HDTenEightyP/NetNews huggingface dataset:
From: bck1@cl.cam.ac.uk (Brian Kelk)
Newsgroups: alt.usage.english
Subject: Re: Final comma in lists
Date: 15 Oct 92 19:42:34 GMT
Reply-To: bck1@cl.cam.ac.uk (Brian Kelk)
Organization: U of Cambridge Comp Lab, UK

In article <1992Oct14.080428.17609@leland.Stanford.EDU> jbradfor@leland.Stanford.EDU (Jeffrey Bradford) writes:
>Whenever someone lists several items, I've always seen it in
>the form of item1, item2, and item3.  Recently, however, I've been
>seeing more and more people leave off the final comma, so they
>write item1, item2 and item3.  This seems rather silly to me, not to
>mention at times confusing.  So my question is, what do people out
>there think of this, and why are people leaving off the final comma?  
>(Are we having a comma shortage that no one told me about?)
>
>Jeff


"There's no tradition so strong as a recent tradition"
                                            Roger Norrington

When exactly did the 'Harvard comma' (as I believe it was first
referred to in this newsgroup) come into use?


Brian Kelk
Cambridge
U.K.
Newsgroups: alt.usage.english
From: frankm@microsoft.com (Frank R.A.J. Maloney)
Subject: Re: a good dictionary
Date: 13 Oct 92 14:36:17 GMT
Organization: Microsoft Windows/DOS Users Ed Group

In article <Bvv3IH.43s@cck.coventry.ac.uk> idx009@cck.coventry.ac.uk (the Crisco Kid) writes:
>In article <Bvo0Bv.5Ho@knot.ccs.queensu.ca> yeh@qucis.queensu.ca (Delbert Yeh) writes:
>>Can anyone recommend a good english dictionary to buy? Thanks,
>>Delbert
>
>For an English dictionary: yes.  The Oxford English Dictionary is the
>paramount reference, but is unwieldy and somewhat expensive.  A good
>option is the Shorted Oxford Dictionary, an abridgement of the former,

The wiring *is* tricky. But if you ground the dictionary
properly, it should be ok.

>in two volumes.  Failing *that*, Chambers' 20th Century Dictionary is
>about as low quality as I wouild care to go: though I'm notoriously
>picky in the matter of dictionaries.  Eschew anything else.  Mind you,
>that's only "ordinary" English dictionaries: if you're interested in
>etymology, the Oxford Etymological Dictionary is excellent.  There are
>other good dictionaries of specialised terms; ask me if you have any
>particular needs.
>
>American dictionaries?  <sigh> I guess there's always Webster's.  Ugh.
>

Kay, there ain't no such a book. "Webster's" is a
public-domain term that can be used by any dictionary
publisher. You're going to have a lot more specific and a
lot more knowledgeable about our American folkways if you
insist on playing Dump The Yank with anything like
effectiveness.

>				Kay
>-- 
>6'2", dark short hair, blue eyes, bisexual and horny as ....
>Kay Dekker, Dept of Industrial Design, Coventry University, Coventry UK
>37 Old Winnings Road, Keresley Village, Coventry   |B0 f t+ g++ k++! s+ e r p!
>Phone: +44 203 838668 (work) +44 203 337865 (home) |Deflowerer-of-innocents

-- 
Frank Richard Aloysius Jude Maloney
	"Well, I'm a little muddled." -- Glinda
Newsgroups: alt.usage.english
From: leveret@warren.demon.co.uk (Nick Leverton)
ReplyTo: leveret@warren.demon.co.uk
Subject: Re: Adjective needed for the following scene.
Distribution: world
X-Mailer: cppnews $Revision: 1.18 $
Organization: Indexed; Access: Random.
Date: Thu, 8 Oct 1992 23:55:43 +0000

In article <BvrGp1.KBt@usenet.ucs.indiana.edu> harkema@phil.indiana.edu (Henk Harkema) writes:

>>Can someone come up with a better word to describe the situation?

>Symbiotic perhaps?

No, definitely not 'symbiotic'. Symbiotic refers to two organisms which
both depend on each other for their very existence. The situation here
is rather the opposite ...

