Category: vocabulary (Page 1 of 4)

Mr and Mrs – and what about Mx and Esq?

2020-05-05 / admin / 0 Comments

We have looked at gender-neutral language in a previous blog post.

To address people we can use the honorific titles Mr, Miss and Mrs.

A man and a woman are walking on a beach by the sea. — Mr and Mrs Gibson on the beach

The female forms Mrs and Miss indicate whether a woman is married or not, which Mr does not. Mrs shows that a woman is married; many widows and divorced women retain the title even though they no longer have a spouse.

In the 1950s many women did not want to be known by their marital status and used the title Ms to replace Mrs and Miss. This usage became more widely spread in the 1970s and Ms is now the common form. However, the abbreviation Ms is older than you may think – it was used in an American newspaper as early as 1901.

Use the neutral Ms when you write to a woman unless you notice that she herself uses the title Mrs. If in doubt, ask her what she prefers.

The gender-neutral title Mx can be used to refer to a person who wants to be identified as neither male nor female. The title has become adopted by institutions in the UK such as the Royal Mail, agencies dealing with passports and driving licences as well as several banks. Mx is pronounced mix, sometimes em-ex.

Mr, Mrs and Mx are always used before a name, while Miss can stand alone.

Good morning, Mrs Johnson!

Thank you, Miss.

Without a following name, Mr and Mrs are replaced by sir and madam (or ma’am), respectively.

Can I help you, ma’am?

Very kind of you, sir!

Mr has a plural form, Messrs, which is put before the names of two or more men, especially in the name of a company.

Send your request to Messrs Watson & Sons.

Young boys are sometimes addressed as Master.

As you see (and surely know), these titles are always capitalised. In American English there is usually a full stop after the abbreviations.

You may have come across the abbreviation Esq. The word Esquire used to be a title given to men of higher rank in society. In the 20^th century it came to be used as a general title for any man, usually added after a man’s name, especially in correspondence (on envelopes and in letters) and official documents: William Brown, Esq. This is the same as Mr William Brown. If Esq. is used, you do not write Mr before the name.

When a British man is invited to Buckingham Palace, Esq. is added to his name on the envelope; for men of other nationalities, Mr is used instead.

In the United States, Esquire refers to a lawyer, irrespective of gender. It is used as an abbreviation after a person’s full name.

I suggest you contact my lawyer, Susan Hall, Esq.

When addressing correspondence to a United States diplomat, Esquire may be used, written in full.

What if the chairman is a woman?

2020-04-03 / admin / 0 Comments

Job titles such as chairman, salesman, policeman and fireman imply that it is a man that is performing the job. And stewardess and barmaid would suggest women. But both men and women work in the police force or stand behind the bar.

Policewoman seen from behind — Clearly not a policeman

Gender-neutral language aims at avoiding reference to a male or a female when the job is not gender-specified. Thus we use neutral forms: chair or chairperson, sales representative or salesperson, police officer, firefighter, flight attendant and bartender.

Some job titles that were seen as typically male or female are now used with reference to both genders, such as nurse, judge, doctor and model. You should avoid specifying, for instance, male nurse or female judge.

In some cases, the male form has taken over: actor instead of actress, usher instead of usherette.

Interestingly, man meant person in Old English (Anglo-Saxon). And female has nothing to do with male; it comes from the Latin femella, the diminutive form of femina, meaning woman.

When the gender of the person referred to is unknown or irrelevant, you can use the pronoun they to refer to that person. Read more about the use of they here.

To sum up, when you write in English, avoid using gender-specific job titles when there is a neutral alternative.

Compounds in English

2019-11-07 / admin / 0 Comments

When two or more words are combined to form a new concept with a new meaning, we talk about a compound.

A compound can be a combination of a noun and a noun (school nurse), an adjective and a noun (full noon), an adverb and a verb (far-reaching), a verb and an adverb (check-up), a preposition and a noun (underworld), a preposition and a verb (overestimate), an adjective and another adjective (blue-green) – and a few more combinations.

