Strange Word...

I don't think I understand why the fire would NOT melt the solder.

Reverting to the original query, I think it's for the editor to decide what is the House Style - and then ensure that everybody conforms.

MC

I suspect a crosssectional* study would find most people favouring a hyphen there, but arguably less forgiveable examples of clarity-impairing hyphen-neglect appear to get a free pass, the almost universal use of "predate" for "pre-date" [as well as for the other "predate"] being one: https://www.model-engineer.co.uk/forums/postings.asp?th=142031&p=3

*Multiple instances of this spelling exist on the Web.

Well, if it's on the Web it must be right! Hmm,

Reputable dictionaries including the Cambridge and Merriam-Webster list it as cross-sectional. That in itself supports the argument for a hyphen in the triple-S sequence in cross-slide.

They also list predate as one word, to mean existing at an earlier time. One of those ones that has become one word and lost the hyphen after years of general usage and a total lack of ambiguity provided by common usage and context. Much like backyard and closer to home, tailstock and headstock.

Only if you believe clarity is the issue here, which I don't.

The problem with predate and pre-date is that they mean different things.

As, incidentally, do content and contents, a difference deemed unacceptable by Silicon Valley which finds it far easier to string 2 digits than 26 letters, together.

Whereas terms like headstock have only one meaning hyphen or not, even if the two words alone can be used for many different things!

I do wonder what if any English Language is now taught in schools. It seems to exclude understanding words and etymology! The Oxford English Dictionary has been criticised for encouraging ignorance, by such things as calling the specific geological term epicentre a synonym for the common word centre, and expunging many nature words.

Ever been had?

Long, long ago, in my youth, I came across a highly contrived string of 14 'had's in the Guinness Book of Records. The scenario is something like two printers, differently interpreting instructions regarding bold face and italics. The resulting confusion was reported:

'Tom, where John had had 'had had', had had 'had had'; had 'had had' had 'had had' printed over it in the final proof, no-one would have been surprised.'

Enough of this time-wasting! I'm getting on, and time's running out!

Sadly, I fear that the OED reflects usage rather that setting a standard.

During my lifetime "alright" has crept into written English replacing "all right" (on the lines, I suppose, of "always".

When I was a Physics teacher (now 30 years ago), colleagues in the English Department felt that not more than one or two wrong spellings in a piece of work should be corrected, since it discouraged the boys from using "new words"!

MC

I'm sure it does and that would be the OED editors' excuse, but it does the language no good and shows the speaker trying to use technical terms metaphorically as ignorant and can change the meanings of their messages.

They have no excuse whatsoever for omitting many names for common plants and animals.

Allegedly or by claim, that censorship was merely to create space for IT-related terms - but looks as if a result of that dreaded arty-flatulency nonsense about 'relevance'. Obviously, both IT and Nature words should be included (needing two entries each for some trade-names), and I hope the lost words are restored in the next revision, irrespective of a few more pages and ink.

Thank God the physics teachers dont run the world. We'd still all be speaking like Chaucer if dictionaries were prescriptive rather than descriptive. Newton's first law may be set in stone but language is a constantly evolving artifact.

I'm not a fan of alright either but it has been with us since 1880 and James Joyce used it -- supposedly the world's leading practitioner of the English language. But he used all right as well.

My current pet peeve is decimated increasingly being used to mean devastated. I know it's in the dictionary and there are strong etymological arguments for it. But it still has overtones of one in ten from the decim as in decimal.To use it otherwise is to display a completely tin ear for the language.

Whereas the metaphorical use of epicentre to describe say a hospital that originated an outbreak of Covid works just fine for me. Metaphor is a legitimate part of language and its meaning is clear.

But a family decimated by Covid to me means one in 10 of them died.

Then don't get me started on razed to the ground...

I'm afraid I used the phrase "now words" in a possibly misleading sense but I was writing what I was told by former colleagues.

The context was "new words for that child" rather than "inventing new words"

The suggestion was that one should NOT correct "dose" (meaning "does" or "gose" (meaning "goes"

I'm sure that Physicists could do a better job of running the world that the Politicians !!

(Your view may differ)

MC

Physicists would merely theorise. Politicians have actually managed to create a black hole (in our finances).

pgk

Don't worry, Nigel, the answer is lots. I volunteer as a small-group literacy mentor with disadvantaged ten-year-olds, and their knowledge of English grammar is impressive.

