Love thine Word Nerd April 18, 2009
Posted by Olivia McDowell in Grammar Attack, Laughing, Punctuation, Spellcheck, The Ether, The News, Words.Tags: grammar, Grammar Nazi, Linguiphile, Media editors, Richard Glover, Word Nerd
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Richard Glover’s column, Revenge of the Word Nerds, in today’s Sydney Morning Herald (Spectrum section):
The language police have no interest in the content of what is being said; they don’t even have much interest in language itself, in all its slippery, transgressive glory. They just lie in wait, like cats before a mouse hole, waiting for an error to occur.
Then they pounce. And there is much delight in the pouncing…
Full article at smh.com.au (because nobody actually buys the hulking Saturday paper nowadays).
Thank Gaia I know that Mr. Glover’s ire is all in good humour (he’s a very good-humoured sort of bloke). Of course everyone knows that Grammar Nazis never mean to offend, much less condescend. Sports fans will correct you for saying “points” instead of “goals”(or vice versa). Fashionistas love to commentate when people-watching. A tea lover will happily waffle on forever about Buddha’s Tears (if you let them). And likewise, we linguiphiles just can’t help ourselves when faced with something within our very trivial sphere of interest.
SO PLEASE REMEMBER TO KINDLY INDULGE YOUR FRIENDLY NEIGHBOURHOOD WORD NERD: She’s not pouncing, she’s just enjoying the small pleasures in a pedantic life.
(And besides, without a keen editor, every newspaper, magazine, book, journal, and other miscellaneous printed reading matter would have met that great pulp-mill in the sky long ago, condemned to death by the dire lack of media’s two most essential requirements: credibility and readability.)
RELATED POSTS: Being a Snark (and some shameless self-promotion)
Vegetarian develops insatiable addiction to Savage Chickens April 9, 2009
Posted by Olivia McDowell in Art, Blogging, Etcetera, Grammar Attack, Laughing, Punctuation, The Ether.Tags: Actionise, Addiction, grammar, Grim Reaper, Jargonify, Monty Python, Savage Chickens, Semi-Colon, Timmy Tofu, Twitter, Verb, Vocabulous, Yoga
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A flow chart of my relationship with Savage Chickens:
Discovery: “Oh cool. I like Post-its. I like Pythonesque, punilicious quips about Hot Yoga/The Slim Reaper. I like tofu.”
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Dabbling: “I’m not going to be able to stop until I’ve seen the entire back archives, am I?”
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Addiction: “Just one more…”
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Obsession: “Sure I’ll eat/sleep/study/work/listen to my lecturer… after I’ve finished trawling the archives.”
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Closure: (days later) “Done!… More please?”
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Subscription: “DING! You have ONE new Savage Chickens email.”
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Twitter: *Tweetdeck ‘new tweet’ chirp*
More blog-appropriate proof (v.) that these Post-it-icisms are truly brilliant:
A minor revision re: lolcats March 5, 2009
Posted by Olivia McDowell in Blogging, Grammar Attack, Ire, Laughing, Punctuation, Spellcheck, The Ether.Tags: cheezburger, Dorian Gray, Editing, grammar, IKEA, Lolcats, Snark
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I may have been rather heavy-handed in my universal (and well-publicised) dismissal of all things lolcat. As of now, I would like to officially revise and clarify my prior stance:
a) I still despise the term ‘lol’ (or ‘LOL’ or ‘lololol’, and so on and so forth), whether written, typed or spoken. Maybe we can still be friends if you choose to use it, but I won’t reciprocate (I prefer ‘BAHAHA‘).
and
b) I still want to fix every lolcats caption so that it has correct spelling/grammar/syntax/everything.
BUT…
c) Lolcats can be … REALLY STUPIDLY FUNNY. Especially when related to the topic of grammar/editing/linguistics/quantum physics.
Humour-wise, I place them in the same league as Man Hiding Out in IKEA by Covering Self in IKEA Bags, and this Male Model Reading The Picture of Dorian Gray From Page One Backstage At NY Fashion Week.
If your moronic, miscaptioned cat photo teeters on the brink of irony, with one lolpaw dipping into metareflexivity, then I am likely to find it snortingly funny. I will say ‘BAHAHA!’. Possibly out loud. (But I still won’t say ‘lol’).
Being a Snark (and some shameless self-promotion) February 15, 2009
Posted by Olivia McDowell in Blogging, Grammar Attack, Punctuation, School, Words.Tags: Blogging, Facebook, grammar, Nomenclature, Snark
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Word Nerds of the Web, Unite!
