Troublesome Expressions

PennLady said:

...Like I said, I have never heard "biweekly" to mean twice a week, or "semiannual" to mean every other year. And not just in publishing, although perhaps that's where the mess up started. I've heard of semiannual sales at various stores, but not biannual ones, for example...

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I'm with you on this, PennLady.

Yes, which makes it a problem to use even when used correctly according to the dictionary. A large number of folks won't understand it.

It's like doing the number thing with month/day/year. The British do it one way in the month/day, and Americans do it the reverse way, and no one can remember which is which where. That just makes it something to avoid.

sr71plt said:

Came to check if this one had been covered because I just encountered this in an edit. I have to look it up each time.

Anyone being hit with other unusual ones of late? I had soar/sore the other day.

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If it helps, 'discrete' just means separate, like 'this area has four discrete neighborhoods around the center.

'Discreet' means trying not to attract attention or embarrassment. Doctors are discreet when dealing with patients or relatives.

Friendly bump for additions . . .

"Begging the question"

The phrase is often used in place of "raising the question," although its true meaning is "assuming that the question has already been settled or answered when in fact it has not.

Athalia said:

"Begging the question"

The phrase is often used in place of "raising the question," although its true meaning is "assuming that the question has already been settled or answered when in fact it has not.

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Ah, I didn't know that difference. What I've run across on it, though, says that "raising the question" meaning is becoming so much in use that it's taken over.

sr71plt said:

The one I'm seeing crop up in a couple of works I'm editing now is writing "waste" when they mean "waist." It's produced some pretty icky images.

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I've seen this one many, many times on Literotica. The one which produced the ickiest image: "I placed my hand on her bear waste"

A "twofer"!

-Rei

sr71plt said:

...

It's like doing the number thing with month/day/year. The British do it one way in the month/day, and Americans do it the reverse way, and no one can remember which is which where. That just makes it something to avoid.

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Going back a long time to this post.

Because I write in British English but for an American site I try to avoid using all numerals for dates. Today is the 14th April so in the UK it is 14/04/2017.

Or is it? Some UK internet applications including banking use the US convention of 04/14/2017 or even backwards - 2017/04/14 UK or 2017/14/04 US.

April Fools Day is 1/4 in the UK but 4/1 in the US. But we both know on which day of the month April Fools is.

When a date becomes significant such as 9/11 we Brits have to translate. For us it was 11/9 but the event is known worldwide as 9/11.

So - If I have a date in a story I am likely to write 14th April (not April 14th) and avoid all numerals.

oggbashan said:

Going back a long time to this post.

...Today is the 14th April so in the UK it is 14/04/2017.
...

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Isn't that based on how it is said, "the 14th of April" (which is sometimes how Americans also say it)?

LWulf said:

Isn't that based on how it is said, "the 14th of April" (which is sometimes how Americans also say it)?

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No. The British and Americans put the numbers in different order. I can't keep straight which is which, so I just avoid using the system altogether.

sr71plt said:

No. The British and Americans put the numbers in different order. I can't keep straight which is which, so I just avoid using the system altogether.

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Not sure how it originated but the British+European, and I'm pretty sure Middle Eastern system (Asian as well? no clue) is day/month/year, which makes a lot of sense - going from the shorter unit of time (day) progressively to the longer. The US, of course, has it as month/day/year - no idea why.

I was listening earlier in the week on a discussion on how the differences of driving on the right versus left side of the road originated (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Right-_and_left-hand_traffic) - I knew the reason for the British convention, more or less, but hadn't heard that convention for the US version. Learn more weird facts every day...

LWulf said:

Isn't that based on how it is said, "the 14th of April" (which is sometimes how Americans also say it)?

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Americans say it "April 14th," although as I'm also a Spanish speaker, I can tell you all Spanish-speaking countries that I've seen do dd/mm/yy, as it's always "the 14th of April of 2017" in that format and they quote times on schedules in military time as well.

I ran into 'steeling' when it should have been 'stealing'.

legerdemer said:

...

I was listening earlier in the week on a discussion on how the differences of driving on the right versus left side of the road originated (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Right-_and_left-hand_traffic) - I knew the reason for the British convention, more or less, but hadn't heard that convention for the US version. Learn more weird facts every day...