Nick Leverton
-- 
"Politician! Where's your credibility ?
You promised to lay down your life to set your people free!"  -  Hugh Masekela.
From: casseres@apple.com (David Casseres)
Newsgroups: alt.usage.english
Subject: Re: what's the word for...?
Date: 13 Oct 92 23:00:34 GMT
Followup-To: alt.usage.english
Organization: Apple Computer, Inc.

In article <BvxE1q.HqG@usenet.ucs.indiana.edu>,
jhhardy@silver.ucs.indiana.edu (J. Hardy) wrote:
> 
> Is there an english word that refer to the part of a loaf of bread that
> isn't crust?
> 
> What is it?

It's the crumb.

--

David Casseres
Exclaimer: Wow!
From: meachem@acsu.buffalo.edu (The Meach)
Newsgroups: alt.usage.english
Subject: Re: bicycle scenery adjective
Date: 7 Oct 92 22:08:39 GMT
Organization: UB

In article <1992Oct7.183034.15445@mcnc.org> key@mcnc.org (Kathy E. Yount) writes:
>In article 12417 Ralph Yozzo writes:
>
>>Describe the following scene with a one word adjective:
>>==========
>>You are riding your bicycle along a country dirt road and up ahead you
>>see the massive concrete pillars  and steel girders of a interstate highway
>>bridge. At that moment, enormous tractor-trailers are passing overhead.
>>The stench and the roar of the highway is overwhelming.
>
>>Then, suddenly, out of the corner of your eye, you notice cattle peacefully
>>grazing in a meadow not too far from the road.
>>===========
>>
>>You want a word that describes the rider's bewilderment at the striking
>>contrast of the peaceful nature scene juxtaposed with the tumult of the
>>industrial age.
>>
>>Some of the words that I am considering are: anachronous, paradoxical,
>>contradictory.
>>
>>Can someone come up with a better word to describe the situation?
>
>
>How about incongruous or discord.  Dissonance could be used but it's
>mainly reserved for sounds rather than images.

I beg to differ here. . .  dissonance is frequently used for sounds,
as well as images; discord(ant) is much more frequently applied to
sounds.  I feel that both of these two words have a slight negative 
connotation which would override the possibility of pleasure at the
sight of the more pastoral scene.  Anachronous works, if you want
to imply that the bewilderment is a time-related sensation, so might
be too limiting; paradoxical is excellent, really. . . I don't *feel*
anything from contradictory.  The same goes for contrasting (Sorry,
Rheal!). . . it doesn't make me understand 'bewilderment'. . . 
incongruous does. . . paradoxical does. . . and, for my own humble
offering: divergent.  Like incongruous and paradoxical, it gives me
a sense of being pulled in two directions.

Jo Meachem
meachem@acsu.buffalo.edu
From: kiran@bronze.ucs.indiana.edu (Kiran Wagle)
Newsgroups: alt.usage.english
Subject: Re: Cats'n'Dogs
Date: 14 Oct 92 18:28:32 GMT
Organization: Indiana University

crawford@ben.dev.upenn.edu (Lauren L. Crawford) writes:

>You're behind the times, Geoff -- people no longer use the term
>"handicapped."  They say "differently abled."  

Allow me to quote from _The Official Politically Correct Dictionary
and Handbook_ by Henry Beard and Christopher Cerf:

"and (according to _The Disability Rag_ magazine) severely euphemized."

The citation is 
"Washburn, Andrew J., quoted in _The Disability Rag_, Winter 1990, page 14."

-- 
 From the corrections column in a July Fresno, CA _Bee_:
 
"An item in Thursday's [issue] about the Massachusetts budget crisis
 made reference to new taxes that will help put Massachusetts 
'back in the African-American.' The item should have said 
'back in the black.'"
-- 

Kiran Wagle                           <kiran@bronze.ucs.indiana.edu>
Newsgroups: alt.usage.english
Subject: Re: regress
From: nikolay@husc10.harvard.edu (Philip Nikolayev)
Date: 10 Oct 92 15:58:06
Organization: Poets for Physics
In-reply-to: roger@uvmark.uucp's message of Thu, 08 Oct 92 19:01:54 GMT

roger@uvmark.uucp (Roger MacNicol) writes:

> I am looking for a suitable transitive verb to describe the process
> of reverting to an earlier state.  I had used 'to regress'
> transitively when describing a software tool that makes a file
> available to an earlier release of some software (eg make
> WordPerfect 5.1 files available to WordPerfect 4.2).  However a
> couple of people here objected since all the dictionaries we have
> seen only permit its intransitive use.

