I used to be crap at spelling and grammar and now I'm pretty good. But you can't get it all right. So I'm writing something at the moment and I'm stuck with a couple of linguistic puzzles that I can't find the answer to by searching, hence asking here
1) When using the word "spartan" to describe something that is sparce or barran (such as the furnishings of a room), should it still have a capital S because it's refering to the ancient Greek warriors?
2) Is "wipeable" a real word? It's not in any dictionary I checked and yet it gets used a lot in copy and descriptions. Debating whether I should use it or not you see...
You should only capitalise a noun when it's a proper noun or reffering to the proper noun, i.e. someone from Sparta would be a Spartan and someone who uses that noun as their name would be known as The Spartan. In your example, however, spartan is being used as an adjective and therefore requires no capitalisation.
I don't see a problem with wipeable...
*edit* While we're on the subject, it's barren, not barran. I'm not usually one to pick people up on speeling but this thread seems as good a place as any
Certainly you'd want a lower case 's' on your spartan Spartan.
With "wipeable" surely that's a pointless word anyway. Almost everything is wipeable to some extent: walls, balls and even the cat. Should you not use a word that instead describes the intended effect of the wiping. For example, would "easily cleanable" be better, or "turd resistant" depending what you're talking about?
WiteWulf wrote:You should only capitalise a noun when it's a proper noun or reffering to the proper noun, i.e. someone from Sparta would be a Spartan and someone who uses that noun as their name would be known as The Spartan. In your example, however, spartan is being used as an adjective and therefore requires no capitalisation.
I don't see a problem with wipeable...
*edit* While we're on the subject, it's barren, not barran.
And it's 'sparse' rather than sparce, I think.
But yeah, 'spartan' and find a different way of saying wipeable because it looks wrong. Make it 'wipe-able' if you really must.
WiteWulf wrote:You should only capitalise a noun when it's a proper noun or reffering to the proper noun, i.e. someone from Sparta would be a Spartan and someone who uses that noun as their name would be known as The Spartan. In your example, however, spartan is being used as an adjective and therefore requires no capitalisation.
I don't see a problem with wipeable...
*edit* While we're on the subject, it's barren, not barran.
And it's 'sparse' rather than sparce, I think.
But yeah, 'spartan' and find a different way of saying wipeable because it looks wrong. Make it 'wipe-able' if you really must.
They're not even in the dictionary. "Non-stick" is, though it's just as bad a word. Cleanable is as well.
Glueing "able" onto a word is a fairly weak way of describing things. It's like the god-awful American way of saying you've been "burglarized" since logically that means the person doing the burglarization is a burglarizer.
Use a thesaurus and look up alternate words that make your writing more interesting to read.
Is that the goose-stepping clomp of approaching SPaG Nazis I hear in the distance?
piku wrote:Is that the goose-stepping clomp of approaching SPaG Nazis I hear in the distance?
I think that we've had approval to buy the black helicopters now..
Perhaps we'd be better off with Newspeak. It's one of those languages that had all the useless meaning pared away, so you're left with the useful. After all, there's no point in talking about freedom when there isn't any..and having ten different ways to say the same thing is merely duplication. In 2050, when the language is perfect, then people won't be able to criticise $console in a conversation or on a forum board..
"Observation is the path to understanding. Self-observation is the path to self-understanding."
Mayhem wrote:The line as it currently stands is "...his mind constantly rewinding back and replaying the events of three days ago like some unwipeable videotape."
It works.
Remember kids, when Shakespeare didn't have a word that accurately reflected what he wanted to say, he made one up. And many of them are still in use today...
