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Strange... I'm reading a book, and I saw the word "setlement". Initially I figured it was probably a word I don't know, even though "settlement" made the right sense in the context; I'm prone to giving myself the benefit of the doubt. So I looked it up... and turns out there's no such word, and therefor it's, by all accounts, a typo.
I wouldn't say it's the first time I ran into typos in official production, but it is the first time this past two years. Anyone?
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It is an escalating trend, and but one element in the Decline of Civilization.
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typos do seem to be rare with the ubiquity of spell-check in publishing software, which only makes them all the more glaring when they do occur.
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Didn't you get the memo? Civilization has officially bottomed out. But then you can't understand this text because all words have devolved to a meaningless, utterless state of degradation.
Ceci n'est pas un seing.
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Only once in the past two years, Woody? I see them in almost every book I read these days... 
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It really sticks in my craw when I spend $$$ for a textbook and find that it is full of typos. It makes me feel like the authors and editors had very little respect for the material and/or their readers. God knows there are enough hungry English majors out there who could be hired to proof read.
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Feeling another diatribe coming on. Faulty spelling is bad enough especially with spell-check programs. But rampant illiteracy is truly appalling. About a week back, A. received an official memorandum written by one of those oafs who only think they know what i.e. means, as if "imbecile's example". This thing had a top-level manager's signature on it and effectively suggested that everyone's E-Mail address is something like 'JohnDoe@moronville.gov'. The manager passed the question sent to some lackey who had the audacity to suggest A. had not read the thing closely and it meant giving an example. That ninny now knows i.e. is the POLAR OPPOSITE of giving an example, but in this monkey read, monkey write society that letter still amounts to an illiteracy promotion.
Last edited by Aramis11; 05/23/06 04:57 PM.
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It's almost as bad as people who speak of themselves in Kafka-esque third person in hard to decipher diatribes.  And while we're diatribing about proper usage, what would be the "polar opposite" of giving an example - taking away a counter-example?
Last edited by Myridon; 05/23/06 05:01 PM.
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You with that same gripe again? Must have hated Bob Dole speeches. The polar opposite of an example is a specific citing, like videlicet (viz. for Defoe fans) or id est.
Last edited by Aramis11; 05/26/06 12:28 PM.
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Quote:
... God knows there are enough hungry English majors out there who could be hired to proof read.
*raising hand*
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Quote:
About a week back, A. received an official memorandum written by one of those oafs who only think they know what i.e. means, as if "imbecile's example".
You can always show your obvious superiority by perversely understanding what was meant even though it wasn't properly expressed
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Pooh-Bah
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One of my father's former students is an avid reader who also enjoys corresponding with his favorite writers. Apparently on more than one occasion he has written letters to authors, getting their attention by pointing out typos he has found in their novels. Thus some will write back. He often ends up with autographed copies of their books for his efforts. He was visiting our house once and noticed a copy of a John Updike book I was reading. He mentioned that he exchanged letters occasionally with Updike, and would I be interested in an autographed copy of one of his books? I gave an enthusiastic yes, and sure enough a few weeks later a package arrived from him containing an autographed hardcover of "Rabbit at Rest," which had the added benefit of containing a brief mention of my hometown in the novel itself!
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Humph. I've never gotten an autographed book, though I have gotten nice notes and letters. I once wrote Andrew Greeley about a serious error in time in one of his books, and got a very nice note saying, in effect, why bother having editors?
Another time I pointed out to the younger Shaara that the US VP who became a Confederate general was Breckinridge, not Breckenridge. Interesting story, there. I was wandering through the Confederate White House some years back and saw Breckinridge. Since I lived not too far from Breckenridge, CO, knew that the town was named after the general, and assumed they had spelled it properly, I made a fool out of myself by telling a docent they had misspelled the guy's name.
Actually, the town had been Breckinridge, but in anger at his perfidy they changed the spelling to Breckenridge after their namesake went South (literally).
The other error I noted in the book was that he had the Shenandoah river flowing south, rather than north.
In his letter to me, Shaara thanked me for finding the errors, promised they'd be fixed in future editions, and related to me that in one other major error in the book he had moved Newport News across Chesapeake Bay and that he had referred to John Brown's having been hung. (I had noted the latter error and decided not to mention it when I wrote to him.)
But a friend of mine struck real paydirt many years back. He wrote to John Dos Passos to point out some error in USA, and got back a full page holographic letter defending the error (signed of course.) Charlie has this framed and hanging in his law office.
TEd
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Quote:
The polar opposite of an example is a specific citing, like videlicet (viz. for Dafoe fans) or id est.
While I agree that i.e. and e.g. are quite different things, my point was that (IMO) saying they are "polar opposites" is almost as bad a misuse. They are both ways of further explaining or clarifying.
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While I agree that i.e. and e.g. are quite different things, my point was that (IMO) saying they are "polar opposites" is almost as bad a misuse. They are both ways of further explaining or clarifying.
Agreed that this polar opposite characterization is not as obvious as 'night and day', but the idea is of narrowing the subject to a single thing rather than presenting a model of many variations. 'Whole' and 'partial' are also both ways of further clarifying, but arguably opposites. The Britts never seem to botch standard Latin abbreviations, e.g., i.e.