Try 'return', 'go/come/bring/move back to', 'make revert/return',
and so on.
From: LMEBGO@kiera.ericsson.se ("Bengt G{llmo, L M Ericsson, Stockholm, Sweden")
Newsgroups: alt.usage.english
Subject: Re: Final comma in lists
Date: 15 Oct 92 08:05:00 GMT

Tracey Dianne Layng writes:

>In terms of fashion in English and how grammar changes over time, I would
>like to note the use of "But commas are as much matter of tast and fashion as
>shoes are."  It is interesting that the prescriptive rule governing the use of
>coordinating conjunctions is that one can never start a sentence with a
>coordinating conjunction; however, "but" has come to be an exception. Many
>people, even in scholarly journals, start sentences with "but." I personally
>think that it is not quite right, but since it has become totally accepted I
>tell my students that they can do it. 

Speaking of but's and commas, how about "But, commas are ..."?  You could use
"however" instead, but "but" is shorter.  Is this "but" really a coordinating
conjunction?

Bengt
-- 
Forwarded-By:
Bengt Gallmo                        e-mail: lmebgo@kiera.ericsson.se
Telefonaktiebolaget L M Ericsson    phone:  +46 8 719 1940
S-126 25 STOCKHOLM                  fax:    +46 8 719 3988
SWEDEN

The bad thing about good things is that they usually come to an end.
The good thing about bad things is that they, also, usually come to an end.
From: donb@igor.tamri.com (Don Baldwin)
Newsgroups: alt.usage.english
Subject: Re: Cats'n'Dogs
Date: 16 Oct 92 22:02:29 GMT
Organization: TOSHIBA America MRI, South San Francisco, CA

In article <ldme0aINNlhn@jethro.Corp.Sun.COM> geoffm@purplehaze.Corp.Sun.COM
(Geoff Miller) writes:
>
>>Hmmm... I had a dog for about 12 years before we put her away.
>
>You "put her away," huh?  Where?  In the cupboard over the sink?  In the
>coat closet?  It's always nice to see that people are tidy and organized,
>instead of leaving clutter such as dead dogs lying around the house.  Hell,
>someone might trip!
>
>This is as good a time as any to intrroduce you to Geoff's Guide To
>Euphemisms -- a modern primer to assist one`s navigation through the
>mysterious and hazardous shoals of modern mealy-mouthed obfuscation:
>
>                EUPHEMISM                       TRANSLATION
>                ---------                       -----------
            :
>                put down, put away              kill
>                (an animal)

Heh heh.

When I started dating Gillian, she made a remark about "putting down" a
kid that she was babysitting.  At first it made me nervous, I started
wondering if I was dating some horrible, murderous thug...then it became
clear that she was talking about putting them to bed for a nap, not
euthanasia.

Of course, she does use those ads for Huggies as targets, when we go to the
range...

   don
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
So as not to make the same mistake twice, don't travel to Maine because
it also has dangerously-lax gun laws. Last year we had two dozen murders
out of a population of 1.2 million. Plainly, you're better off staying
in places where handguns have been effectively outlawed, like D.C. and
New York City.
        - posted in talk.politics.guns
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Don Baldwin  -  Software Engineer  - e-mail to:  donb@tamri.com
From: thayes@desire.wright.edu
Newsgroups: alt.usage.english
Subject: Re: bicycle scenery adjective/cog. diss.
Date: 15 Oct 92 14:57:21 GMT
Organization: Wright State University

TH> What's so deadly about the term cognitive dissonance? 
DC> I think it sounds wrong.
TH> To each his/her/its own.

> At the risk of receiving yet another verbose rebuke from Mr. Hayes, may I 
> humbly point out that he missed the pun.

Wrong.

