The OFFICIAL Unofficial Achewood Message Board
Trivial Pursuits => Wild Card => Topic started by: Nabubrush on December 06, 2004, 05:30:37 pm
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So, at work I often find myself needing to put the phrase "needs to be tested" into a spreadsheet cell. My gut feeling is that the phrase "needs tested" means the same thing and is grammatically correct, and has the additional advantage of greater brevity (if what I am thinking of could be described that way). I think that the construction "needs tested" (which eliminates the quaintly expressed "helping verb") probably has a name as a verb tense/form, like present pluperfect or some other crazy thing. The deal is that I should know this, because I have an English degree, but quite frankly there was some coasting going on during my college career. I would like this information so I can back myself up when I populate my spreadsheet with these terms/phrases.
If anyone actually hacked their way through the above paragraph and has an answer for me, could you help a brother out? (I am probably not actually your brother.)
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I'm going to leave the linguistic analysis to the professionals, but I had a friend in high school whose whole family would use that sort of construction. It always struck me as odd, and I've never heard it since, but Julie's mom would have no problem saying "Margo needs picked up. Can you go get her?"
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couldn't you just use "needs testing" for "needs to be tested"?
or, howabout, "test!!!"?
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couldn't you just use "needs testing" for "needs to be tested"?
or, howabout, "test!!!"?
Thank you, but I really just want an answer about the subject. I have all sorts of solutions, but I am wondering about the part of speech. Also, it may be an infinitely small difference in two shades of gray/grey, but I think there is a subtle difference between "needs tested" and "needs testing," and needs tested is shorter. But thank you again.
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This reminds me of the great shift from "falling rock" roadsigns to "fallen rock" because the latter has fewer letters.
Which reminds me that I will never grasp the differences between fewer and less. And don't even get me started on further and farther. And what's the deal with airline food?
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No wandering. I want answers, dammit!
I just want to know how you would describe the verb form of "needs tested" if your meaning was "this needs to be tested."
Paging Wombat. Please pick up the white courtesy phone.
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dictionary.com[/url]"]Regional Note: When need is used as the main verb, it can be followed by a present participle, as in The car needs washing, or by to be plus a past participle, as in The car needs to be washed. However, in some areas of the United States, especially western Pennsylvania and eastern Ohio, many speakers omit to be and use just the past participle form, as in The car needs washed. This use of need with past participles is slightly more common in the British Isles, being particularly prevalent in Scotland.
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Ding-ding-ding-ding-ding!
We have a winner, folks, and thanks for playing.
Some of you Brits were lying down on the job.
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Which reminds me that I will never grasp the differences between fewer and less.
Oh, that's easy. Use "fewer" when you are talking about a distinct number of discrete objects, "less" when you are referring to a fraction of a whole.
"People brought fewer cakes to the hootenanny this year."
Versus:
"People ate less cake at the hootenanny this year."
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dictionary.com[/url]"]Regional Note: When need is used as the main verb, it can be followed by a present participle, as in The car needs washing, or by to be plus a past participle, as in The car needs to be washed. However, in some areas of the United States, especially western Pennsylvania and eastern Ohio, many speakers omit to be and use just the past participle form, as in The car needs washed. This use of need with past participles is slightly more common in the British Isles, being particularly prevalent in Scotland.
Her family was from Pittsburgh.
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Consider yourselves off the chain.
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I love how I don't need to be a linguist anymore because we have Google.
Actually, all I could have told you anymore was that someone who used that construction was probably from someplace like Pittsburgh. I would have had to look up the rest of the answer too. I was a phonologist, not a syntactician.
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That explains why it sounded perfectly normal to me.
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if the spreadsheet is for personal use, use the awkward construct,
if it is for public use, don't, because there's gonna be some jackass just like me who will read "needs tested" as "it's tested don't do anything with it".
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I was a phonologist, not a syntactician.
Cool! Can you tell me the right cartridge to use on my turntable?
What?
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I love how I don't need to be a linguist anymore because we have Google.
Actually, all I could have told you anymore was that someone who used that construction was probably from someplace like Pittsburgh. I would have had to look up the rest of the answer too. I was a phonologist, not a syntactician.
I am not from Pittsburgh. This construction just seems right to me if I want to save space. And I'm going to use it. And if people give me a hard time, I'll just rub my Technical Communication degree in their face. Not that it'll do anything - I keep trying to convince people not to put two spaces after a period, and I'm getting nowhere on that.
A-Dub, you kill me.
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I keep trying to convince people not to put two spaces after a period, and I'm getting nowhere on that.