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You can always show your obvious superiority by perversely understanding what was meant even though it wasn't properly expressed
Tolerance is a virtue, as clearly shown by the shining example of Faldage. But sometimes the battle against illiteracy must be fought, lest its bacteria-colony nature prevail and overcome all the dictionary-lazy. If not now, when? If not AWAD readers, who? 
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Quote:
The Britts never seem to botch standard Latin abbreviations, e.g., i.e.
we all seem to make mistakes; i.e. and e.g. the usual spelling is Brits, not Britts.
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Is it? Actually wondered at it prior to posting. Will have to suggest the 'double-tea' spelling as a Kafka-esque stylized form. [Still snickering over that post.] 
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Quote:
If not AWAD readers, who?
Well, there's always the messianic Robert Hartwell Fiske and his fellow travelers  :
http://www.vocabula.com/forum/
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Quote:
Tolerance is a virtue, as clearly shown by the shining example of Faldage. But sometimes the battle against illiteracy must be fought, lest its bacteria-colony nature prevail and overcome all the dictionary-lazy. If not now, when? If not AWAD readers, who?
Really. Next thing you know people will start using nice to mean something other than "ignorant" or egregious to be something other than a compliment, e.g.
Last edited by Faldage; 05/24/06 09:37 PM.
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Quote:
Quote:
... God knows there are enough hungry English majors out there who could be hired to proof read.
*raising hand*
Well, that's the problem, isn't it? They're hungry and want to be paid for their services. Whereas the publisher has to buy spell check software only once.
My favorite example of the folly of using spell checkers was the use in an otherwise well written book of "auger" when the author plainly meant "augur". I suppose he could have meant that the practice of predicting the future is boring....
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TEd
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Unfortunately spell-check is not likely to balk at such as: "Ween wording to herd wee needs a vocation."
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Quote:
Unfortunately spell-check is not likely to balk at such as: "Ween wording to herd wee needs a vocation."
...or the proverbial "the sons raise meat" instead of "the sun's rays meet," talking of the guy who willed his cattle ranch to his three boys, provided they re-named it "Focus"
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That was actually Isaac Asimov's choice as the best English language pun. And he was something of an expert on that subject.
TEd
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the messianic Robert Hartwell Fiske and his fellow travelers
sed quis custodiet ipsos custodes?
Ceci n'est pas un seing.
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Quote:
the messianic Robert Hartwell Fiske and his fellow travelers
sed quis custodiet ipsos custodes?
Eu, nunca.
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Quote:
You with that same gripe again? Must have hated Bob Dole speeches. The polar opposite of an example is a specific citing, like videlicet (viz. for Defoe fans) or id est.
I've read a few of Daniel Defoe's novels, but I wouldn't really call myself a Defoe fan. Nevertheless, I do use viz. quite often.
Bingley
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Bingley's use of viz. here, although it is only a reference to his use, is the 37th(!) use in these forums over the last five(5) years. jheem used it most often (during his salad days) followed by yours truly, milum and Bingley. Defoe doesn't even rate a citation in OED2.
viz. [Abbrev. of VIDELICET. Cf. VIDZ
The z represents the ordinary med.L. symbol of contraction for et or -et. For the various forms in which the abbreviation occurs in med.L. manuscripts, see Chassant Dict. des Abréviations and Cappelli Dizionario di Abbreviature. In reading aloud usually rendered by namely.]
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formerly known as etaoin...
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I've read a few of Daniel Defoe's novels, but I wouldn't really call myself a Defoe fan. Nevertheless, I do use viz. quite often.
Aramis does fancy stylishly archaic terms like 'viz.' An excerpt from an [unknown] original work relates:
Shocking as this may be, I will admit to once making a faulty assumption from not looking something up. In reading Defoe, I had always taken his viz. to mean vis-ŕ-vis. One day while looking something else up somewhere in the Vs, on a whim I looked for viz . To my surprise, Dafoes term turned out to be an abbreviation for videlicet, which means that is to say or namely, [and thus very much like id est ]. My interpretation of "vis-ŕ-vis" was reasonably useful by one of its three definitions, but not what Dafoe wrote. So, even a literary snob can stumble on a forehead-smacking discovery. 
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Thanks, A--I hadn't known that; or rather, had forgotten. My brain doesn't seem to want to retain Latin for some reason. Videlicet, videlicet...vee-day-lee-chet?
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Videlicet, with the c as an s. As far as Latinate abbreviations and terms go, I've always been partial to the old footnotary terms ibid. (for ibidem 'in the same place') and op. cit. (for opere citato 'in the cited work').
Ceci n'est pas un seing.
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Kafka-esque, solipsistic Aramis had not only botched the meaning of viz. but evidently was not pronouncing videlicet correctly either.  Cf. for compare and et al. seem quite useful and awkward to replace.
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I have to admit 'f' or 'ff' is shorter, but I do miss 'et seq'.
Bingley
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I ran across videlicet's cousin t'other day: viz. scilicet 'namely, that is to say', abbreviated sc.
Ceci n'est pas un seing.
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sc. is used often in OED2 -- I mean *very often.
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You miss et seq.? Golly, have some of mine: I use it so often that I have an autocorrect abbreviation for it which includes html formatting for the italics.
Et seq. is used in Michigan statutory citation form, to indicate citation to a series of statutes, typically comprising a single act. The governmental immunity act, for example, is cited as MCL 691.1401 et seq.
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