Just visualize it

So readers, you are all familiar with Visual Thesaurus, yes? (If you are not, familiarize yourself!) Now check out Shahi, “a visual dictionary that combines Wiktionary content with Flickr images, and more!”

The space(s) between

SgtGrayMatter dares to raise that old question: one space or two after a period?:

Apparently, there has been a debate going for quite some time now about whether one or two spaces should come after a period.  I never knew this was a point of contention.  I have always been taught two, have always used two, and two will probably forever be etched into my mind as the right way.  Now I’m hearing that all those stylebooks I assumed would back me up on this have turned traitor.  I feel like I’m taking crazy pills!

Being a lady of a certain age, MRP is old enough to have taken typing lessons (on a typewriter) back in the day when two spaces always followed a period. Having smoothly made the transition to computerized word processing, I have fully abandoned the two spaces and never looked back really. But I get that it’s a habit.

Chicago Manual of Style says (don’t be distracted by the beginning of this, it was a question about colons the morphed into a response about colons and periods):

A. One space after a colon. There is a traditional American practice, favored by some, of leaving two spaces after colons and periods. This practice is discouraged by the University of Chicago Press, especially for formally published works and the manuscripts from which they are published.

The AP Stylebook also prefers one space after a period, as does the Modern Language Association. The Angry Grammarian offers this, er, erudite commentary:

A million years ago, when people used typewriters, every character took up the same amount of space, so two spaces were needed to help set off sentences. It made the text flow better, and was easier on the eyes.

But now that we have pre-kerning (or, to use a similarly inside-baseball term, proportional spacing), two spaces is obsolete. The eyes are drawn to the gaping white space between the sentences rather than to the sentences themselves.

The bottom line, I think, is that it’s not a matter of grammar but of typographical preference. There is actually a decent discussion of this on the Wikipedia entry for this topic.

I’d be interested to hear what all of you think about this, though. Are you comfy using one space after a period or old habits (still) die hard with you on this one?

Enunciate vs annunciate

This little tidbit spotted at the Huffington Post.

So here’s the deal. When you want to announce or proclaim something, you might annunciate it. (I didn’t think this was an actual word but apparently it is. Like I say, you can teach an old MRP new tricks, although this word doesn’t appear to be in regular usage.) When you want to carefully pronounce a word so that you are understood, which is apparently important to Perez Hilton, you enunciate it.

It’s a crime

Listen as Boston mayoral candidate Michael Flaherty commits the crime of the double negative (”One child murdered is one less child we won’t see graduate from school”) about ten seconds into this advertising spot.

Hat tip to Nikita and Bostonist.

If I’ve said it once, I’ve said it a thousand times

This little tidbit comes to us from Samir, who writes: “When you are CIO magazine it doesn’t hurt to use spell-check.”

Okay, here’s the deal: Athough it sounds like ad nauseum when pronounced, the correct spelling is ad nauseam.

As Samir writes, “It makes me nauseam to think about it.”

Is this some kind of joke?

Hmm, I dunno. This tidbit appeared in the Onion, so I guess it’s meant to be a joke, but raise your hand if this actually happens to you.

Friendly Note To Coworker Undergoes Eight Revisions

WILMINGTON, DE—A brief note from United Family Insurance employee Martin Schatz to a coworker regarding storage-closet office supplies went through eight rewrites Monday. “I wrote it pretty quick and was about to drop it in [Al Miesner's] box when I noticed I used the word ’stapler’ twice in the same line,” Schatz reported after delivering the final version. “It read kind of weird, so I changed the second ’stapler’ to ‘it.’ But then it read even worse, so I changed it back.” Schatz also changed “Thanks!!!” to “Thanks…” fearing that the original punctuation was “a bit too much.”

Now, here’s the thing: I’m not saying I do this, but I’m also not saying I don’t.

Just you and myself

Today’s thought question came from Emily with the subject line, “Grammar, schmammar.” As she says, “Everyone can play.”

Grammar question!  Is this sentence correct?  I think so, but it seems horrible:

“I have always considered you and myself to be twins separated at birth.”

Assumption #1:  Reflexive pronouns (e.g. “myself”) are correct when the subject and the object of the sentence are the same.  “I talk about myself to excess, but the stories are always hysterical.”

Assumption #2:  The first-person pronoun always comes last in a list.  “He and I went to the store to get cheese” or “Bowling is a new obsession for Mark, Nikki and me.”

So why does that sentence seem so clunky?  I know I could substitute “us” for “you and myself”, but “us” isn’t as precise (I may want to be very specific about exactly who “us” consists of).

MRP responded (somewhat off the cuff and without doing any research):

I immediately wanted to say it should be “you and me” because that sounds better to my ear, but then again, if you took away “you” and wrote the sentence as “I have always consider XX to be a twin separated at birth,” you would say “myself.”

However, I would probably say, instead, “I have always considered the two of us to be twins separated at birth.”

To which Emily responded:

I agree with your suggestion, but it still relies at least somewhat on context to determine who the “two of us” are.

It also sounds somewhat better if you use a proper noun:  “I have always considered Lamar and myself to be arch-enemies.”   But that’s still not great.

So—other than feeling bad for Lamar, who finds himself to be at extreme odds with Emily—what do you think, folks? Bonus points for the person who provides an actual grammatical explanation for this beyond “it sounds right.”

Out of alignment

Spotted along Route 27 in Natick, Mass.

Here’s what needs a bit of alignment: the spelling on this sign.

This is just to say

Apparently, someone has been sending passive-aggressive notes to William Carlos Williams:

Hat tip to Married to the Sea.

Making headlines

Sometimes, what you think something means is not what someone else thinks something means. For example, this headline:

For some people, especially people in the Philippines, MILF means Moro Islamic Liberation Front. For others, it means, er, hot mom.

MRP wonders: What’s next for the Filipino Air Force—they start attacking the cougars?

Hat tip to Nikita.