Why The Internet Could Be the Best Thing That Ever Happened To The English Language: Online epiphanies of an inveterate grammar snark — By Olivia McDowell.
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Snarks are not alone. Hence the above article (read it all here), which I wrote last year as part of my Online Journalism course. And now my little rant has been published in No·men·cla·ture, the online fruit of that course, and I feel duty bound to spread the word: Snark is cool! So please, read on.
Haters of lolcats and lovers of grammatical perfection, you will not be disappointed.
A bit more about snark…
- The word ’snark’ — which began life as a portmanteau (snide + remark) — now also refers to a nark (informer) with snarking tendencies: see detailed etymology here.
- Lewis Carroll — widely credited with having invented the portmanteau during Alice’s second trip, Through The Looking Glass — also wrote the fabulous nonsense poem, The Hunting of the Snark.
- It’s been said that Snark is the language of losers. Witless, angry, petulent and belittling. That it wishes it were Jon Stewart (who is just awesome, by the way), when it fact it’s more like, well, Bill O’Reilly.
- To me, a snark is someone with a pedantic eye for detail, and a penchant for picking out minor details — right or wrong — then waffling on about them for no other reason than pure self-indulgence. A snark is cheerily particular: specific, but never angry.
- ‘Snark’ is also another name for the Irony Mark (؟).
Helmer (n.)? December 21, 2008
Posted by Olivia McDowell in Cinema, Democracy, Grammar Attack, Ire, Spellcheck, Words.Tags: Captain, Director, Etymology, Film, Helmer, Helmsman, Johnny Depp, Pirates of the Caribbean, Tim Burton
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In my mind, ‘helm‘ is a noun: most basically, the steering wheel of a ship. Hence, to take the helm. The person who does so is “at the helm”, and is called a helmsman (or helmsperson, blah blah blah). This applies literally, when talking about ships (avast!), and also idiomatically, with regard to controlling the direction of something tangible (like a car) or abstract (like a strategy).
But then I saw this:
Apparently the person at the helm is not a helmsman/person, but a helmer. A HELMER? Helmer: Noun. No, really? Considering that this was the Greater Union cinema timetable, I was willing to accept it as a grammatical anomaly unless a reliable second opinion could prove otherwise, so I turned to the most reliable second opinion in existence: the OED. And I was shocked:
Apparently, helmer IS a noun, and a specific one at that: a person who directs a film (etc). But note also, that it is only colloquial, and only in the United States, and the first recorded appearance was only 1974 (to me, half a century at the very least is a good indicator of a well-entrenched word) AND it’s still only a draft entry.
So I say ‘helmer’ is a dumb, made-up, superfluous word. Who says ‘helmer’ anyway? No-one. Because there is no need to.
A movie director is a movie director:
{ Tim Burton via OvationTV }
And a person at the helm can just be called a helmsman/person… er, or a Captain…
{ Captain Jack Sparrow via imdb }
‘Nuff said*, at least on my part.
NB. No honestly, I was inspired by the terribly worded movie timetable. The Tim Burton/Johnny Depp joint appearance came later, and as a complete fluke, which I can attribute partly to coincidence, and partly to a penchant for my favourite director and his favourite leading man.
* Not surprisingly, the phrase ’nuff said’ originated not with Stan Lee, nor with Frank ‘Nuff Said’ Catton in Ocean’s Thirteen, but on the stage of a 19th-century theatre. See true/interesting etymology about halfway down this article.
At least it’s not a hanging chad November 8, 2008
Posted by Olivia McDowell in Democracy, Grammar Attack, Obama!, Spellcheck, Wisdom.Tags: Change We Can Believe In, Dangling preoposition, Design for Obama, McCan't/Failin', President-Elect Barack Obama, Salon
2 comments
…The dangling preposition has just started to bother me. I’m preeeetty certain that all this time it should have been “Change In Which We Can Believe”.
…But I also think we should all just let it slide, because I’m NOT going to share the same grammatical bandwagon as McCan’t/Failin’ supporters.
ALSO, re: This letter on Salon
@ Blueflash
Damn snappy, dawg.
PS. I am not saying Obama is stupid. Obviously “Change in which we can believe” would just add to his uppity-elitist-arugula-eating image in a way that would not benefit his campaign.
I’m just saying that his platform is not exceptionally complex and his campaign style has not been particularly intellectual.— Rosenkavalier, 11 August 2008
(my emphasis)
I hope this is sarcasm, or if not, that the humble pie is good at this time of year.
First published at tumblr Proof (v.)