This is a pet peeve of mine. Word has the option of considering 2 spaces an error and I enable it on every computer I use. Even if it isn't mine.
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I keep trying to convince people not to put two spaces after a period, and I'm getting nowhere on that.
This is a pet peeve of mine. Word has the option of considering 2 spaces an error and I enable it on every computer I use. Even if it isn't mine.
Is this considered incorrect? I was taught to use the two spaces in school. Is two spaces just a relic from typewriter times?
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Yes - yes - a thousand times yes! Please tell me that you will stop doing that.
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Never! I'll never change. I was born a two-spacer and I'll die a two-spacer. You'll never convince me to type otherwise. The habit is too deeply ingrained.
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Is this considered incorrect? I was taught to use the two spaces in school. Is two spaces just a relic from typewriter times?
Probably. When I was taught to use WordPerfect version whatever way the hell back in 1990, we had to put one space after commas, and two spaces after periods. I just fired up MS Word and tried it both ways, to see if it automatically corrected either one (thus suggesting some sort of agreed-upon standard) and it didn't.
I think two spaces in this day and age looks like a vast chasm of wasted space. Maybe it's due to advances in font technology or something.
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This construction just seems right to me if I want to save space. And I'm going to use it.
Hooray for Nabu and his authentic regional dialect, whereever the hell it comes from.
The two period rule seems to only apply in certain styles. I always did it in my academic articles. Then I sent a 100,000+ word fiction manuscript to a friend who's an author and journalist and she told me that in book manuscripts you do NOT put two spaces after the period. Do you have any idea how many periods are in 100,000+ words? I wanted to weep.
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This construction just seems right to me if I want to save space. And I'm going to use it.
Hooray for Nabu and his authentic regional dialect, whereever the hell it comes from.
The two period rule seems to only apply in certain styles. I always did it in my academic articles. Then I sent a 100,000+ word fiction manuscript to a friend who's an author and journalist and she told me that in book manuscripts you do NOT put two spaces after the period. Do you have any idea how many periods are in 100,000+ words? I wanted to weep.
That's what Perl is for. Could have chewed through your manuscript and fixed it with a two or three line program.
As for the two spaces, though I certainly can accept that two spaces are unnecessary, I doubt I'll ever be able to break the habit. Were you young pups here on the board taught the two space thing? I'm just about 30, and my junior high typing teacher taught me two spaces. For what it's worth, I did learn to type on a real typewriter. I had had my C64 since second grade, but didn't learn to touch type until seventh, and then it was in a typing class with real typewriters.
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Asher, you are crazy.
I am proudly in my mid to late thirties, but I learned this two/one space thing when I was in college, somewhere in the 1999 area. Also, in terms of a regional dialect, I'm from Alaska, which is a melting pot. My mother is from Chi-town, and my dad's from upstate NY.
A-Dub, your post doesn't look two-spaced.
Zart, two-spacing does do something to the rivers of white space on a page. It's a whole different thing in a two-line post, but in a publication it makes a difference.
In addition, fonts nowadays are designed differently. The font on a typewriter is monospaced. It's a whole diffferent burlap sack full of rabid squirrels.
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Zart, two-spacing does do something to the rivers of white space on a page. It's a whole different thing in a two-line post, but in a publication it makes a difference.
In addition, fonts nowadays are designed differently. The font on a typewriter is monospaced. It's a whole diffferent burlap sack full of rabid squirrels.
Well, all web browsers that I'm familar with render any string of whitespace as a single space, unless you use instead of a space. I've seen some content systems that replace multiple spaces with s (Livejournal, I think), but phpBB doesn't seem to do it.
Sentence with two spaces. Sentence with one space. Is there a difference?
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I too regard one-spacing as fundamentally wrong, and was most emphatically taught to put one space after a comma and two after a period. I only encountered the one-space style this year when I was working on production at the school paper.
Weird.
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Well, all web browsers that I'm familar with render any string of whitespace as a single space, unless you use instead of a space. I've seen some content systems that replace multiple spaces with s (Livejournal, I think), but phpBB doesn't seem to do it.
Sentence with two spaces. Sentence with one space. Is there a difference?
Mmmm . . . .
Look, I'm not Grampa Simpson, but there are these things that you can hold in your hand and read. Publication? Page? I give up . . . you damn kids.
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Duobligi post la punkto, ja.
Wait, now, what? Because I posted twice I'm a punk? Them's fightin' words!
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The rule is:
With a fixed-width font or typewriter: one space after mid-sentence puntuation (commas, semi-colons, end-quotes, abbreviations, &c) except colons. Two spaces after colons or sentence-ending marks.
