Pedants' Paradise

[Bryn]

My current quibble is with the use of 'misnomer', which means using a name for something that is not appropriate. People increasingly use it to mean...well anything that they think is incorrect.

Blatant misnomers, in the strictest sense, in the online listing for tonight's Radio 3 in Concert:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000b6hh

and no, I do not put it down to antisemitism, though it might possibly be anti-Israeli.

[Just in case they manage to correct it before anyone reads the page linked to, its significant content reads/read:

Don Quixote

Radio 3 in Concert

The BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra and Ilan Volkov perform Strauss's music inspired by Don Quixote, a rarity from a Romanian composer and a suite of ballet music by Prokofiev.

Music Played:

Myriam Marbe
Serenata: Eine kleine Sonnenmusik

Orchestra: BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra. Conductor: Thomas Dausgaard.


Sergei Prokofiev
Visions Fugatives

Performer: Steven Osborne.


Sergei Prokofiev
Chout: Symphonic Suite Op.21b

Conductor: Thomas Dausgaard. Orchestra: BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra.


Myriam Marbe
Song of Ruth

Ensemble: Celloquintett der Musikhochschule Nurnberg.


Georg Philipp Telemann
Suite Burlesque de Quixotte

Orchestra: Academy for Ancient Music Berlin.


Richard Strauss
Don Quixote

Orchestra: BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra. Conductor: Thomas Dausgaard.


Richard Strauss
Piano Trio No. 1 in A major

Ensemble: Amelia Piano Trio.


Richard Strauss
Sonatine no.2

Performer: Dario Bonuccelli.

]

[kernelbogey]

I'm two thirds of the way through Max Hastings's masterly book on the Vietnam War.

I'm struck by his avoidance of the word "and". Dozens of examples so far - when he lists three things, as he often does, he simply puts commas between them, e.g. (one I've made up) "guns, grenades, helicopters." No "and", with or without Oxford comma. Haven't noticed it in his books before, or elsewhere.

I remembered this discussion today when I found myself using this device when sending a text. A list with only commas has a different tone to a list incorporatng an 'and'.

My father (who had an acute interest in language and grammar) asserted that a comma means 'and': a sustainable argument IMV.

It is a device used in US newspaper headlines - made-up example - Schiff subpoenas President, Attorney General, Press Secretary.

[Serial_Apologist]

I remembered this discussion today when I found myself using this device when sending a text. A list with only commas has a different tone to a list incorporatng an 'and'.

My father (who had an acute interest in language and grammar) asserted that a comma means 'and': a sustainable argument IMV.

It is a device used in US newspaper headlines - made-up example - Schiff subpoenas President, Attorney General, Press Secretary.

I've often wondered why it is that scribes of legal documents refrain from using punctuation of any kind, apart from full stops. It don't 'arf make for difficult reading, see?

[Pulcinella]

I've often wondered why it is that scribes of legal documents refrain from using punctuation of any kind, apart from full stops. It don't 'arf make for difficult reading, see?

And it leads to all sorts of ambiguities, which of course they can profit from in trying to resolve them (when they needn't have happened in the first place).

Or am I being just a bit too cynical.

[teamsaint]

And it leads to all sorts of ambiguities, which of course they can profit from in trying to resolve them (when they needn't have happened in the first place).

Or am I being just a bit too cynical.

Oh no not too cynicl. It’s just like complex tax systems, which keep accountants and tax inspectors nice and busy........

[ardcarp]

Apostrophe Protection Societys demise.

Its dead.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-lincolnshire-50602665

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

Apostrophe Protection Societys demise.
Its dead.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-englan...shire-50602665

Sadly never achieved it's aims.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Qr9M1A7wXU

[LMcD]

Sadly never achieved it's aims.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Qr9M1A7wXU

Its not my fault - Ive alway's done my best.

[ardcarp]

...and for sailors, our fo''c's''e will never be the same.

[vinteuil]

...and for sailors, our fo''c's''e will never be the same.

... and spare a thought for maître d' s everywhere*

(actually I always thought the apostrophe a silly little bestiole. The its / it's convention is of recent date - Coleridge and others of the period consistently use them the 'other way around'. And it's sheer convention that we have Lloyds Bank and Lloyd's underwriters (among other Boots and Waterstones). It's just the sort of shibboleth to give a sense of purpose and unmerited smug superiority to low level pedants.)


* and the double apostrophe necessary for the possessive here? "The maître d' 's aloof demeanour... " Bah!.






.

[Padraig]

... and the Emily Dickinson style has its' own distinctive mistake.

[greenilex]

So the brackets have closed with a clang, and pedantry is shut out of paradise...

[vinteuil]

So the brackets have closed with a clang, and pedantry is shut out of paradise...

... o, only 'low level pedantry'. Proper growed-up pedantry is to be respected and relished!

.

[gurnemanz]

Low level pedantry is something up with which I will not put.

[Maclintick]

Low level pedantry is something up with which I will not put.

Self-identifying as a "low-level" pedant who revels in entry-level solecisms, may I put in a word -- or two, to be pernickety, this being the point, as it were -- of hearty congratulation to tireless BBC Radio presenters who strive unflaggingly to entertain us with pronounciation (sic) "howlers", such as the one on Mr. Paddy O'Connell's Broadcasting House programme today, who identified the author of a quote as FRYdrich Nietzsche....Quality.