Posts by linger
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What Hager actually said was that he initially believed the prisoner moving instruction came from <str>Bennett</str>Collins, but the evidence didn’t positively support it, and so he dropped it from the main text, but left the supposition – marked as a supposition, not as a factual claim – in a footnote.
This all sounds absolutely in keeping with standards of academic writing.
But can somebody with the actual book confirm the actual wording?ETA: Collins. (Ta nzlemming.)
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Hard News: Dirty Politics, in reply to Ian Dalziel,
Some obvious alternative captions for the National imagery:
“Paddling up bullshit creek”
“Ready for the next America’s Cup challenge”
“Heading for John’s pleasure yacht” -
While I'm on the subject of message and graphic design:
the full-page ad in Monday's DomPost comparing the parties' commitments to increasing carer salaries -- on which every party but National is shown to be in favour -- loses several points for phrasing its conclusion "Vote for the party..." which invites the casual reader to vote for the odd party out ... i.e., National. Gah! -
Hard News: Never mind the quality ..., in reply to ,
Have been tour(ist)ing around the top of the South Island this week, and finally got to see a range of party billboards.
Impressions:
National have the most effective design by far: uncluttered blue field with the very clear instruction to “party vote National” + tick.
Greens: text in white on a detail-rich coloured field is harder to read, and the “party vote” instruction is too small to read on a drive-by, but the party name is still relatively prominent.
Labour: “Vote positive” is all very nice, but in effect it means even their own billboards lack the confidence to instruct us, unambiguously, to vote Labour. Frustratingly incompetent messaging and graphic design, failing to get even the basics right. What the hell are they playing at? -
Hard News: Dirty Politics, in reply to nzlemming,
[Key] “anyone who knows Cameron Slater knows that he’s a force unto himself”.
Stephen Clover:
it excuses not one damn thing.
And it just sits up and begs for the followup question: “So, Mr. Key, are you saying that you know Cameron Slater well?”
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Hard News: Not doing justice, in reply to Pete George,
a dick on a John Key billboard
is just a tautology, surely?
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Hard News: Not doing justice, in reply to Pete George,
A singular and a plural don’t go together.
Your premise (that they is inevitably plural) is false: “singular they ” has long been a part of normal English speech, and is more commonly used today – even in edited writing – than any alternative way of referring to an individual of unknown gender.
References:
Bodine, Ann (1975). Androcentrism in prescriptive grammar: singular ‘they’, sex-indefinite ‘he’ and ‘he or she’. Language in Society 4: 129-146.
Gerner, Jürgen (2000). Singular and plural anaphors of indefinite personal pronouns in spoken British English. In Kirk, J. (ed.) Corpora Galore: Analyses and Techniques in Describing English. Amsterdam: Rodopi. 93-114.
Holmes, Janet (1998). Generic pronouns in the Wellington Corpus of Spoken New Zealand English. Kotare 1: 31-39.
Laitinen, Mikko (2002). He and they in indefinite anaphora in written present-day English. International Journal of Corpus Linguistics 7 (2): 137–164. -
Hard News: Steven Joyce: Prick or Treat, in reply to Lucy Telfar Barnard,
Except that he started off with “rather”, which implies that he regards the following order as a mistake.
ETA: "should be no more than necessary to achieve that" goes a bit too far -- I suspect it's "should be at least sufficient to achieve that"
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Hard News: The silence of the public square, in reply to Rosemary McDonald,
I sympathise with your frustration, but not voting is self-defeating: it just ensures that nobody in the next government will feel any need to listen to you either.
(Meanwhile, with great timing, PAS provides another pro-voting argument here. )
Please vote. -
Hard News: Steven Joyce: Prick or Treat, in reply to Matthew Poole,
You meant putting the cart before the horse ... rather than the reverse?