With a variable-width font: always one space.
Word 2000 will let you choose to enforce either or accept both in the Spelling & Grammar settings. You can also force serial commas and punctuation with quotes here. I'd have to check at work whether Word 2003 has these options.
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Have I mentioned lately that I love you all madly.
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That's what Perl is for. Could have chewed through your manuscript and fixed it with a two or three line program.
Hate to rat on any use for Perl, but search/replace does it just fine too. You may need to use the ASCII code for space, but it's perfectly doable.
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The rule is:
And CJ said it was true, so there.
Oh, you're so OWNED.
Or is it PWNED? I don't understand this newfangled method of communicating.
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Has to be said, CJ's rule makes sense. All I know is, I'd be shot if I started two spacing in publishing! Given how strict the rules are on M-dashes and the like, two spacing is just downright apocryphal, according to the Chicago Press books at any rate.
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I'm telling you, two-spacing is for crazy people!
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Or is it PWNED? I don't understand this newfangled method of communicating.
I think it's PWNT.
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What does that mean? Pawned? Punted? I've been punted?
Anyway, it is only correct to put two spaces after a period. I LIKE being able to see at a glance where a new sentence begins. What is it with people's dislike of white space?
Of course, I also subscribe to the Harvard Comma (i.e. "the lion, the witch, and the wardrobe" whereas the common method being taught today for commas and conjunctions is "the lion, the witch and the wardrobe.")
Fuck you people who did not learn how to write using the Palmer Method, too.
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I think pwned is when you're owned so hard that your finger is momentarily jolted to the right. Pwnts are when you wear trousers so hard that your finger is momentarily jolted up and to the right.
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Of course, I also subscribe to the Harvard Comma
Ditto on the Harvard Comma. I mean, as y'all could probably tell from looking through any of the posts I've ever made. I am interested to look into Chicago Press' opinions of it, but I like writing to look how it sounds as much as possible, and so the Harvard Comma just seems right to me.
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What does that mean? Pawned? Punted? I've been punted?
Anyway, it is only correct to put two spaces after a period. I LIKE being able to see at a glance where a new sentence begins. What is it with people's dislike of white space?
Yeah, abundant white space makes text easier to read. It's not like we're killing trees here, folks. There are plenty of electrons to go around.
Of course, I also subscribe to the Harvard Comma (i.e. "the lion, the witch, and the wardrobe" whereas the common method being taught today for commas and conjunctions is "the lion, the witch and the wardrobe.")
I thought the "no comma before the conjunction" was Old School and the "Harvard Comma" was the new hotness. I was taught no comma in elementary school, then read later as an (ostensible) adult that the comma was proper. Now I just punctuate randomly.
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What does that mean? Pawned? Punted? I've been punted?
Anyway, it is only correct to put two spaces after a period. I LIKE being able to see at a glance where a new sentence begins. What is it with people's dislike of white space?
Of course, I also subscribe to the Harvard Comma (i.e. "the lion, the witch, and the wardrobe" whereas the common method being taught today for commas and conjunctions is "the lion, the witch and the wardrobe.")
Fuck you people who did not learn how to write using the Palmer Method, too.
I think the idea is that variable-width fonts already adjust the spacing at the end of a sentence so the 2nd space is superfluous.
I learned the serial comma as well. When I was still in school MLA style changed their rule on it from optional to required (IIRC) but I'd been using it anyway for clarity.* Around this same time MLA also made whom optional since nobody uses it right anyway.
*In fact just last week I say a headline that read, "new shows, Charlie and Bret married" when it meant to say, "new shows, Charlie, and Bret married" indicating 3 distinct stories.
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OK, but just to check, everybody realizes that when I brought up the great two-space/one-space wars of the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries, inclusive, I meant on actual paper, and not on a CRT or whatever the hell it is I'm looking at right now.
Note: When I typed that, I was actually looking at my keyboard.
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Yeah, abundant white space makes text easier to read. It's not like we're killing trees here, folks. There are plenty of electrons to go around.
*swoon*
marry me you fool!
Now I just punctuate randomly.
*biggerswoon*
marry me more!
i was taught two spaces after a sentence ends, but later was told that the new way with computers is one space. i consider that dumb, though. white space makes things easier to read.
i remember being taught that it was ok to use commas before the "and/or" or that it was ok to not use one there.
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Funny - here we are talking about ease of readability on this here website, and there's not a serif font to be found - other than part of the logo.
