Copy editors do more than find typos, #312
In my forthcoming book, "The Grammar Daily," I had written, "You're probably tired of hearing me say this, but it's a style choice."
The copy editor caught that this was the first time I had said something was a style choice. Nobody would be tired of hearing it at this point.
I say it all the time in my podcast and have said it in other books, but I had not said it yet in *this* book, which needs to stand alone.
#AmEditing #AmWriting #copyediting
I am constantly surprised by being wrong about what other people understand.
TIL my husband did not know the sentence "The quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dog" contains all the letters in the alphabet.
Another thing is that not everything works as a direct translation.
My podcast typically wouldn't work, for example, because I'm explaining words that need to be kept in English.
One of my friends who is a linguist was a guest on "Armchair Expert." It wouldn't work to translate her interview.
Do you think they will be sophisticated enough to filter out those episodes?
It looks like maybe they are only translating a subset of episodes, so maybe they will filter out things like my linguist friend's episode.
Here's a writing lesson though: The press release is unclear. It says:
"for a select number of catalog episodes and future episode releases."
Does "for a select number of" apply to just catalog episodes or future episodes too? If it's only catalog episodes, to be clear, it should say, "for future episode releases and a select number of catalog episodes."
I just subscribed to a newsletter, and on the page where they were trying to upsell me to the paid version (no problem ... give it the old college try, my friend), it had a list of features you don't get. For example:
❌ No searchable archives.
Which, OK, sure. But the last one was this:
❌ Not expensable.
Whaaa? Who is thinking, "I sure wish I could pay for something and then expense it"?
I'm thinking about the new #AI tools that convert your voice into a real-sounding version of you speaking in another language, and how Spotify is using them to make foreign versions of podcast such as "Armchair Expert."
Those podcasts have guests.
I wonder how guests are going to feel about being translated that way.
I bet most won't care or will think it is cool, but I can imagine some people objecting.
I wonder how they will handle that.
#podcasting
Another thing is that not everything works as a direct translation.
My podcast typically wouldn't work, for example, because I'm explaining words that need to be kept in English.
One of my friends who is a linguist was a guest on "Armchair Expert." It wouldn't work to translate her interview.
Do you think they will be sophisticated enough to filter out those episodes?
@bd280af2 Good one! I've taken a screenshot for possible use in future presentations. Thanks.
["Taken a screenshot" because "screenshotted" sounds too weird.]
I learned the funniest thing from a friend who has a teenage son.
You know how little kids say, "Mom! Mom! Mom!" over and over to get their mom's attention? Well, her teenage son texts "mom," "mom," "mom," over and over until she responds!
This cracks me up.
Do your kids do that too?
I sometimes take surveys for fun (I know; I'm weird), and I often come across #BadSurveyQuestions.
Yesterday, in a survey that seemed to be a student project, I was asked questions about how I heat and cool my house.
I don't have air conditioning, but a number of questions forced me to answer as if I do. For example, it asked what month I switch from heating to cooling, and there was no n/a option.
@a92c5dc9 I use a very simple template where I just drop in the episode number, and others that I see seem to be stock art. I'm sure at least a few people put a lot of effort into it though.
@f298d8b4 Interesting. I use one of the smaller podcast players. As I look around, I see some other players have this problem and others don't. It's actually reason enough for me to switch.
@8b6472f9 That seems like a smart way to do it.
I have individual episode art that goes everywhere, but it has strong branding so you can still tell it's my show. It just replaces the show name with the episode number, which I actually think is useful if you're looking for a specific episode (which people are doing for my show because the topics are evergreen).
I may be in the minority here, but I don't like the trend of having episode art that's different for every podcast episode — at least not when the images have no recognizable connection to the brand.
Maybe it's just the podcast player I use, but now, when I'm looking at the list of new episodes from shows I subscribe to, I can't even tell which show they're from. They've lost all branding.
#podcasting
@f53e7790 Good question!
The OED has an older meaning for the verb "roast" as burning someone alive, so I would guess that roasting someone as a very mild form of torment comes from that, but I can see how it would also benefit from the resonance with "toast."
@30a83efa Interesting. I've never heard "toast" used to describe phone pop-up notifications, and I didn't find it on the first 10 pages of Urban Dictionary (after which I stopped reading because I had learned things I now wish I did not know ... ugh). I'll keep an eye out for it.
I'm revisiting the word "toast" this morning and was reminded of one of my favorite tidbits:
Toasting someone with a drink comes from the ancient practice of putting a piece of toast in bad wine to reduce the acidity.