In English there are three ways to write compound words: as separate words (open compounds), as one word (closed compounds) or as words combined with a hyphen (hyphenated compounds). This can sometimes be rather confusing. We write head office as separate words, we write head-teacher with a hyphen and we write headmaster as one word. Likewise we have table knife but tablespoon.

This may seem frustrating, and if you are in doubt, you had better check a dictionary or a style sheet. (Actually, you can also write stylesheet. Some compounds can take any of the three forms. You can write life style, life-style or lifestyle.)

OPEN COMPOUNDS

Unlike some other languages – German, Swedish or Finnish, for example – English often does not combine the separate words into one word. A breakfast table is in German Frühstückstisch; a hotel room is in Swedish hotellrum; a taxi driver is in Finnish taksinkuljettaja.

Here are some examples of open compounds in English:

apple pie	half sister
coffee mug	information technology
computer network	light year
couch potato	living room
database design	master bedroom
decision maker	orange juice
dinner table	post office
English teacher	swimming pool
evening dress	truck driver
football stadium	video game
full moon	washing machine

Two adults hiking in the Julian Alps in Slovenia on their way to the highest peak, Triglav. — An open compound: Mountain climbers

CLOSED COMPOUNDS

The following are examples of compounds written in one word:

afternoon	makeup
airport	newspaper
blackboard	notebook
bodyguard	online
bookstore	paycheck
cupcake	policewoman
cowboy	skateboard
doorbell	substandard
downtown	takeaway
football	textbook
grandmother	underworld
handout	wallpaper
headache	watermelon
input	worksheet

Compounds with words from Latin or Greek are written as one word:

photography

agriculture

HYPHENATED COMPOUNDS

Many compounds – especially those formed by two nouns – used to be hyphenated, but now most of them are written either as one word or two separate words. Here are some compounds that are still hyphenated (and you will notice that they are generally not of the noun+noun type):

broad-minded	runner-up
check-in	secretary-general
dry-cleaning	self-esteem
far-reaching	six-pack
go-between	well-being
passer-by	X-ray

Compounds with three or more words are usually written with hyphens:

around-the-clock	merry-go-round
do-it-yourself	mother-of-pearl
editor-in-chief	right-of-way
father-in-law	jack-of-all-trades
happy-go-lucky	state-of-the-art

Compound numbers from twenty-one to ninety-nine are hyphenated:
My dad is forty-two.

Fractions also take a hyphen:
We had already driven two-thirds of the way.
Less than one-fifth of the operators are women.

But with a instead of one there is no hyphen: Less than a fifth of the operators are women.

Some compounds have changed from being hyphenated to a single word. We used to write on-line and world-wide, but nowadays online and worldwide are more common. This also applies to words such as cooperate and proactive.

To avoid confusion, a hyphen is used when the prefix ends and the base word begins with the same vowel:

anti-intellectual

COMPUNDS AS MODIFIERS

When compounds are used as modifiers, they are written with a hyphen. A modifier works as an adjective or adverb to add information about the word directly following it.

A six-year-old boy.
But: The boy was six years old.

We rely on just-in-time delivery.
But: I arrived just in time. The clock struck three when I opened the door.

You can read about compounds as modifiers here.

Do you cooperate or collaborate?

2019-10-22 / admin / 0 Comments

Most writers either use these two words indiscriminately or simply choose cooperation without even reflecting on the alternative collaboration.

The main difference between the two words is that collaboration involves people working together towards a shared goal, while cooperation implies somebody working to support somebody else’s goal.

Two small boys are putting stones into a box. — Collaborating towards a common goal

As a copyeditor, I work with the author of a text. The author wants me to make sure the manuscript is in fluent English without any linguistic or factual errors. (You can read here about how I work.) The author may ask for comments on a certain passage and I may want clarification of what the author intends. I can suggest an alternative formulation. Our shared objective is an article that deals with an interesting topic, has perfect language and format and is of such a quality altogether that it can be accepted for publication. That is collaboration. Collaboration is teamwork requiring mutual respect, trust and adaptability.