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It has been frequently said that in some parts of West Africa there is no right or left convention for vehicles outside major cities. They drive according to the potholes and the largest vehicle gets the best route forcing other vehicles to left or right. Some drivers continue like that even in major towns, causing chaos.

RubenR said:

In this sense, is the use of 'quite a few' correct? It seems weird to me.

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Just one of those idioms meaning a large, but undetermined number. It goes with "quite a bit," "quite a lot," "quite a number."

RubenR said:

In this sense, is the use of 'quite a few' correct? It seems weird to me.

...

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few, fewer, less


If you can count the numbers, fewer is correct. If you can't, less is correct.

There were fewer people at Trump's inauguration than at Obama's.

There was less of a crowd...

Those two statements are grammatically correct even if the statements can be argued about as expressions of fact.

Detailed usage in the link:

https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/usage/less-or-fewer

oggbashan said:

few, fewer, less


If you can count the numbers, fewer is correct. If you can't, less is correct.

There were fewer people at Trump's inauguration than at Obama's.

There was less of a crowd...

Those two statements are grammatically correct even if the statements can be argued about as expressions of fact.

Detailed usage in the link:

https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/usage/less-or-fewer

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But that's sort of irrelevant to "quite a few" being an acceptable idiom meaning "many."

sr71plt said:

But that's sort of irrelevant to "quite a few" being an acceptable idiom meaning "many."

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It may be irrelevant to "quite a few" but many writers get it wrong so it is appropriate to the thread as a whole.

sr71plt said:

No. The British and Americans put the numbers in different order. I can't keep straight which is which, so I just avoid using the system altogether.

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"On the eighteenth of April, in Seventy-five" ...too dated for you?

How about the 4th of july?

Americans don't always put it in month, day, year, when we speak it, but when writing it, we use the month/day/year because chronologically, you have to get to a month, before you can progress to what day of the month is meant. We also tend to say "the 2nd Tuesday of the month," or "the first week of April."

My point is, how we (Americans) annotate a day of the month, is different to how we speak. I'm not sure, but I believe the British use day/month year whether they say it or write it, which is why they use that convention.

LWulf said:

"On the eighteenth of April, in Seventy-five" ...too dated for you?

How about the 4th of july?

Americans don't always put it in month, day, year, when we speak it, but when writing it, we use the month/day/year because chronologically, you have to get to a month, before you can progress to what day of the month is meant. We also tend to say "the 2nd Tuesday of the month," or "the first week of April."

My point is, how we (Americans) annotate a day of the month, is different to how we speak. I'm not sure, but I believe the British use day/month year whether they say it or write it, which is why they use that convention.

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The issue isn't with how dates are given in text--they are given all sorts of ways in both systems, it's the specific numerical rating: 4/22/2017 or 22/4/2017. There's no real problem when numbers go into double digits like this, but the problem shows up in something like: 1/2/2017 or 2/1/2017.

sr71plt said:

The issue isn't with how dates are given in text--they are given all sorts of ways in both systems, it's the specific numerical rating: 4/22/2017 or 22/4/2017. There's no real problem when numbers go into double digits like this, but the problem shows up in something like: 1/2/2017 or 2/1/2017.

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The international standard (ISO 8601) is to order elements from largest to smallest: year, month, day, hour, minute, second, and then fractional seconds if needed.

The advantage of this method is that it sorts correctly without special handling. Say I have a list of dates in UK/Australian DD/MM/YYYY format:

26/01/1788
14/10/1066
11/09/2001

A standard lexicographical sort (think "alphabetical order" but including digits) works from first digit to last, so it will order them as:

11/09/2001
14/10/1066
26/01/1788

so the Battle of Hastings gets placed in between the September 11 hijackings and British colonisation of Australia.

US MM-DD-YYYY format doesn't do any better:

01-26-1788
09-11-2001
10-14-1066

But the ISO method gets them in the right order, every time:

1066-10-14
1788-01-26
2001-09-11

Sadly, as with many standards, it's rarely followed*. I wouldn't use it in fiction unless I was writing about something like a space station or an engineering firm where I wanted to establish a technical tone. But it makes sense.

(If I recall, US military uses DD-MM-YYYY for at least some purposes, at odds with normal US style, so it's not consistent even within countries.)

*There is an International Standards Day to celebrate the value of standards. It's celebrated on or around October 14th, except in the USA where it's on October 23rd. I wish I was joking.