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Funny - here we are talking about ease of readability on this here website, and there's not a serif font to be found - other than part of the logo.
The rule of thumb I had always heard was that you use serif fonts for print and sans-serif for screen.
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Serif font is easier to read, because serifs give the reader more clues about what the letter is. In a nutshell, the letters are more differentiated. Sans serif fonts are better for headlines and titles and things of that nature. Certainly, though, sans serif appears to rule the day on the internet. If you try to read a large amount of text in sans serif, it's somewhat taxing. You rarely see that in professional publications. It shows up in porno, though.
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neat. i always thought "seriff" was an _Actual_Font_.
learn something new everyday.
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neat. i always thought "seriff" was an _Actual_Font_.
learn something new everyday.
::Cort whooshes in with much flourish and cape flapping::
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serif
::leaves equally dramatically::
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I miss the ubiquity of Courier New on the Internet. Now it's all just Arial and similar monstrosities (maybe it's from reading Kibo too much, but I just cannot deal with Helvetica, at all, and other sans serif fonts have always bored me with their similarity). Bring back the serif, damn you!
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I miss the ubiquity of Courier New on the Internet.
Courier New will always, for me, be the "we forgot to pick a font" font.
Also: no discussion of fonts is complete without two great heaping handfuls of hate for Comic fuck*ng Sans. DIPSY-DOO WHAT A RELAXED FUN EBAY AUCTION THIS MUST BE
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I miss the ubiquity of Courier New on the Internet.
Courier New will always, for me, be the "we forgot to pick a font" font.
Also: no discussion of fonts is complete without two great heaping handfuls of hate for Comic fuck*ng Sans. DIPSY-DOO WHAT A RELAXED FUN EBAY AUCTION THIS MUST BE
Indeed. When AOL first added font choice I think 90% of IMs and chatroom lines showed up in comic sans because it was the most "fun" standard font.
You want fun? Then download a font like GroupSex or one of the ransom note variations.
When I was in college was had a TA who would knock off 5 points for using Arial, Helvetica, Times*, or Courier since there's no way they could fit the tone of the paper.
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When I was in college was had a TA who would knock off 5 points for using Arial, Helvetica, Times*, or Courier since there's no way they could fit the tone of the paper.
You did all rise up and slaughter this person and eat their brains, right?
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When I was in college was had a TA who would knock off 5 points for using Arial, Helvetica, Times*, or Courier since there's no way they could fit the tone of the paper.
Umm... what would then?
I like Helvetica when it's large enough to be distinguishable from Arial, but mostly because I associate it with a design era and style that I enjoy.
But yes, Comic Sans should die painfully. I think all computers should be packaged only with sedate, "no-nonsense" fonts until people get a hold of themselves.
</pat>
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When I was in college was had a TA who would knock off 5 points for using Arial, Helvetica, Times*, or Courier since there's no way they could fit the tone of the paper.
Knocking off marks for font choice? Cripes.
I have to say, I use Arial quite a lot, but only as my on computer font. For any publishing work, we use Garamond (bought, proper Garamond sets that is). I have seen a remarkable number of people using Garamond in publishing of late.
And indeed, Comic Sans is the work of some sort of satanic organisation. Or Microsoft. Kind of synonymous.
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you can change fonts?
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When I was in college was had a TA who would knock off 5 points for using Arial, Helvetica, Times*, or Courier since there's no way they could fit the tone of the paper.
Umm... what would then?
It depended on the paper. I wrote mine on how Cabell Hall ruined the flow and progression of The Lawn as Jefferson designed it. So I used a font that slightly scratchy and messy without entering KidPrint territory. In other words very functional and usefull just not classy or clean. I may have used Anson.
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Can't you change display fonts? Change it to Olde English 800 if you want! I like Copperplate m'self.
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Is this considered incorrect? I was taught to use the two spaces in school. Is two spaces just a relic from typewriter times?
Probably. When I was taught to use WordPerfect version whatever way the hell back in 1990, we had to put one space after commas, and two spaces after periods. I just fired up MS Word and tried it both ways, to see if it automatically corrected either one (thus suggesting some sort of agreed-upon standard) and it didn't.
I think two spaces in this day and age looks like a vast chasm of wasted space. Maybe it's due to advances in font technology or something.
Well, I'm writing a little paper right now. I won't use only one space after periods, because I need the extra spaces to make it five pages, because my brain can only do so much.
