January2014
Passive aggression: what’s wrong with the passive voice?
Up until fairly recently, Microsoft Word had a serious problem with its users stringing together sentences in the passive voice. If you typed (more…)
The joy of content – rethinking how we write for the web
Those who have written professionally, or semi-professionally, for websites over the past 20 years might have noticed something of a shift in attitude towards web content , particularly in (more…)
Spot the difference – Home in on what makes your web presence special
Launching a new website, or maintaining an existing one, presents a series of creative, technical, and logistical challenges. Indeed, it’s only too easy to (more…)
Rapped knuckles for Rap Genius, but SEO penalty removed
Google has performed a U-turn on its decision to penalise music criticism and journalism site Rap Genius for (more…)
Dord is the word: a rogue entry to the dictionary
Last week, we talked about new additions to Oxford Dictionaries Online and how and why they have been accepted. Is it ever possible, however, that words can enter the dictionary completely by mistake?
When the second edition of Webster’s New International Dictionary was compiled in 1934, a peculiar word wormed its way into the book. The word was ‘dord’ and, according to the compilers, it was simply another word for ‘density’ in the fields of physics and chemistry.
In reality, however, physicists were never talking about dividing mass by volume to determine dord, and chemists where never talking to one another about osmium being the element with the highest dord, because ‘dord’ was not a word. It ended up in the dictionary by accident.
This seems very odd. Why would somebody even think that ‘dord’ could mean ‘density’? What could be so wrong with the word ‘density’ as to mean that an etymologically unconnected word like ‘dord’ would be required as a synonym of it?
The origin of ‘dord’ remained something of a mystery until 1954, when Merriam-Webster editor Philip Babcock Gove came clean about the reason for its unwelcome entry. He explained that a slip had been prepared to advise that an abbreviation for ‘density’ should be added to the 1934 edition in the form of ‘D or d’. Somewhere along the line, this was misinterpreted as the full word ‘dord’. Perhaps adding to the confusion was the fact that words were often presented to editors with a space between each letter in those days.
Dord, nevertheless, managed to cling on to its page 771 spot for five years despite having no right to be there, before an editor spotted that it had no etymology in 1939. Despite the mistake, it’s worth noting that ghost words like ‘dord’ are extremely rare in dictionaries, showing that lexicographers are usually far from dense.
Google reveals top trends of 2013
Google has published a list of the search terms that ‘trended’ (showed the biggest increase in search volume compared to the year before) in the UK in 2013, with (more…)
Yorkshire convenience store pair in apostrophe misuse face-off
Two convenience stores in York have sold themselves short after showing a lack of understanding of how to use possessive apostrophes.
A Nisa store in the city was the first to commit a grammatical gaff, committing the cardinal sin of using an apostrophe to denote a plural when it proudly fitted a banner reading “Thank’s for shopping with us” to address its customers while they were served at the checkout.
The nearby Your Shop, run by the University of York Student Union (YUSU), snapped the offending slogan and broadcasted it via Twitter in a dig at its rival store. It accompanied the photo with a Tweet reading:
“Poor grammar on one of our competitors signs. #grammarpolice.”
Sadly, in identifying the mistake, the students had made a cock-up of their own in omitting the apostrophe signifying the plural possessive of ‘competitors’, suggesting that perhaps English was not the chosen course of the person or people responsible for managing the store’s social media accounts.
Your Shop, which uses the Twitter handle @YUSUYourshop, quickly ‘corrected’ its mistake by Tweeting:
“haha *competitor’s sign. at least our error was only on twitter… #awkward”
The shop had still got it wrong, however. The apostrophe should have come after the ‘s’, not before it, as ‘competitors’ was plural in this instance.
While apostrophe errors are common and many people will fail to notice them, those that do tend to get particularly irate by them, and will often hasten to point out their mistake. With social networking sites like Twitter helping news travel fast, small but notable errors can soon lead to embarrassment.
For this reason, it is always essential for businesses to proof-read their text when ordering printed items, and perhaps even more so if they intend to take the mickey out of mistakes made by competitors.
