Pedants' Paradise

[oddoneout]

I discovered recently that EWM have a store in Northallerton - I thought EWM went under years ago.

They went into administration along with Pondens, Peacocks and Bon Marche, but have all come out the other side now over a period of time. EWM is opening a new store in Chesterfield.
The improved fortunes have been welcomed in my home town where half the space in the then-new shopping centre was occupied by those stores. When it all went pear-shaped EWM stayed open but the 3 other stores all closed. Pondens didn't return but Peacocks and recently BM have now opened again.

[Old Grumpy]

Reminds me of the sign to the left of the pre-dual carriagewayed A1 heading north, just after leaving Bawtry:

SLOW CHILDREN CROSSING

"Good to know we're now in Yorkshire" - said Dad!

Interesting history, Bawtry. Apparently it was in Nottinghamshire, then pre-Norman Conquest became part of the West Riding...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bawtry

[french frank]

Just reading my Guardian newsletter. There's a story about 'cloud milking', a zero-energy method of keeping newly planted forests watered:

"It started in the Canary Islands, and mimics the way laurel trees capture water droplets from fog by using sheets of plastic mesh erected in the path of the wind."

Is it just me?

Why has the Reply Window gone down to the bottom of the page? What did I do? Oh, I think I may have zoomed out too far.

[Pulcinella]

Just reading my Guardian newsletter. There's a story about 'cloud milking', a zero-energy method of keeping newly planted forests watered:

"It started in the Canary Islands, and mimics the way laurel trees capture water droplets from fog by using sheets of plastic mesh erected in the path of the wind."

Is it just me?

Why has the Reply Window gone down to the bottom of the page? What did I do? Oh, I think I may have zoomed out too far.

You've been lost in the fog erecting those plastic sheets.
The Reply Window has always been at the bottom on my iPad, and the reply stays there after having been posted until you refresh the page (at least in the view settings I use).

[french frank]

You've been lost in the fog erecting those plastic sheets.

I didn't need to do it myself - the laurel trees have been doing it naturally on their own.

The Reply Window has always been at the bottom on my iPad, and the reply stays there after having been posted until you refresh the page (at least in the view settings I use).

Correct. Until I did a bit of zooming out, the blue Post Reply button was on the left at the top. Click on it and the software scrolled down automatically to the reply window. But after zooming out on a different website the Post Reply button moved over to the right which confused me so I scrolled down manually to the bottom of the page to find the window. First: what's changed? Second: why? Third: Solution - all back to normal

[oddoneout]

From the blurb for tonight's concert

Here the solo violin represents Scheherezade himself,

[Serial_Apologist]

From the blurb for tonight's concert

Probably mixed up with Lucozade.

[french frank]

From the blurb for tonight's concert

Here the solo violin represents Scheherezade himself,

AI not programmed to identify the name.

[smittims]

There was an interesting, if predictable, discussion on Woman's Hour yesterday about what they called 'gendered terms'. The given example was 'Dear Sirs' which apparently is still widely used in letters from a law practice, and they went on to discuss other such phrases.

While I agree that 'Dear Sirs' is outdated and should be discontinued, I did feel that they had forgotten the existence of Common Gender. 'Chairman' for instance, is a noun of common gender. It doesn't imply that the chairman is male. So it is quite correct to say 'Madam Chairman ' as well as 'Mr. Chairman'. I think a little edication in grammar would save a lot of argument and ill-feeling. Even the word 'man' has a common-gender application, as in 'The Ascent of Man'. In his famous TV series Jacob Bronowski clearly used it to mean the human race .

Two 'gendered terms' I should dearly love to see rendered exctinct are reference to ships as 'she' , and giving storms boys' names (e.g. 'Storm Peter') . I've always thought these ridiculous.

[french frank]

Two 'gendered terms' I should dearly love to see rendered exctinct are reference to ships as 'she' , and giving storms boys' names (e.g. 'Storm Peter') . I've always thought these ridiculous.

Your wish is their command: storm names for 2024-2025 include Mavis, Poppy, Tilly and Vivienne (my middle name coincidentally, same spelling); and Otje apparently a girl's name. Plus, dubiously, Kayleigh and Izzy (Isabel or Islwyn?)

"Another tradition is to consider ships as female, referring to them as ‘she’. Although it may sound strange referring to an inanimate object as ‘she’, this tradition relates to the idea of a female figure such as a mother or goddess guiding and protecting a ship and crew. [...] Interestingly, Captain Ernst Lindemann of the German battleship Bismarck referred to his ship as ‘he’, in view of its awesome power. In popular parlance, the tradition of naming ships ‘she’ has now become less common. It's worth noting that the shipping industry newspaper, Lloyd's Register of Shipping, now calls ships ‘it’."

https://www.iwm.org.uk/history/why-do-ships-have-a-gender

[oliver sudden]

There was an interesting, if predictable, discussion on Woman's Hour yesterday about what they called 'gendered terms'. The given example was 'Dear Sirs' which apparently is still widely used in letters from a law practice, and they went on to discuss other such phrases.