I've been listening to the "Starter Villain" audiobook by @c8565328 and it's wonderful, silly fun.
No spoilers but, OMG, the dolphins. I laughed until I almost cried last night!
#Bookstodon
I will also tweak my prompt.
I was worried about telling it to "delete obvious filler words like 'uh' and 'um.'" It seemed like it decided that more and more text was "obvious filler words." But on the other hand, it did it fine for a few pages.
6/x
I've heard AI handles smaller amounts of text better, so I will try again with one page at a time.
There's a point at which it's faster just to do it the old way, but cleaning up transcription is tedious and time-consuming, so it could still be faster to use AI one page at a time.
4/x
I absolutely love how weird AI is. It fails in such unexpected ways (at least to me).
Why would it be fine for a few pages and then go rogue?
It's tempting to assign feelings to it. It was tired. It thought the paragraph was boring, etc. But I know that's wrong.
3/x
I've heard AI handles smaller amounts of text better, so I will try again with one page at a time.
There's a point at which it's faster just to do it the old way, but cleaning up transcription is tedious and time-consuming, so it could still be faster to use AI one page at a time.
4/x
I used "compare documents" in Google Docs to see every change, and it was totally fine for the first 3 pages — great, in fact.
And then it went completely off the rails. It started deleting whole sentences, and by page 14, it was deleting half the text on the page!
2/x
I absolutely love how weird AI is. It fails in such unexpected ways (at least to me).
Why would it be fine for a few pages and then go rogue?
It's tempting to assign feelings to it. It was tired. It thought the paragraph was boring, etc. But I know that's wrong.
3/x
I had the most amazing AI fail this afternoon!
I had a pretty rough transcript of an interview, so I fed it into Claude (and AI that can handle a lot of text), and I gave it a prompt to clean up the transcript (fix punctuation, capitalization, delete obvious filler words like "um," etc.)
1/x
I used "compare documents" in Google Docs to see every change, and it was totally fine for the first 3 pages — great, in fact.
And then it went completely off the rails. It started deleting whole sentences, and by page 14, it was deleting half the text on the page!
2/x
@91f61fff Yes, thanks! I like Blossom a lot too, but I stopped playing for the same reason I struggle with Squardle — it was taking too much of my time.
@0668609e My only regret from rage unsubscribing when they went through their Nazi-next-door phase many years ago is that I can't rage unsubscribe again when they continue with their infuriating framing.
I have seriously thought about resubscribing just so I could unsubscribe again.
@ce37034b@7f2d5fda@c0d5fe1a Thanks! I used a plastic dental pick and pulled out what looked like a small amount of fuzz, and it has worked twice now.
So with six days left on the warranty, I'm trying to decide whether to call it fixed or send it in for repairs.
@7f2d5fda@c0d5fe1a I hope it will be that simple, but the charging port frequently isn't recognizing the charger, and that seems less routine, so I'm worried it will take longer. But I should actually check.
I need to get my iPhone serviced, but it's my only phone. What do people do in this situation?
Do they give you a loaner, or do I need to get a cheap burner phone or something like that?
I don't want to be without a phone for days.
@cc5dcdba I rarely suggest "one" as a replacement for "he," but it could be an option in this case, where you want to preserve the strong feeling of singularity and the tone is also a bit highbrow: "One can have as many diseases as one pleases"?
@97650812 Great post!
Perhaps ironically, the thing that helped me realize work emergencies could often wait was getting myself a second full-time job as a professor for a few years. My QDT emergencies sometimes had to wait while I was teaching for hours at a time, and I learned that, wow, the world didn't end, our business didn't fail, and usually people weren't even annoyed with me.
@0bd4edcb I can't say I've never heard that construction, but it does sound uncommon to me. I'll try to remember to look in the OED when I'm back at my computer.
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Notes by Mignon Fogarty | export
If you want a podcast to listen to while you cook or work out this weekend, I bet you'll like my interview with Steve Kleinedler, who managed the usage panel at the American Heritage Dictionary! We talked about why usage questions are still relevant, who gets to decide what matters, and why some words become accepted ("contact" as a verb) and some likely never will ("irregardless"). APPLE PODCASTS: https://applepodcasts.com/GrammarGirl SPOTIFY: https://spoti.fi/454uDte TRANSCRIPT: https://grammar-girl.simplecast.com/episodes/steve-kleinedler/transcript https://cdn.masto.host/zirkus/media_attachments/files/111/070/531/328/175/115/original/342dc80e14d02b5a.png