-----ted hayes
From: hermit@cats.UCSC.EDU (William R. Ward)
Newsgroups: alt.usage.english
Subject: Re: cockney slang
Date: 15 Oct 92 02:23:03
Organization: Computing and Telecommunications Services, UCSC
	<1992Oct06.014102.118835@watson.ibm.com> <BvpIuF.CKC@news.cso.uiuc.edu>
NNTP-Posting-Host: am.ucsc.edu
In-reply-to: tdlg9831@uxa.cso.uiuc.edu's message of 6 Oct 92 15:54:11 GMT

In article <BvpIuF.CKC@news.cso.uiuc.edu> tdlg9831@uxa.cso.uiuc.edu (Tracey Dianne Layng) writes:
|There is a book called _The Muvver Tongue_ which is a study of Cockney 
|written by two Cockneys, Robert Barltrop and Jim Wolveridge. I don't
|know who published it though.

Here's what MELVYL, the University of California library card
catalogue, has to say about it.

Author:        Barltrop, Robert.
Title:         The muvver tongue / Robert Barltrop and Jim Wolveridge. London ;
                 West Nyack, NY : Journeyman, 1980.
Description:   135 p. ; 23 cm.

Subjects:      English language -- Dialects -- England -- London.
               English language -- Slang.
               London (England) -- Social life and customs.

Other entries: Wolveridge, Jim, 1920-

Call numbers:  UCD   Main Lib  PE1961 .B37
               UCI   Main Lib  PE1961 .B37
               UCR   Rivera    PE1961 .B37
               UCSD  Central   PE1961 .B37
--
William R Ward                       Bay View Software
VoiceMail: +1 (408) 479-4072         Internet:  hermit@cats.ucsc.edu
SnailMail: 1803 Mission St. #339     BITNet:    hermit@cats.bitnet
           Santa Cruz CA 95060 USA
Newsgroups: alt.usage.english
Subject: Re: Possessives, Contractions, & Apostrophes
From: Ray.Nickson@comp.vuw.ac.nz (Ray Nickson)
Date: Sat, 10 Oct 1992 05:08:46 GMT
Organization: Victoria University of Wellington, Wellington, New Zealand

In article <92048@netnews.upenn.edu> crawford@ben.dev.upenn.edu (Lauren L. Crawford) writes:

           --If a noun is hyphenated or compound, use an apostrophe with
             the last element.  ("Her father-in-law's sculpture won a prize.")

What if the compound noun makes its plural by modifying a word other
than the last, I wonder?

Her brothers-in-law's sculptures?
Newsgroups: alt.usage.english
Newsgroups: alt.usage.english


Sure it wasn't a typo for "torso" ?
Newsgroups: alt.usage.english
From: yozzo@watson.ibm.com (Ralph Yozzo)
Subject: Re: bicycle scenery adjective
Date: Fri, 16 Oct 1992 16:55:11 GMT
Disclaimer: This posting represents the poster's views, not necessarily those of IBM
Organization: IBM T.J. Watson Research Center

In article <1992Oct9.145116.14709@bcrka451.bnr.ca> nadeau@bnr.ca (Rheal Nadeau) writes:
>I'm beginning to think the original poster is trying to cram a lot
>into one adjective.  Now, I do like getting the "mot juste", but we
>shouldn't expect a single adjective to do the work of a whole sentence
>or paragraph.
>
>And Jo is right that we're all guessing at the original poster's intent.
>I hope he'll let us know his intents and conclusions?
>
>>{Jo Meachem}
>


I'm beginning to see your point.  One word does not seem to do the
scene justice.  I will use a selection of suggested adjectives in a paragraph
to describe the scene.

I was especially entertained by the contribution from the U.K.
>> Oh, shit, not another motorway!
For certainly, both nouns in his sentence were present.  I could 
smell the former and could see the latter.

Thank you to everyone who responded both publicly and privately.

-- 
 Ralph Yozzo (yozzo@watson.ibm.com)  
 From the beautiful and historic Mid-Hudson Valley area of NY state
From: casseres@apple.com (David Casseres)
Newsgroups: alt.usage.english
Subject: Re: Possessives, Contractions, & Apostrophes
Date: 8 Oct 92 17:20:45 GMT
Followup-To: alt.usage.english
Organization: Apple Computer Inc.

