have a true or not? section for all of those things that nobody is really sure about. If you got the mix of articles right then you could avoid give the humour away of such lovely entries like this.

Hi,

Nice interesting entry. All news to me.

I'd love to see it in GuideML though, It'll make it easier to read, and take a bit of load off the Sub-Eds.

Dancing our way to a better day,

Dancer

I like it.

Err wasn't this entry nominated for the Sin Bin some time ago? as the reason why it is "all news" is because it is all fiction -) very good and amusing fiction and as stated elsewhere worthy of some sort of recognition that doesn't yet exist in the guide, but sadly not for the edited guide as it stands.

ChawkE

If such nice entries end up in the sin-bin, can anybody give me the address?
It will be very refreshing reading after all the dry and serious officially stamped stuff that's left in the edited guide.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/h2g2/guide/A482177

And yes there are some serously amusing entries there.

ChawkE

SinBin sounds bad, and, indeed some of the entries that end there end there because in one way or another they are bad. (Bad language, stupid entries, racist or offending entries...)

BUT!!! !!! there are a lot of great entries that end in the SinBin. This is for the reason that, as great as they may be, they aren't Edited Guide material.

You can read the guide's guidelines about writing an entry to see what it means, but usually it means the entries aren't factual. The guide is full of unfactual entries, but only factual ones(or, sometimes, partly factual and greatly assumptive) are Edited guide material.

I myself am a fiction fan, so I look a lot at unedited entries, but in order to guide, the guide needs to have some relation to the earth it is describing.


Dancer

Also, please note that the articles do NOT go anywhere, only the threads from PR go to the PR Sin Bin.

Articles, amusing or not, edited or not, remain in the unedited guide unless deleted by the authors or by TPTB for reasons of House Rule violation.

The above are information gleaned from other threads and other comments by scouts and such. I am not an official anything on h2g2, just another researcher.

Barton

Ladies and gentlemen, as a long-time Ace, Scout and Sub Editor, I am well aware of the guidelines for an entry to become part of the Edited Guide.

This article lives in Peer Peview because I, and other people, use this thread as a pointer to help explain to researchers why fiction is not included (at present) in the Edited Guide. We say things such as "Your yarn is splendid but, alas, it is fiction. Even good fiction such as 'The 27th Letter' (insert URL here) has been rejected. A discussion about this can be found in the Peer Review thread situated at (insert URL here)."

This point was put to the italics when the last attempt, via the Scouth's mailing list, was made to move the thread to the Sin Bin, a place where it would serve no useful purpose. All this happened a couple of months ago, so it would appear the italics agreed with this course of action.

Thank you for listening.
Loonytunes.

Hokedokey.

Memo to self: Write article on how to be a good example of a bad example.

I'm glad to see this notification in place, it clears up a lot of things.

Barton