I took a linguistics class a few years ago from David Bowie, originally of Maryland, but trained, I believe, at the University of Pennsylvania. I don't remember whether we talked about the "needs washed" v. "needs to be washed" distinction, but he did talk a lot about linguistic issues in Pennsylvania, primarily among the Pennsylvania Dutch population. It was a great class, and I'd like to take more classes from him, but I dropped out of that college, and he now teaches in Florida I understand.
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David Bowie was an undergraduate student of mine when he was at Maryland. The first day of class when I collected the sign-up sheet (I don't remember why I didn't have an official roster) I was sure someone was goofing around signing up fake names and the rest of the list would be like "Mick Jagger" and all.
And in his dissertation acknowledgments he refers to my dissertation acknowledgments, which were my favorite part of my dissertation (and probably that fact was some sort of foreshadowing of my present situation, now that I think of it.)
I know no one else cares, but I find this a wonderous small-world sort of thing.
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I :heart: Courier New.
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David Bowie was an undergraduate student of mine when he was at Maryland. The first day of class when I collected the sign-up sheet (I don't remember why I didn't have an official roster) I was sure someone was goofing around signing up fake names and the rest of the list would be like "Mick Jagger" and all.
And in his dissertation acknowledgments he refers to my dissertation acknowledgments, which were my favorite part of my dissertation (and probably that fact was some sort of foreshadowing of my present situation, now that I think of it.)
I know no one else cares, but I find this a wonderous small-world sort of thing.
If it's the same one, that is pretty cool, but it may be that there is something of an epidemic... there was a David Bowie at my high school a few years before I went there and he did a mural. I had always thought by his signature that the mural was supposed to be of David Bowie, which would have been grossly inaccurate. But no, it turned out he was just awesome. One does have to wonder about the motives of his parents, though, since he would have been born after the "real" David Bowie, whose name wasn't in fact even actually David Bowie.
It is a complicated world.
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It's definitely the same one.
I seem to recall he pronounced his last name differently from the famous one - like the town in Maryland instead. But that didn't help me when reading it from a list for the first time.
Can we get Va to name her next baby David Bowie WhateverVa'slastnameis? After the one she's going to name Wombat when it's born on my birthday, of course.
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It's definitely the same one.
I seem to recall he pronounced his last name differently from the famous one - like the town in Maryland instead. But that didn't help me when reading it from a list for the first time.
Can we get Va to name her next baby David Bowie WhateverVa'slastnameis? After the one she's going to name Wombat when it's born on my birthday, of course.
That is most excellent! He pronounced it Boo-eee. If that makes sense (I can't remember the IPA or whatever it's called, and I couldn't reproduce anyway on this this keyboard). He didn't mind if we pronounced it like the rock star. Was he a good student?
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And maybe he got this from you, Wombat...
One of his little quirks was that he would always say "barring pathology, (for example) at such and such stage of human development, the child will learn this and exhibit that..." It got to the point where if he didn't say it, inevitably a class member would add, after such a comment, "barring pathology, of course." He said he got it from a professor.
He also, almost exclusively, wore collar-less woven shirts. In fact, the only time I saw him with a collared shirt was when I visited his office on a day he didn't have lecture.
But anyway, small world, indeed.
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I took an excellent class in Transformational Grammar my senior year in undergrad. It was my favorite class in my undergrad career. A guy named Greg Stump taught it. Any connection?
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Yes, that's the pronunciation. Yes, he was a good student, I think I wrote him a reccomendation to grad school. He wanted to be a sociolinguist, which was originally what I'd wanted to be when I grew up, and I remember telling him to go to Penn, to study with the person who'd done the work that made me interested in it. I don't remember anything special about his shirts at the time.
He didn't get that particular locution from me - I'll bet it could have been a Maryland syntactician, though.
Greg Stump only sounds vaguely familiar. I feel like I ought to know him but it's lost in the mists of all that stuff I am trying to forget. Googling reveals him to be a morphologist, so not really of my tribe.
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Greg Stump only sounds vaguely familiar. I feel like I ought to know him but it's lost in the mists of all that stuff I am trying to forget.
Hearing that you don't want to do what you went to grad school for is the saddest thing. By the time grad school was over, I'd ended up doing something different from my original intent, but I can't imagine wanting to forget all about my research....
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It's really not that sad. Doing any one thing for fifteen years (more if I count undergrad school) is more than enough. It's a big world with too many other possibilities.
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It's really not that sad. Doing any one thing for fifteen years (more if I count undergrad school) is more than enough. It's a big world with too many other possibilities.
I've actually found that after 6 months of anything, I'm ready to shit and/or go blind. I'm pretty much destined to be a hobo.
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Man! I have to shit, like, once a day! You are Rad!