In article <1992Oct7.155820.29454@advtech.uswest.com>,
eade@advtech.uswest.com (Elizabeth Erickson) wrote:
> 
> 
> Can anyone supply a simply formulated set of rules for the use of
> apostrophes?  My husband is woefully ignorant on the subject, and believes
> that "it doesn't matter anyway, no one else knows how to use them, either".
> This drives me nuts.
> 
> I've noticed in grading my students' papers (these are undergrads in info
> systems management) that they, too, have difficulty deciding how to use
> apostrophes.  It drives me crazy, but I can't think of all the proper
> examples to use.  "It's" and "its" as well as using apostrophes for plurals
> (how is it possible to make a mistake like "all of the red one's"?) --
> does anyone have a BRIEF set of rules?

Well, IF I were interested in trying to reform English (and I'm not), I'd
abolish apostrophes altogether.  And IF I were trying to be helpful to
average English-speakers like your husband (and thank god I'm not), I'd
tell them "Don't use apostrophes at all.  You'll make far fewer mistakes by
always leaving them out than by trying to follow rules."

--

David Casseres
Exclaimer: Wow!
From: bf455@cleveland.Freenet.Edu (Bonita Kale)
Newsgroups: alt.usage.english
Subject: Re: Final comma in lists
Date: 14 Oct 1992 10:22:46 GMT
Organization: Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland, Ohio (USA)
NNTP-Posting-Host: slc4.ins.cwru.edu




In a previous article, jbradfor@leland.Stanford.EDU (Jeffrey Bradford) says:

>Whenever someone lists several items, I've always seen it in
>the form of item1, item2, and item3.  Recently, however, I've been
>seeing more and more people leave off the final comma, so they
>write item1, item2 and item3.  This seems rather silly to me, not to
>mention at times confusing.  So my question is, what do people out
>there think of this, and why are people leaving off the final comma?  
>(Are we having a comma shortage that no one told me about?)


I think it's a matter of fashion.  The comma before the "and" used to be
omitted most of the time, then it was more "modern" to put it in (in the
twenties and thirties, I think), now it's migrating out again.  I prefer to
keep it, myself, most of the time.  But commas are as much a matter of
taste and fashion as shoes are. 

Bonita Kale
From: key@mcnc.org (Kathy E. Yount)
Newsgroups: alt.usage.english
Subject: Bicycle Scene/Word Games
Date: 9 Oct 92 12:46:42 GMT
Distribution: usa
Organization: MCNC Center for Microelectronics, RTP, NC


I like this game.  Let's do another one.  I'm writing
a classification essay on courage.  I've come up with
three categories (reactionary, obligatory, and ??)
What word would you use to describe the courage one
has when fighting the system for their beliefs and rights? 
i.e.  Ryan White who fought the system for his right to an education,
      any great inventor or discoverer (Columbus)
From: crawford@ben.dev.upenn.edu (Lauren L. Crawford)
Newsgroups: alt.usage.english
Subject: Re: Possessives, Contractions, & Apostrophes
Date: 8 Oct 92 17:19:55 GMT
Organization: University of Pennsylvania

In article <1992Oct08.140845.12970@uvmark.uucp> roger@uvmark.uucp (Roger MacNicol) writes:

>OK, but on an invoice is it:
>
>	Two day's consultancy @ $...
>or
>	Two days consultancy @ $...
>
>In other words does one say x day's worth of consultancy or has days become 
>part of the number?

Well, it wouldn't ever be "two day's..."  If you were going to make it
possessive, it would have to be "two days'..."

Associated Press would use your second option, if either.  Their
reasoning:  The two days don't "own" the consultancy; they describe it. 
For example, they'd call it the Engineers Club rather than the Engineers'
Club.

My own ruling on your example would be to rework it into "two-day
consultancy and drop the "s" altogether.



-- 
The trick of reason is to get the imagination to seize the actual world --
if only from time to time.     -- Annie Dillard, "An American Childhood"
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
Lauren Crawford  //  crawford@ben.dev.upenn.edu
From: kgs@panix.com (Karen Schneider)
Newsgroups: alt.usage.english
Subject: Re: bicycle scenery adjective
Date: 11 Oct 92 12:59:05 GMT
Organization: PANIX Public Access Unix, NYC

In <92250@netnews.upenn.edu> bsinger@eniac.seas.upenn.edu (Bayla Singer) writes:

>Dissonant seems right: there is a phrase, 'cognitive diissonance, which
>describes the conttrast betweenwhat a person has been led to expect as
>his/her social status, and the actual status.  (E.g., a woman PhD who
>earns only a small fraction of the salary her male counterpart does,
>and who moreover is not given the respect she feels  sheis due her.)

