LINGUIST 30Q

[Beverly Flanigan]

Gee, I use logical "since" and "while" all the time and wondered why
editors changed them.  Maybe they're a sign of our generation. . . .

At 11:59 AM 6/14/2004 -0700, you wrote:
>On Jun 14, 2004, at 11:33 AM, Beverly Flanigan wrote:
>
>>Wow, this gives me heart to object to the writing on our university
>>website's instructions to international applicants.  It includes
>>run-ons,
>>fragments, missing commas, oversupplied commas, etc.--all of which
>>native
>>readers could disentangle but nonnatives could get, well, tangled up
>>in.  I
>>WILL complain now, though I'm dealing, I'm sure, with low-level page
>>writers who may not even understand what I'm complaining about.
>
>[SS] in my story is in fact a drastically over-educated person for the
>job: a berkeley ph.d. in indonesian literature!  (i'm not making this
>up.)  so it's no surprise i got such a thoughtful response.  even an
>invitation to take me out for a cup of coffee.
>
>i have had less pleasant resolutions to my resistance to pig-ignorant
>editing.  for instance, several blood-soaked battles with editors who
>refused to countenance "since" and "while" in logical, rather than
>temporal, uses.  (if i remember correctly, the American Psychological
>Association manual still stickles on this point.)
>
>arnold (zwicky at csli.stanford.edu), noting that he did in fact change
>many people's  attitudes in courses this spring -- but it took ten
>weeks, with a long slow build-up; also noting that he's watching the
>encore bit to eddie izzard's Dress To Kill, which has a lot of very
>funny (also profane) stuff about language in it