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

Hullo Beeline,

Thank you for the editing. Separating the Separating Eggs from the Ice Cream was an obvious, and good idea.

Some of the items you edited out really did need to go. Others, well I don't have an opinion either way. Thanks for adding the bit about why one does not want yolks in one's whites. That was helpful.

I don't know what, if anything, you can do with 'pending' entries, but there are a few errors which need to be fixed, and a couple of personal preferences regarding style which I would really *prefer* that you implement, if possible.

The errors I saw are:
(Ice Cream)
-There is an extra close parenthesis mark after the word 'cognac'.

-'Straightaway' is an adjective for roads that run in straight lines. I think you meant to use 'straight away', which adverb means roughly 'immediately'.

-'Now for the tricky part!' is a sentence fragment. I do not use sentence fragments, even in recipes, because I am the grammar bxtch from hell. Please check for others and correct them. Thank you.

-'...your home-made ice cream is much more dense' does not work for me. That usage of the word 'your' is one I both dislike, and which is not correct English. Please omit, and start a new sentence with 'Home-made ice cream is denser than...'. 'More dense' is not a proper comparative.

(Both pieces)
I prefer that contractions not appear in even such informal writing as a recipe. I also do not like, and so seldom use exclamation points. If you do not think they are necessary, and they are a reflexion of your personal writing style, I would appreciate it if you could please un-contract the contractions (doesn't => does not), and remove all exclamation points.

I do not remember whether I used 'you' originally, but I do not think I did. I dislike the 2nd Person Over-Friendly, and do not use it in writing, unless I am writing to a particular person. I would much prefer if you returned to 'one'. This is my style of writing, and it is grammatically correct, even if it is not everyone's preference. In a recipe, I shall not get too exercised about it. It is, however, *my* writing.



I am new, and this is the first of my stuff to be edited by someone else. I don't know what your guidelines are for stylistic changes (like 'one' to 'you'), but if the grammar is correct, I am not sure I understand why a person would implement such changes. There are one or two places where I think the original was clearer than the edited version, and it is mostly because of stylistic changes. Could you please drop me a line with your rationale behind some of the things (particularly contractions, 'you', and exclamation points) you changed, so that I may better understand the sub-editing process?

thank you very much,

Arpeggio for LeKZ

Hi Arpeggio,

Thanks for your notes - feedback is always welcome. While I'll try to get the outright errors fixed (such as the brackets and 'straightaway'), there are some other points which I think might warrant further discussion. Generally, I thought your article was excellent, and only needed a bare minimum of editing for the reasons discussed below.

As a subeditor, I am trusted to make certain changes as I see fit. This is an unavoidable consequence of using a team to maintain a 'house style' - everyone has a slightly different view, personal preferences and degree of objectivity about what constitutes 'correctness' of grammar. The stylistic changes I made, therefore, were simply effected to make your article fit the style of the rest of the Guide as, which, as I see it, has a slightly less formal style than your own.

To address your points individually:

- What is the nature of your complaint about (Ice Cream)? The OED has it hypenated, with a small 'c' on cream. Have I misunderstood you?

- 'Now for the tricky part!' - There is nothing ungrammatical about this - it is a complete sentence and perfectly acceptable in English usage. If I remember correctly, you used 'Now comes the hard bit!' in the version I received, which I changed for something I considered to be less discouraging for anyone who might have liked to try out your recipe.

- '...your home-made ice-cream...' I think you have misunderstood the way in which I used the word 'your' in this context. I wasn't using the East London dialect (often used to replace 'the') - I was merely making it clear that shop-bought ice-cream is less dense than that which you have just made yourself. This use of 'your' matches the rest of the article's use of 'you' (see below).

- 'More dense' seems as correct as 'denser' to me. You may have a more compendious dictionary of comparative adjectives to hand, of course...

- Contractions. People use these in everyday speech, and therefore they tend to read more fluently than non-contracted pairs. They are therefore suitable for the Guide, in my opinion.

- Exclamation points. I'm not sure that I introduced any that weren't there already. Like you, I hardly ever used them myself, and the couple of places they appeared seemed appropriate to me. Whether you, personally, like them or not, suitably restrained use does inject a certain friendly tone into an article.

- 2nd person. I purposefully changed all the anonymous 3rd person to 2nd person. I don't think it 'over-friendly' in the context of the general style of Guide entries, and in fact I think that a set of instructions such as a recipe is improved by giving direct instruction - it involves the reader more intimately. The use of 'one' seems rather too formal for Guide style, and 'over-friendly' seems more appropriate than 'too formal' in this case.

