User talk:Caligo-de-Bigorre

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Misdirection

A syntactical error that seems to me to appear with increasing frequency is often flagged by a participle at the start of a sentence.

An example:

Having studied at Oxford as an undergraduate and Harvard University for his PhD, Bayley worked at MIT, Columbia University, and Texas A&M University. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hagan_Bayley)

By extension, are we to assume that everybody who studied at Oxford as an undergrad and then gained a Harvard doctorate necessarily went on to work at MIT etc?

Clearly not, yet that is what the construction indicates. The relationship between the two ideas has been given a causal rather than temporal component.

The dangling participle need not be expressed:

Born in Cape Town to Gershon and Gaby Shapiro, Jonathan studied architecture at the University of Cape Town ... (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jonathan_Shapiro) - the 'Having been (born)' being understood.

The error is easily corrected. For instance, 'After studying at Oxford as an undergraduate and Harvard University for his PhD, Baylley worked at MIT, Columbia University, and Texas A&M University.

Because there is no clear link between parentage and university study, the second example is better split into the two separate ideas:

Jonathan was born in Cape Town to Gershon and Gaby Shapiro. He studied architecture at the University of Cape Town.

Is the error attributable to laziness? Is the author perhaps more interested in the flow of words rather than clarity?

Caligo 20:32, 16 March 2012 (UTC)

Inversion

The topic of inverted word order is lengthy, but there is one form of it that grates ... as do many errors.

There it is ... as do many errors is an inversion of the correct order. The phrase should read as many errors do, with the verb following the subject.

Where the clause introduced by as is wordy, the author might deliberately use inversion:

However, we are obliged to undertake certain closures and redundancies, as would be any enterprise that has to cater in a time of recession for a clientele at once very specialised and notoriously volatile.

If the verb would be were moved right to the end, the sentence would hardly be elegant. But that's not necessary. The verb does not have to follow the subject in its entirety. We can use it after enterprise without losing track of how the enterprise might be parallelled by others:

However, we are obliged to undertake certain closures and redundancies, as any enterprise would be that has to cater in a time of recession for a clientele at once very specialised and notoriously volatile.

But where somebody writes I dislike word inversion, as does any reader, there is no excuse at all.

Caligo 20:31, 16 March 2012 (UTC)

One of the only

Have you noticed the phrase one of the only now in use by speakers and writers? If not, keep an ear or eye open and you'll become aware that it's used quite a lot. Increasingly, too. And if you think about it, the phrase is nonsensical. One of two makes perfect sense, and so do one of several, one of a thousand, one of many, and so on. If something is among very few others, it might be described as almost the only. But one of the only provides no idea whatsoever of proportion or ratio, since only in this construction could describer ten, a hundred, a million, or any other number.

For me, the phrase is one of many signs that people speak, and write, without thinking about the meaning of the words they're using.

Caligo 20:45, 16 March 2012 (UTC)

Comparatively higher (or lower)

In a technical report sent to me for editing were the terms comparatively higher and comparatively lower. I pencilled the words for the author's attention and asked why he had included the word comparatively, as higher and lower were already comparatives and needed no such qualification. He defended his position by saying that in his field the phrase had a special meaning that the unqualified adjectives failed to communicate. He could not explain further.

Being an adviser, I could do no more than recommend. I will never know whether he listened to me. He and other engineers seem to struggle to write what they mean and tend to use redundant words, complicated structures, and very long sentences. Editing their work can take time.

Caligo 21:01, 16 March 2012 (UTC)

No unexpected problems are foreseen

This delightfully brain-twisting claim concluded a section towards the end of a technical report I edited. In a way, I hope the author ignored my recommendation and left his charming phrase intact. (My recommendation eludes me now; the brain twister never will.)

Caligo 21:13, 16 March 2012 (UTC)

After the fact

A ewe thought to have been a contender for the title of world's oldest sheep has died after falling off a cliff.

