Jay

19,347 reputation

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bio	website	johansens.us
	location	Michigan
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visits	member for	1 year, 8 months
	seen	8 hours ago
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	19,347 reputation	bio	website	johansens.us	visits	member for	1 year, 8 months
1344 badges		location	Michigan		seen	8 hours ago

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Jan 24	comment	What is the difference between “I earn $500 each month” and “I earn $500 per month”? I don't think most English-speaking people would take these words to have the distinction you're making. You certainly COULD use the words "each" and "per" this way if you explained yourself up front, but that's not how they are commonly understood.
Jan 24	comment	What is the difference between “I earn $500 each month” and “I earn $500 per month”? RE "neither imply causality". Ditto. There may actually be causality in any ratio, but the use of "per" does not indicate it. I might just as well say, "My car is moving at 50 miles per hour." The hour did not cause my car to move.
Jan 24	comment	Parentheses vs. commas vs. hyphen or dash in a list of people The point of the list is that it is a list of people. Statements like "cancer" are an explanation of why the person is on the list, which is a side note from the fact that they are on the list. Therefore parentheses are appropriate. As a practical matter, parentheses more clearly set off the reasons from the names in a graphical sense. (Though I am curious about the "nephew of Tim". Is that something that makes this person need prayer in the same way that having cancer or being bereaved call for prayer? How bad an uncle is Tim?)
Jan 24	comment	Real word for “equippable” "Usable" sounds like the answer to me. Is the OP looking for something more specific, like that it is usable for some specific purpose?
Jan 24	comment	Real word for “equippable” @RedDwight: A word is "real" to the extent that it is (a) understood and (b) accepted in any given context. Both of these criteria take a range of values and are not simply true/false. (a) Few people outside a narrow constituency would recognize the word, but would have to figure it out. As Monica notes, they would probably guess that it means that a person or thing is capble of being equipped, not that it is able to be used for the equipping. (B) If you tried to use this word in a college paper or an article for publication outside a gaming magazine, it might well be declared a non-word.
Jan 24	comment	Using or arguing a biased opinion as fact @Noldorin: Well, I don't want to get into an argument. Obviously my example is just that: one example. I don't claim it illustrates every possible nuance. But I have never seen a definition of "hyperbole" that would allow for its use in a case where a person is asserting that what he says is literally true. I just checked a couple of on-line dictionaries and all describe hyperbole with phrases like "not intended to be taken literally". Can you point to some reference that gives a broader definition?
Jan 24	comment	Using or arguing a biased opinion as fact @Noldorin: How is exagerration NOT mutually exclusive with reality? By definition, exagerration is saying that something is more or better (or less or worse) than it really is, i.e. it is not reality. It is certainly true that there are times when it is difficult to prove whether a statement is reality or exagerration. But you could say that about all sorts of statements. "You can't disprove it" is not the same as "it's true".
Jan 24	awarded	Critic
Jan 24	comment	Using or arguing a biased opinion as fact I think you're in the right direction, but your answer is very general.
Jan 24	comment	Using or arguing a biased opinion as fact @Scott: The whole point of hyperbole is that it's not intended to be taken literally. If someone makes an exagerrated statement and expects the listener to believe it as literal fact, then by definition it is not hyperbole. I suppose it could come down to a question of intent. In theory, two people could say exactly the same words, one meaning them literally, and the other as hyperbole. In practice, hyperbole is normally understood to be so exagerrated that no one would take it literally. I guess given some of the extreme rhetoric of political debate, there could be times when it is ambiguous.
Jan 24	comment	Using or arguing a biased opinion as fact Hmm, I don't see how this fits at all. Maybe if we knew the OP's context. But hyperbole is when you say something like, "I was attacked by a dog that was the size of a truck!" The dog was not literally the size of a truck; this is just a way of emphasizing that he was very big. The poster's question sounds more like he is referring to statements like, "As all Republicans are racists, Senator Jones is opposing this bill just because it will help black people."
Jan 24	comment	Correctness and spelling of “misscheduled” I suspect "mischedule" is just a mispelling. :-)
Jan 24	comment	When did ironic use of “as in” start? I don't think that qualifies as "irony". In your example, you are using words with their strictly literal meaning. You are re-stating the obvious. I'd call that redundancy or maybe tautology, not irony. Irony is when you use words with the opposite of their literal meaning. Like, I once read of a rich man who put in his will that he wanted to be buried sitting at the wheel of his expensive limousine, and so at the funeral they had a crane to lower the limousine into the grave. A bystander saw it and was heard to say, "Wow, that's really living!" That's irony.
Jan 23	comment	Is it 'what it looks like' or 'how it looks like'? Just BTW, this is an example I often use when people ask what an "idiom" is. If someone asks, "How does Sally look?", if I interpret the question literally, I might answer, "With her eyes." But the answer the person is really expecting is more likely, "She's very pretty" or "She looks terrible since she caught that disease" or some such.
Jan 23	comment	Is it 'what it looks like' or 'how it looks like'? I agree but I'd be more emphatic. If someone asked me, "How does the new sculpture look?", I would be very unlikely to reply with a description. I would almost surely say that it was pretty or it was ugly or some other statement about its quality. In some contexts other sorts of qualitative statements might apply, like, "How does the new headquarters building look?" "It's almost finished." "How does Bob look?" "Pretty good, I think he's almost recovered from his illness." Etc.
Jan 23	comment	'We care for us' or 'We care about us'? @Robusto: True, but JSBangs statement is still USUALLY true. He should have said, "is generally changed to ..." rather than "must be changed to ...". That applies to almost anything you say about language: There are always special cases for emphasis, rhetorical effect, poetic rhythm, etc.
Jan 23	comment	Do you know the term “She is a people's person”? Actually I hear "computer person", meaning someone skilled in use of computers, a lot. Similarly, "Bob is our tax guy", meaning the person who prepares our taxes or is knowledgable about our taxes. Occasionally the idiom is used for all sorts of things, like "Who can I ask about recalibrating the transmogrifier?" "Oh, Fred is our transmogrifier person."
Jan 23	comment	“Advice” vs “An advice” "A piece of advice" is a very common phrase and perfectly acceptable. But in general, I'd say just don't try to make it countable. If you are tempted to say, "I gave Sally two advices", just change it to "I gave Sally advice". If you need a qualifier, make it "some advice" or "a little advice" or "tons of advice". What would it mean to count it anyway? When would you want to say "three advices"? Perhaps what you mean is, "I gave advice on three subjects" ?
Jan 23	answered	How to say that you are going to do something really soon?
Jan 22	comment	Is there a correct gender-neutral, singular pronoun (“his” versus “her” versus “their”)? @MikeSchinkel: Huh. I thought "Palinesque" referred to a woman who is successful in politics based on her own abilities and efforts rather than piggy-backing on the career of her husband. :-)