>--bayla singer

I'm sifting through the mnemonic flotsam and jetsam, and in my Psych
101 class (Spring, 1976) the professor defined cognitive dissonance
as the ability to live peacefully while maintaining two conflicting
beliefs (not his words, but that's what I captured).  An example of
cognitive dissonance would be believing that you are "against"
big government and federal interference while you also believed that
the government had a right to control your reproductive activities.
Or, for a less inflammatory example (and one I have probably been
guilty of myself), believing at once that "out of sight is out of
mind" while maintaining that "distance makes the heart grow fonder."
:-)

I vote for "jarring."  "Oxymoronic" has its charms, but the 
advantage of "jarring" is that it recalls the bicycling experience.
Simultaneously experiencing discordant scenes is as unsettling
as hitting a pothole.  The rider swerves slightly, her palms
suddenly damp, the ground beneath her treacherous... Her bottom
slides back and forth on the seat as she struggles to regain
balance... her attention is fully absorbed by the effort to
regain momentum and stability.  Good parallel experiences.

--k.g.schneider

-- 
----------------------------------------------------------------------
K.G.Schneider  kgs@panix.com

"Prudence keeps life safe, but does not often make it happy"
From: idx009@cck.coventry.ac.uk (the Crisco Kid)
Newsgroups: alt.usage.english
Subject: Re: An etymological question
Date: 9 Oct 92 15:57:13 GMT
Organization: Eris's Restaurant

In article <1algbhINN7hu@agate.berkeley.edu> ted@physics1 (Emory F. Bunn) writes:
>There are two classes of words that have the root "hyster-" in them:
>"Hysteria" and "hysterectomy" both come from the Greek word for "uterus"
>(Hysteria was once thought to be an exclusively female ailment.), while
>"hysteresis" comes from a Greek word meaning something like "later."
>
>My question is this:  Are these two words actually related somewhere 
>far back in time?  If so, how?  If not, then doesn't it seem strange
>that Greek should have evolved two such distinct meanings for almost
>the same word?  (After all, "hyster-" is a fairly long and complex
>sequence of sounds.  It doesn't surprise me a bit that the word "ou"
>has two distinct meanings in Greek, but "hyster" is a little much.)

Trot to the trusty L&s...

	hystera: the womb (hysteros), often in plural
	hysteresis: a coming short; want, need
	hysteros: the latter, coming after, following;
		  after, late, too late;
		  later than, too late for;
		  standing after, inferior, weaker

Well, at least L&S indicates that "hystera" is derived from "hysteros",
but fails to explain *why*.

I've got the faintest notion that the Greeks conceived of the uterus as
in some way being "eager" to bear a child, and that childlessness may
lead to the uterus detaching itself and romping around the body in
a fit of pique.  Though whether this has any relevance to the matter
under discussion is debatable.

I'll chase this up further when I can get my hands on my books on medical
etymology, which are on loan.

>By the way, this is the way this subject came up in the first place.
>One of my professors asserted in class that "hysteresis" comes from
>the same root as "history."  Having studied Latin as far as _De Bello
>Gallico_ in high school, I was skeptical.  Clearly "history" comes straight
>from the Latin "historia."  My dictionary asserts that if you trace it
>back further, "historia" comes from some Greek word "histor", but isn't
>clear on what that word means.  It's not by any chance related to
>"hyster-", is it?

Mmmmmm.... I'll chase this too.

					Kay
-- 
6'2", dark short hair, blue eyes, bisexual and horny as ....
Kay Dekker, Dept of Industrial Design, Coventry University, Coventry UK
37 Old Winnings Road, Keresley Village, Coventry   |B0 f t+ g++ k++! s+ e r p!
Phone: +44 203 838668 (work) +44 203 337865 (home) |Deflowerer-of-innocents
Newsgroups: alt.usage.english