It compares very well indeed with the situation when I took up secondary-school teaching in the early nineties. If I said to a class "Acid is the noun; acidic is the adjective" I was faced with blank incomprehension. By the time I retired from teaching a few years ago, I could say the same thing and be met with understanding. Now my disadvantaged ten-year-olds can tell me about adverbs and ellipsis. You've no need to worry.

Pet peeves? I shout at the television when people talk about carnage when there's no blood, and also when apparently intelligent and well-educated people talk of die-section rather than diss-section. By-section is fine; it 's all in the prefixes. Or pre-fixes.

Hobby horse rubbed down and returned to stable...

George B.

Yes, but they usually manage a personal escape from it, even though none of them approach the speed of light...

The pollies are like quantum physicists: The budget is both in surplus and in deficit at the same time, until somebody looks at it.

No need for fear or sadness because English exists to enable communication and living languages shouldn't be nailed down!

Just one example from a complex history. Mother's pre-war OED favours -ize rather than -ise spellings. Organize, humanize etc. My modern OED has shifted to the -ise form.

The move happened because -ize spellings are apparently inconsistent with the many -ise words in English with no connection to Greek, or to imported Latin and French words imitating the Greek form. Chastise has always been spelt with an 's', and size was never spelt with one. Whilst the root of many -ize words is Greek, British English shifted over the last century to the French -ise form. It's easier!

If English were written to a fixed standard, we should all have learned the rules that decide whether -ize or -ise is correct. We don't because there's no value in it. There are two 'mistakes' in baptise, baptize, civilize and civilise, but few would know the reason. In practise it makes no difference, so British English adopted -ise spellings throughout. No-one decided, the population just did it.

'Correctness' changes over time. Before WW2 the move away from -ize spellings was condemned as a decline in standards. Today many well-read persons believe -ise to be correct English whilst -ize spellings are vulgar Americanisms. They're wrong!

English is a mongrel language. Frisian German overlaid on Celtic and the British variant of Latin, plus a dose of Norse. After 1066 heavily influenced by Norman French, and during the Renaissance by an injection of Classical Greek and Latin. Trade and empire led to the adoption of many words from European and non-european languages. Engineering, the Sea, and Science all contributed. Then the independent development of English in the US, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, India and many other countries, all respectable. Nothing wrong with Tattoo, Bungalow, Pom, Blitz, or Id. English is a multi-national hybrid, continually evolving to meet user needs. There's no consistent set of rules covering English grammar, phonology, syntax, composition, semantics, etymology, orthoepy or morphology.

What we're taught at school are guidelines to assist communication, and a good thing too. Consistent spelling, punctuation and grammar are helpful, but aren't the whole story. Most schooling is a simplification rather than a rock solid truth. British readers will see many defects in Strunk and White's 'The Elements of Style', which is insisted on by many US Colleges. Mostly sensible, except many of the 'Rules' are author prejudices. More obviously flawed this side of the Atlantic because our reading heritage is diverse, and Brits trust Jane Austin and Thackaray more than William Strunk Jr.

Dave

Interesting thread.

My understanding is that language is always evolving and that dictionary publishers have always understood this and actually aim to reflect usage rather than try to set some unchanging standards or rules, so regrettably some contributors to the forum will have to remain sad.

The French, of course, are different and have a State body, whose name I can't remember, which does try to fix French language usage, and the French do love their language. But I understand even the French are having difficulty in modern times as technical terms and English (American?) words are creeping into the language, as used on the street, rather than as the State body thinks it "should" be used.

Rod

I remember a chat with a French software developer a couple or three decades ago, who said there was much anxiety in his country about the adoption of English/American words and phrases, and he asked me if there were French terms creeping into English.

I could think of sang froid, rendezvous, bete noire, savoir faire, cul-de-sac, fait accompli - in fact anything with a suitable raison d'etre.

A slightly uncharitable representation of my thinking, Hopper, and of the Web, which we all know has plenty of ore among the dross.

Also, I did recently try to indicate that seeing usage in terms of right and wrong, rather than standard and non-standard, isn't really regarded by linguists as defensible any more.

Academie Francais (accents left out).

For the record, I generally follow either instinct or the Guardian Style Guide.

Both of which are silent on cross-slides and topslides.

Académie Française according to Wikipedia ... and yet

Académie française according to its own web-site

... surprising but true

**LINK** http://www.academie-francaise.fr

MichaelG.