- *your* writing. This is the crucial point all through this discussion: whether the article that you have given to the Guide should be edited at all. Should it remain as clearly your style, or should it be edited into a style that fits in with the rest of the Guide? The h2g2 editors have chosen the latter, and it's the subeditors' job to try to interpret that style and edit articles appropriately. Another sub will almost certainly have changed different things.

The only way to gain an understanding of the editing process at h2g2 is to read lots of articles, and put lots of articles through yourself. As with editing, it's all a matter of practice and experience.

I'll raise the matter in the subeditors forum and gauge what the general feeling is.

D'Oh! Sorry - just realised what you meant by (Ice Cream) - a section reference.

Bit slow today - it's Friday!

Just to rudely butt in...

http://www.bbc.co.uk/h2g2/guide/writing-guidelines - number 6: it does seem to suggest that there is no such thing as an "h2g2 style" - or at least there wasn't planned to be... but it's tricky, because there *is* an aim to be consistent in certain matters, such as, say, spellings (UK).

There's nothing about "one" vs "you" or use of contractions in the h2g2 style guidelines - either to say that yes they should be consistent, or to say no that they are a matter of writer style - have to see what the rest of the sub-eds think, I guess!

FYI, http://www.bbc.co.uk/h2g2/guide/A567452 is the original entry, as was.

Thank you for responding, Beeline.

I do understand about Guide-wide consistency. I can see why that would be an objective. Honestly, in a recipe, it doesn't much matter to me, but my next-up article is on English Grammar, and I shall be a bit put out if my grammar is changed in *that* one, as one might expect.

Items:

If the Rules -- and I do mean capital 'R' Rules -- say to use contractions: 'you must use contractions to make written language read like everyday speech', then by all means, you must use them. If they do not, then by every style-book I have ever seen, contractions are Not Allowed in Standard Written English. That is what I write, and that is how I should *prefer*, if at all possible, that my writing appear. This is only a recipe, but it was written down for publication, and not on a the back of an envelope. Please do not use contractions unless they are Required. I would very much appreciate your co-operation in this matter. Incidentally, there are not very many contractions, because I carefully dodged pronoun-use (see below) and the majority of them appear in the Separating Eggs bit.

'Now for the tricky part!' is indeed a sentence fragment (as might have been whatever I put in originally, which I would have changed on another go-through). Where there is no verb, there is no sentence, n'est-ce pas? What about 'Here comes the tricky part!', does that work for you? You get what you felt needed changing, and I get my verb and everybody is happy.

You are right about the exclamation points. I *have* been using them here, much more than I normally do! It's an infuriating breathless adolescent tic, imo, and I think I use them here in somewhat the same manner as I use smileys, to try to add tone of voice. A couple of them in a recipe is ok. I think there was a gratuitous one in the Separating Eggs piece, but I don't remember and honestly, it does not matter that much. It was probably *my* gratuitous exclamation point, which I would have revised out had I looked at the thing another time. It's not an Issue.

If *I* misread 'your' as being used to mean 'the', which a regional illiteracy here in the States, too, might not other people? 'Home-made' implies 'your', in any case, which makes it a trifle redundant, don't you think? It reads like an old gym teacher of mine from N'Yawk, who said, every Spring 'This is the time of year when your creeps come out from under their rocks...' If you do not *mind* changing it, please do. I should hate for other people to mistake it for a regional illiteracy, shouldn't you?

For usage, my OED suggests 'denser' as being the better choice, as do all the other style-books I checked. 'More dense' is more wordy, and therefore less good, than 'denser'. This holds true for all comparatives where a comparative can be made with '-er'. again (because I am *fond* of that smiley, and use it whenever I have an excuse). Alternatively, and by way of solving the problem above as well, you *could* say something like, 'There is much less air whipped into home-made ice-cream. While shop-bought ice-cream can contain as much as 2/3rds air by volume, home-made ice-cream contains virtually none. It is dense stuff....' yadda yadda... None of this is really necessary, and is more work (sorry for the four-letter word ) for you, so how about just 'denser', and less wordy?

