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

Both the questions of inverted commas and the positioning of punctuation (I love that alliteration) are generally defined for any publication or publishing house in their style guide. Each house has a different style.

Many modern style guides are derived from the OUP (once known as Hart's Rules and now called 'The Oxford Guide to Style'). I believe this guide is responsible for the following:

- Single inverted commas for the first quotation.
- Punctuation in quotations follows the grammar of the quotation (i.e. punctuation inside if it belongs to the quotation, outside otherwise).

There is definitely something in there about possessives, but I can't remember what it is. The most famous rule of all is the 'Oxford comma' (a comma before 'and' in lists).

Personally, I find single inverted commas a bit confusing when they enclose apostrophes and generally prefer double.

For a contrasting set of rules, you can look at the Economist Style Guide -> http://www.economist.com/research/styleGuide/index.cfm?page=805701. I find their rules on plural possessives particularly confusing (look under 'apostrophes').

And here is another from The Times (http://www.timesonline.co.uk/section/0,,2941,00.html).

Both of these favour double quotes over single.

The BBC Style Guide was recently made available online also. But if you search on it (above), you get a lot of links about home decorating.

>> Hi ~jwf~. 'Pretentiousness' is a fairly normal word in everyday English. I've never heard of 'pretention'. <<

Omigod, you're right.

I can only think that whichever teacher it was who regularly accused me of being pretentious as a teenager made this same mistake whenever she pointed out my ongoing 'pretentions' rather than my overall 'pretentiousness'.

I copied that role model all my life and in all these years I would never have used 'pretentiousness'. If I had occassion to suggest someone else should stop being pretentious, I would have asked them to desist in their pretension. And spelled it wrong too.

The dict.dot.com listing for 'pretention' points out that it is properly spelled 'pretension' (the t becomes an s) and lists as only its third possible meaning:
>> "3: the quality of being pretentious (creating a false appearance of great importance or worth) [syn: pretentiousness] [ant: unpretentiousness]" <<

It is significant that this meaning is listed only after some awkward usages involving rare examples of false gods, would-be kings and other great and not-so-great pretenders.

And so, another half-assed, half-cocked bit of my half-baked, half-right education bites the dust. If I did not already know that most of what I thought I knew is wrong, completely wrong or partly wrong, misinformed or mis-remembered, I would be very apprehensive at this point. But apprehension is not an option for pretentious (and terrribly cool) people like me.


~jwf~

Another triumph for reasoned debate. I've had the same experience many times here. Vivat Hootoo.

2 thoughts:

Firstly, I will be moving next week and will be offline for a while until I get sorted out and find internet access near my new home which is 50 miles the other side of the city (Halifax, Nova Scotia) which I'm now 25 miles this side of. My absence will temporary so don't say anything about me that you wouldn't want me to find in the backlog.


And secondly, the only words I've been mulling over lately are tranny and gearbox.
I'm not sure if there's any real question here but after several days of mulling this over I need to gather and express my random thoughts and perhaps inspire some other thoughts on the subject.

'Tranny' is a word I hear on Brit TV shows used casually to mean a transexual. Not a transvestite but a true transexual. On Coronation Street they recently mentioned the Granny Trannies, a lawn bowls team. So it seems clear that tranny has but one meaning in British English and it is a perfectly acceptable usage.

But a tranny in North Am is just a short form for 'transmission'. It could be any transmission, manual or automatic. Most people would know what it means but the word is used principally by motor head types and usually refers to a heavy duty sporty automotive transmission in a big truck or hot rod. The idea of transexuality would never enter their minds.

So, what is curious and causing me to mull is my memory of the word gearbox. Y'see, long before there were any trannies, before sex change operations were even possible, like way back in the middle of the 20th century, one of the words used in North Am to mean a homosexual or sexually ambiguous person was a 'gearbox'. Like most other words used to mean homosexual, gearbox is not a socially acceptable term in that context. It also means of course, a transmission.

Usually most Canadians would recognise the meaning of both words, both ways. In our wonderfully compromised way, we generally speak both Brit and Yank and rely on context to show the sense in which words are used. When someone says, "Give me a lift', we don't think they are asking to be presented with an elevator.

Anyway it just seems queer to me that we seem now to have come full circle - what was a gearbox could now be a tranny. But Brits and Yanks would be talking at cross purposes if they used either to mean either.

~jwf~

I missed the Coronation Street "Granny Tranny" reference. Was it associated with Hayley's inclusion in the team?

My first recollection of the "Tranny" word was back in the ... erm .. 60s or thereabouts. It was after the arrival of easily portable "transistor radios". Next it was used for the Ford Transit van.
My acquaintances tend to speak of "automatic transmision" but "manual gearbox". I settle for "automatic" or "manual".

Pray tell, Sir, are you moving towards the North Pole in anticipation of global warming? Or to higher ground?

Then there's the meaning "trannie" had in NZ in the 1960s - transistor radio!

I hope you are back soon, ~jwf~

Yes - when I read "tranny" (trannie? tranny?) I heard Kenny Everett's voice from the grave. That's the only time I've ever heard the word.

And don't worry - if you ask a Brit to give you a lift, he won't leave you standing at the side of the road either.

...He might just drive through a puddle in your vicinity ..... but that's a world wide phenomenon.

What _do_ we call radios now that they aren't wirelesses or transistors (trannies)?

The answer's in the question there!

Hmm, yes, i could see that a Brits reference to a 'trany van' (the ubiquitous Ford Transit van) might lead to some confusion to non Brits.

>> ..ask a Brit to give you a lift, he won't leave you standing at the side of the road...<<

God bless those who would Guide and succor the Hitchhiker. Great will be their reward in Valhalla.

~jwf~

>> ..are you moving towards the North Pole in anticipation of global warming? Or to higher ground? <<

The two are inexorably (a badly abused word) linked. Starving Polar Bears are already invading our major cities.

As the polar ice caps and glaciers melt, the seas will rise. As a coastal dweller lo these 30 years I have seen it happening, slowly at first but now increasing to a rate that will retrospectively be described as 'sudden'.

In the short term of course I am simply retreating inland to escape the fog and rain of our new 'semi-tropical maritime climate'. But in the long term (just beyond my own lifespan), even an elevation of 250 meters (one of the highest in Nova Scotia) may not be enough.

~jwf~

Actually the melting of the northern ice cap will have very little effect on the sea level. Most of that ice is floating on water, so it will not take up any more space when it melts than it does at the moment. The melting of Greenland would have and effect, but not a huge one.

What we really have to fear is the melting of Antarctica.

It's floating on water, but isn't it raised above it? Or is it all so low it's more or less at sea level anyhow?

remember that saying about icebergs? 9/10ths below the waterline. Plus the anomolous expansion of water, although I don't know the exact increase in water volume. Hmm, one for SEx: I think.

Yes, the 9/10 thing. Hadn't thought that through....

Gearbox. Well 'box' has been used to refer crudely to the female parts. So a 'gearbox' would presumably refer to . . . a box with a gear lever sticking up? (Stick, in US).

This is terribly rude Whoever brought it up? Banish him to the icy regions.

Global warming. Heard last night that Tony Blair couldn't even get Bush to mention the words.

"I'm just a guy who can't say Climate Change."

Clinton will be rememberd for being between two Bushes, won't he?

<>

Scary stuff!