For The Love Of Port

My first impression is that L.A.Weekly should hire a proofreader who has taken at least one English class at 8th grade level or above.

"It's" is a contraction, not a possessive.

Oenaphile is not even listed as an alternative spelling in any of the three dictionaries I checked. "Enophile" maybe.

I would have liked to see a hyphen between "ultra" and "rich". (And, yes, putting punctuation outside the quotation marks is a personal idiosyncrasy of mine.)

Those distractions aside, the speech was fairly witty, and nicely and consistently themed. Also, you will never lose me as a fan by taking a little dig at Parker.

(There are reasons why my sig reads as it does.)

I subscribe to Jerry Pournelle's Three-Foot Rule: Never sit down to write unless you have a dictionary within three feet of where you are sitting. If it is farther away, you will not consult it if you have a doubt about the spelling or meaning of a word.

Peter W. Meek wrote:I subscribe to Jerry Pournelle's Three-Foot Rule: Never sit down to write unless you have a dictionary within three feet of where you are sitting. If it is farther away, you will not consult it if you have a doubt about the spelling or meaning of a word.

These days it's even simpler than that. Install the Google Toolbar. When in doubt, type the word into the Google toolbar and you'll nearly instantly know whether or not it is spelled correctly. (You don't even need to perform the search - the Google Toolbar pops up possible searches containing your word as you type it.) In a very few cases an incorrectly spelled word will generate sufficient hits to confuse the issue, but Google Toolbar is smart enough to suggest correctly spelled alternatives when this happens.

Worst case, complete the query with "definition" and you'll get hits at several online dictionaries.

Peter W. Meek wrote:I would have liked to see a hyphen between "ultra" and "rich". (And, yes, putting punctuation outside the quotation marks is a personal idiosyncrasy of mine.)

Yes, the MLA would disagree with your idiosyncrasy.

Glenn E. wrote:

Peter W. Meek wrote:Jerry Pournelle's Three-Foot Rule

These days it's even simpler than that. Install the Google Toolbar. ...

Hey; I'm a serious guy. The dictionary that sits within 3 feet of my keyboard is the photo-reduced Oxford English Dictionary (with aspheric magnifier). Google or Wiki-dictionary just doesn't cut it.

Eric Menchen wrote:

Peter W. Meek wrote:I would have liked to see a hyphen between "ultra" and "rich". (And, yes, putting punctuation outside the quotation marks is a personal idiosyncrasy of mine.)

Yes, the MLA would disagree with your idiosyncrasy.

It isn't a simple idiosyncrasy; I put the punctuation inside if the punctuation refers to what is inside the marks and outside if it refers to the entire sentence. I'm willing to stand up for the logical usage. MLA be damned.

And I have a strong suspicion that accepted usage will bear me out within two decades. I hope I'm here to see it.

Yes, but what if it isn't clear "if the punctuation refers to what is inside the marks?"

Or should that be, if it isn't clear "if the punctuation refers to what is inside the marks"?

(We'll ignore the fact that it should be "whether or not" instead of "if" in this case.)

Peter W. Meek wrote:It isn't a simple idiosyncrasy; I put the punctuation inside if the punctuation refers to what is inside the marks and outside if it refers to the entire sentence. I'm willing to stand up for the logical usage. MLA be damned.

And I have a strong suspicion that accepted usage will bear me out within two decades. I hope I'm here to see it.

I think you might be right on this last one. I violate the MLA guidelines in technical documentation, in particular when the thing in quotes is something I would expect someone else to type on a computer, in a query field, on a command line, etc.

Somehow I doubt the average reader of LAWeekly ever spends more than $20 on a bottle of wine.

Nor do they likely own a dictionary.