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Jonathon Owen Profile picture
@ArrantPedantry
Aug 13, 2020 • 9 tweets • 2 min read • Read on X
Copy editor confession: I can never remember the difference between "premier" and "premiere" and have to look them up every time. #AmEditing
Also, I think pairs of words that are only distinguished by a silent "e" on the end are dumb. What is this, French?
Plus, "palette" and "pallet" are etymologically the same word. There's literally no reason for both of them to exist. Might as well toss "palate" in there while we're at it.
You say that "premier" and "premiere" have discrete meanings; I say that they both just mean "'first,' but in French."
Plus, "discrete" and "discrete" are also just spelling variations of the same word. Let's recombine 'em.
This one is the literal worst, especially if you end up having theatres and theaters in the same passage.
Oops. That should have been "discrete" and "discreet."
This has been Yelling about English Orthography with Jonathon. Please join us for our next episode, "Seriously, What's the Deal with '-ough'?"
This is fantastic.

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More from @ArrantPedantry

Jonathon Owen Profile picture
Nov 11, 2020
This is . . . not how rhymes work.

Would you like to learn how rhymes really work? Of course you would! So let's talk about syllables and stress.
Pretty much every learned how to count syllables in elementary school. A simple way of thinking about syllables is just that every "beat" in a word is a syllable. You clap along as you say a word, and that helps you figure out where the syllables are and how many there are.
So "friend" has one syllable because you say it in one beat, while "principal" has three: prin-ci-pal. (Of course, some words will vary from one variety of English to another or one person to another. Some people say "caramel" with three syllables and some with two.)
Read 23 tweets
Jonathon Owen Profile picture
Nov 10, 2020
The flip side of this, of course, is monochrome icons like the ones Mac OS and Windows 10 have moved to. Stripping out the color removes a lot of visual information that helps you identify the icons quickly.

Just compare Mac OS 10.5 to 10.15. Are the older icons a little overwrought? Sure, but at least they were easily identifiable. The new ones are mostly just slightly different gray rectangles. ImageImage
Windows 10 is even worse, I think. They've even forgone shades of gray. Everything is literally a single shade of a single color. ImageImage
Read 4 tweets
Jonathon Owen Profile picture
Sep 21, 2020
I keep hearing ads on Pandora for the breakfast menu at McDonalds, and I'm driving myself crazy trying to figure out the morphological rules of the Mc prefix.
At first glance, it seems that biscuits are Mc-less
Bacon, egg, and cheese biscuit
Sausage biscuit
Sausage biscuit with egg
But McMuffins, of course, always have a Mc:
Egg McMuffin
Sausage McMuffin
Sausage McMuffin with egg
Read 12 tweets
Jonathon Owen Profile picture
Sep 17, 2020
This is a great thread that explains, among other things, why some Latin words meaning "two" start with du- (as in "dual") and why some start with bi- (as in "biannual").
Here's another surprising Old Latin change: "lingua" (as in "tongue" or "language") is cognate with "tongue". They both come from the Proto-Indo-European *dn̥ǵʰwéh₂s. en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Reconstru…
Something like *dn̥ǵʰwéh₂s may make your eyes glaze over, but the important part here is the beginning, which I'll simplify to *dng. In Germanic, a PIE /d/ typically became /t/. A syllabic /n/, I think, typically became /un/. And voilà! We have the English "tongue".
Read 9 tweets
Jonathon Owen Profile picture
Sep 15, 2020
I'm grading editing tests from intern applicants again, and it's reminding me how much I hate most editing tests.
Too many of them, I think, don't really test editing skill. It's more of a test of how well you can guess what the test maker is thinking.
For example, our department's editing test has a section that is a mix of style and usage questions. The style questions include the possessive of "press," whether the first letter after a colon is capped, and whether "good-natured" is hyphenated before a noun.
Read 15 tweets
Jonathon Owen Profile picture
Sep 14, 2020
Cat owners of Twitter, I need some advice. This adorable little pest is making working from home a real pain. Back when I worked in the office, she would spend most of the day sleeping under my bed. Now she spends most of the day whining for attention.
I'm working in my bedroom, and I keep the door closed to try to block sound from the kids. Phoebe wants to stay in the bedroom with me, but she's not content to sleep under the bed all day anymore. Now she wants to play all day.
She loves to play fetch, but I have real work to do and can't turn around every few seconds to throw a toy for her. So she just sits next to my desk and whines at me.
Read 8 tweets

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