While I agree that 'Dear Sirs' is outdated and should be discontinued, I did feel that they had forgotten the existence of Common Gender. 'Chairman' for instance, is a noun of common gender. It doesn't imply that the chairman is male. So it is quite correct to say 'Madam Chairman ' as well as 'Mr. Chairman'. I think a little edication in grammar would save a lot of argument and ill-feeling. Even the word 'man' has a common-gender application, as in 'The Ascent of Man'. In his famous TV series Jacob Bronowski clearly used it to mean the human race .

Two 'gendered terms' I should dearly love to see rendered exctinct are reference to ships as 'she' , and giving storms boys' names (e.g. 'Storm Peter') . I've always thought these ridiculous.

German is in a horrible mess in this regard. Not only is every noun about someone who does something gendered, but since gender also affects articles and adjectives and sometimes declensions you can’t just plug in the gender-neutral version of a word without turning the sentence into a flowchart. (The gender-neutral version of ‘clarinettist’ is ‘Klarinettist:in’, for example. But the accusative is Klarinettisten in the masculine form and Klarinettistin in the feminine…and that’s before you even think about catering for non-binary folks.) I’ve no idea where that bit of the language is going to go!

[oddoneout]

There was an interesting, if predictable, discussion on Woman's Hour yesterday about what they called 'gendered terms'. The given example was 'Dear Sirs' which apparently is still widely used in letters from a law practice, and they went on to discuss other such phrases.

While I agree that 'Dear Sirs' is outdated and should be discontinued, I did feel that they had forgotten the existence of Common Gender. 'Chairman' for instance, is a noun of common gender. It doesn't imply that the chairman is male. So it is quite correct to say 'Madam Chairman ' as well as 'Mr. Chairman'. I think a little edication in grammar would save a lot of argument and ill-feeling. Even the word 'man' has a common-gender application, as in 'The Ascent of Man'. In his famous TV series Jacob Bronowski clearly used it to mean the human race .

Two 'gendered terms' I should dearly love to see rendered exctinct are reference to ships as 'she' , and giving storms boys' names (e.g. 'Storm Peter') . I've always thought these ridiculous.

Trouble is, those who - erm -"feel strongly" about the matter, don't want any mention of man, full stop, so the technical argument isn't accepted.

Apparently hurricanes had female names in the USA for 25 years from 1953.

[french frank]

I’ve no idea where that bit of the language is going to go!

It's an interesting linguistic point. My feeling would be that the words 'masculine' and 'feminine' couldn't originally have been about gender as such - even though the concept existed in several linguistic families: Romance, Germanic &c. Why would a table be recognised as being female but a chair is male? I'm not sure where the grammatical nomenclature of masculine and feminine originated. It's not the kind of idea which seems rigid and preordained.

[LHC]

There was an interesting, if predictable, discussion on Woman's Hour yesterday about what they called 'gendered terms'. The given example was 'Dear Sirs' which apparently is still widely used in letters from a law practice, and they went on to discuss other such phrases.

While I agree that 'Dear Sirs' is outdated and should be discontinued, I did feel that they had forgotten the existence of Common Gender. 'Chairman' for instance, is a noun of common gender. It doesn't imply that the chairman is male. So it is quite correct to say 'Madam Chairman ' as well as 'Mr. Chairman'. I think a little edication in grammar would save a lot of argument and ill-feeling. Even the word 'man' has a common-gender application, as in 'The Ascent of Man'. In his famous TV series Jacob Bronowski clearly used it to mean the human race .

Two 'gendered terms' I should dearly love to see rendered exctinct are reference to ships as 'she' , and giving storms boys' names (e.g. 'Storm Peter') . I've always thought these ridiculous.

A lot of organisations now use the term "Chair" rather than "Chairman" as a more obviously gender neutral term (mind you I used to work with a female Chairman who strongly objected to being referred to as an 'inanimate object") while some prefer "Chairperson".

I have noticed in team sports that a "player of the match" is now often preferred to the more alliterative "man of the match", although I have heard female commentators still using the term "man of the match" even when choosing the best player in an all woman match (possibly because that was the term they grew up hearing and the alliteration makes it an easier term to use and remember).

[oliver sudden]

Why would a table be recognised as being female but a chair is male? I'm not sure where the grammatical nomenclature of masculine and feminine originated. It's not the kind of idea which seems rigid and preordained.

Indeed: la table, der Tisch. (Although: die Tafel.)

Le soleil, la lune. Die Sonne, der Mond.

(Or one of my favourites: un étage, die Etage.)