A blackface ewe, nicknamed Methuselina, fell off a cliff on Lewis in the Western Isles. An ear tag showed she was 25 years and 11 months old, which made her the oldest sheep in the world and the story newsworthy enough for the BBC. So far so good. But the report fails to meet the who, what, where, when, why, and how demand of good reporting. We know who, what, where, and when (well, the report appeared on 28 February 2012), but we don't know why or how Methuselina died.

The BBC tells us she fell off a cliff. And after falling of a cliff, Methuselina died. Well, did she die of her injuries, of shock, a heart attack, old age? And for how long did she survive after the fall? Not important, the BBC deems.

Why couldn't the BBC simply tell us the animal died in a fall from a cliff? What's with this after the BBC (and some other sources) insist on? At least 15 people have died after a 6.7 magnitude quake struck the central Philippines ... A 38-year-old woman has died after her car crashed into a wall in Edinburgh on Monday evening. ... Man killed after car struck tree ... Man killed after being hit by car. Each is a headline from www.bbc.co.uk/news.

One of the worst must be At least 300 prisoners have been killed after a massive fire swept through a jail in Honduras .

A fire sweeps through a jail in Honduras, after which 300 prisoners are killed. By whom? Armed guards trying to stop them from escaping? We'll never know, if we rely on the BBC.

Each of these BBC reports presents a mystery ... an accident followed by a killing. An even bigger mystery: why this strange way to report accidental death?

Stop press

BBC News (2011-03-19): Three children and an adult have been killed after a gunman riding a scooter opened fire on (a school)

The Irish Times (2012-03-20) - Garda sergeant killed after car hits Wicklow motorway barrier

CBC News (2012-03-19) - Cyclist killed after hit by truck on highway

Nation (ABC News) (2012-03-19) - Pregnant Woman Killed After Car Crashes Into Hotel Pool Cabana

The Washington Post (undated) - Police say 14 children killed after schoolbus falls into a pond in southern India

Caligo 20:18, 17 March 2012 (UTC)

Your account will be renamed

Hello,

The developer team at Wikimedia is making some changes to how accounts work, as part of our on-going efforts to provide new and better tools for our users like cross-wiki notifications. These changes will mean you have the same account name everywhere. This will let us give you new features that will help you edit and discuss better, and allow more flexible user permissions for tools. One of the side-effects of this is that user accounts will now have to be unique across all 900 Wikimedia wikis. See the announcement for more information.

Unfortunately, your account clashes with another account also called Caligo. To make sure that both of you can use all Wikimedia projects in future, we have reserved the name Caligo~enwiki that only you will have. If you like it, you don't have to do anything. If you do not like it, you can pick out a different name. If you think you might own all of the accounts with this name and this message is in error, please visit Special:MergeAccount to check and attach all of your accounts to prevent them from being renamed.

Your account will still work as before, and you will be credited for all your edits made so far, but you will have to use the new account name when you log in.

Sorry for the inconvenience.

Yours,
Keegan Peterzell
Community Liaison, Wikimedia Foundation

22:51, 19 March 2015 (UTC)

Your draft article, Draft:Ruth Clydesdale

Hello, Caligo-de-Bigorre. It has been over six months since you last edited the Articles for Creation submission or Draft page you started, "Ruth Clydesdale".

In accordance with our policy that Wikipedia is not for the indefinite hosting of material deemed unsuitable for the encyclopedia mainspace, the draft has been nominated for deletion. If you plan on working on it further, or editing it to address the issues raised if it was declined, simply and remove the {{db-afc}}, {{db-draft}}, or {{db-g13}} code.

If your submission has already been deleted by the time you get there, and you wish to retrieve it, you can request its undeletion by following the instructions at this link. An administrator will, in most cases, restore the submission so you can continue to work on it.

Thanks for your submission to Wikipedia, and happy editing. Sam Sailor 10:34, 28 August 2018 (UTC)