I know the Guide has a less formal style than my own, if only because I know my style is on the starchier side of formal. It is not true, however, that all of the Guide is *uniformly* informal. The more easy-going the subject matter, the more relaxed style it can tolerate. A recipe is a recipe is a recipe. It does not interfere with a person's ability to follow it whether it is formal or informal. It does not *matter* to me, in a Deep and Serious Way, at what level of formality this particular piece is presented.

I can see your position on using the 2nd Person (which I call 'over-friendly' by definition) for a recipe. It makes enough common sense that I retract my request that you change it. I, personally, dislike reading things addressed to me in the 2nd Person. I tried to minimise the use of pronouns to avoid the problem altogether, but it is impossible to say much, without them. I find the 2nd Person cutesy and condescending. I have a very old fashioned and formal background, and am aware I err on the side of 'excessively formal'. As I said before, I do not really have a strong opinion about this. It is only a recipe.

-- a smiley we need. So, with those caveats, comments, and compromises, are we okay on this? I hope so.

Yeah, it was a heading sort of thing. Ding(!). I was having trouble understanding the question, probably because it is Friday here, too.

Thank you again!, maybe a couple more !!

Arpeggio, for LeKZ

Hi Arpeggio,

I'm afraid I will not remove the contractions. In my official capacity as a Subeditor, I consider them to be more appropriate to the style of the Guide as a whole, therefore they stay. If you really want your article to remain as you wrote it, you should not have submitted it for editing - it's as simple as that.

When you submit an article, its contents become subject to the changes that the Subeditors think suitable. If you wish to promote your own style then the Guide is not really the place for your material. Your "very old fashioned and formal background" is, I'm afraid, secondary to the style that is edited in for the sake of the Guide's style.

If you wish to have your article considered for editing by another Subeditor, you'll have to take that up with the Editor, but considering the sheer number of articles that we have to get through, I'm fairly sure he won't be entertaining any ideas about paying particular attention to any one article - there's simply not the time or resources to do that for everyone who asks.

BTW, "...a trifle redundant..." made me laugh - I don't know whether you intended such excellent irony!

A note about sentence fragments. (Heh ) The nature of language and its modes of use is considerably more complex than you seem to have been taught. Most of us, when we learn to write, are taught hard-and-fast rules such as 'you must have a verb in a sentence'. This is a very simplistic view of language, however, and is only really suitable for those that aren't aware of - or interested in - its deep structure. Rules of thumb such as these are merely guidelines for learning basic grammar, nothing more.

I wonder if you're familiar with the widely accepted theory of implied words in sentences. In many sentences there are words that simply don't appear because our grammar-parsing brains imply their existence in the sentence to make complete sense of it. Because we are so good at this, our language has evolved to leave these words out completely. Take, for example, the sentence:

> "I have more potatoes than John."

There is an implied word in this sentence that is missing, but which our brain inserts for us to make sense of it. The word is 'has' and it appears - or rather doesn't - at the end:

> "I have more potatoes than John [has].

It is left out because its existence is implied, and modern English is particularly prone to this phenomenon. Of course, this particular sentence has an ambiguity of meaning apparent in it just because of missing words. Suppose 'John' were a continuous-quantity object such as a drink - the sentence could just as correctly be parsed as:

> "I have more potatoes than [I have of] John."

However, our experience - that other vital part of our language-understanding machinery - tells us that the first meaning is much more likely in most contexts, so we assume that one. Sentence fragments such as yours are also classic cases of implied words - verbs in this case. The sentence:

> "Now for the tricky part."

has the putative implied words:

> "Now [it is time] for the tricky part."

which would pass your criterion for sentence wholeness by having a verb, albeit an invisible one which we don't need to see because it's clearly implied. And in any case, that particular phrase is in such common usage it's practically idiomatic by now, and therefore free of most grammatical constraints. Everyone knows what it means, and it can therefore be considered perfectly good English.

Any author of the last 300 years has almost certainly used sentence fragments of this type in their work - some Steinbeck chapters have practially nothing else. Whether they're considered 'right' or 'wrong' is nothing to do with 'rules of grammar' - it's a completely stylistic choice, and in many cases can be supported by this theory of implied words. All the sentences are completely understandable and parsable, and I for one would be happy to be counted amongst authors who so blatantly flout these simplistic hard-and-fast rules!

------------

Any 'rules' that there are concerning Guide style are generally rules of preference, i.e. they promote the use of certain stylistic features - lists; minimal punctuation; fluency of reading, etc. - rather than prohibiting use of others.

As you're obviously quite a long way ahead of the field in terms of general writing ability, you can use the Guide to learn something much more tricky: how to write with flexibility and adaptability of style, and how to write with your readers in mind; not yourself. It's a great deal harder to do because the 'rules' are a lot more nebulous and the only way to grasp them is with experience and a certain degree of humility.

You clearly attribute a great deal of importance to how you think others perceive your intelligence and learning based on the grammar and spelling you're fighting for ("I should hate for other people to mistake it for a regional illiteracy, shouldn't you?"). Unfortunately, that sort of mindset often contributes an unappealingly egotistical flavour to written material, and people really don't like to read something that appears arrogant in its style.

Don't worry about what others think of you intellectually - if you write in an accessible enough style, your intelligence will be apparent without it feeling like you're pushing it at your readers or constantly drawing attention to it.

I recommend you wait a while before submitting your language article, or at least take a little more time to read some current linguistic theory. Unless you've already read it and discarded its validity, I utterly recommend Steven Pinker's "The Language Instinct" for starters - it's very thorough, and written in a superbly fluent and approachable style. The last chapters are paricularly interesting as they deal with a number of misconceptions that people generally have about what constitutes 'correctness'. Most of what I once believed to be 'gospel' was swiftly depatched when I read his work.

> "whereas your home made ice creams are a little more dense" I parsed this the wrong way round as well, if it makes any difference. I think part of the problem is that after conclusion of this entry I will be in possesion of a /single/ home made ice cream - and I've never made any before - so the regionalism parsing appears more likely. In addition, I would automatically presume that /all/ home made ice cream is denser, rather than just home made ice cream using this particular recipe. Which isn't what is implied by the sentence in the way you apparently want it to be parsed... so again, the regionalism parsing appears more likely. I've raised generic issue of style and such here: http://www.bbc.co.uk/h2g2/guide/F48888?thread=122273 I'm happy whichever way it goes, but I'd like to know the answer so that I can advise people appropriately in Peer Review... :) -Lucinda (scout)

Oh, and just to be 'helpful'...

> "I recommend you wait a while before submitting your language article"

If you are referring to "Declining English", you possibly should know that this entry has not only been submitted, it has been recommended. So your advice comes a little late, I'm afraid. But I'm sure if you want to make any criticisms of it in the Peer Review thread then Arpeggio and/or the relevant sub-editor will be happy to give them the attention they deserve.

Xanthia <-- picking curtains for her lair

Beeline:

I was not aware that *introducing* grammatical errors was part of the job-description for sub-editors. I pointed these out to you in post #1, and you did not correct these errors:

-There is an extra close parenthesis mark after the word 'cognac'.

-'Straightaway' is an adjective for roads that run in straight lines. I think you meant to use 'straight away', which adverb means roughly 'immediately'.

I believe you intended to do so before the article went into the Edited Guide.

Kindly do so, or, if it is now out of your hands, pass this along to the Editors.

Arpeggio
Leïlah el Khalil Zendavesta, MAR

In beeline's defence, it's entirely possible that (s)he notified the italics and they failed to read their email: they do sometimes get flooded (Peta gets ~100 emails a day - that's before stuff on h2g2 itself!). Give it 24 hours, and if it's still buggy, then complain (politely ) in the Feedback-Bugs place...

It's sad how things become negative, sometimes - one loses sight of the positive words at the top of this thread, because of the negative words underneath it. A shame...

Lucinda,

Excellent point. You are quite right. Beeline did some super work and the errors s/he left in are trivial compared to that.

I am sure you are right, that Beeline must have mentioned it. S/he has proven how thorough s/he can be. Just look at hir posting in this thread, on language usage.

It is important to acknowledge how hard everyone here works, and that everyone is trying hard at all times. Thank you Beeline, for having done the best possible job you could do on my frivolous recipe.

Arpeggio, for LeKZ

FYI, beeline, the errors have now been resolved, so fret not. The stylistic issues are a seperae thing, but can be best taken to the "style and such" forum, which I know you are keeping an eye on.

Glad that's sorted out then

Agreed.

Generally speaking, once a sub has sent their subbed entries back again, they play no greater part in the content than the original author does. It's almost certainly quicker for the author to contact the PTB rather than waiting on a sub to take further action in their name.

I've got quite a lot of 'official' work to do myself sometimes and can't get to the site for days... Still, I have a new job coming soon which might let me spend more time on-site.