In my job as a copyeditor I may come across a word that is totally unknown to me. I can then call an expert to ask about that word. For example, I once called the coast guard to ask what word they used in a certain context. Thanks to their cooperation I could achieve my goal – to use that word correctly.

Should you have a hyphen or not? The answer is here.

Perhaps some writers hesitate to use the word collaboration since it has a less agreeable connotation. A collaborator is someone who helps an enemy that has occupied their country in a war.

Co-operate or cooperate?

2019-10-21 / admin / 0 Comments

Co is a prefix, a syllable placed before a word. The word prefix itself is made up of the prefix pre (meaning before) and the word fix (meaning attach).

The prefix co (and its alternative forms con, com, col and cor, depending on which letter follows the prefix) has the meaning with, together with.

A prefix is usually not followed by a hyphen. Some examples:
Afterthought, antedate, biannual, collaborate, commemorate, confederation, displace, ensure, illegal, indirect, overuse, posttraumatic, prepaid, replace, submarine, underestimate, uninterested.

So you are right in leaving out the hyphen in words such as cooperate, collaborate and coordinate.

A grandfather is helping his grandson with a toy car — Cooperation

However, in some cases a hyphen is to prefer, since otherwise the spelling might suggest a different pronunciation:

If you write co-opt without a hyphen (coopt), it looks as if it could be pronounced with a vowel as in too, and re-edit, when written reedit might sound like read it. The same pronunciation issue would apply to, for example, re-enter, re-establish, and re-examine.

Some words with the prefix re- have two versions, one with and one without a hyphen:

When you re-sign a document, you sign it again, but when you resign, you quit a job.
To re-cover means to cover again, while recover is to get better, regain your health.
When you re-store goods, you put them back in store again, but to restore something means to reconstruct or bring back to a former state.

And, since we are dealing with English, we have to accept inconsistencies like the following:

Anti-clockwise, anti-hero and anti-Semitism but antirust, antiseptic and antisocial.
Vice President of a state; vice president or vice-president in business.
Viceroy but vice-chancellor.

A last note: Instead of writing cooperate, you could consider writing collaborate. There is a difference between the two!

How to use the semicolon

2019-10-10 / admin / 0 Comments

Many writers seem to be unsure of how to use the semicolon.

This image shows what a semicolon looks like. — A combination of a comma and a full stop

The semicolon looks like a combination of a full stop and a comma, and that is an indication of how it is used. Like the comma and the full stop, the semicolon separates clauses. The semicolon links two independent clauses that are closely related. In other words, we use a semicolon between two complete sentences to indicate that what they say is of equal importance. The semicolon can replace words such as and and but.

Finally, Tom found his bike behind the garage; it was rusty and the tires were flat.
This method is based on many years of research; particularly important are the findings from four studies in the heavy vehicles industry.
The potential variables are numerous; they include everything that might influence the evaluation criteria.

You cannot have a semicolon after a dependent clause beginning with words such as since, although, when, because, etc.

Since she had visited the city several times, she knew all the tourist spots.
She had visited the city several times; she knew all the tourist spots.

To avoid confusion, use a semicolon to separate groups in an enumeration.

Among the cities in the study were Hamburg, Germany; Milan, Italy; Copenhagen, Denmark; and Helsinki, Finland.

Don’t use the semicolon where you must have a colon!

He had three main interests: vintage cars, whisky and antique furniture.

You cannot write *He had three main interests; vintage cars, whisky and antique furniture (For the use of the asterisk read at the end of this text). After a semicolon there must be a complete, independent, clause with a subject and a verb. So you could write: He had three main interests; they were vintage cars, whisky and antique furniture.

Disinterested or uninterested?

2019-09-08 / admin / 0 Comments

Are you disinterested or are you uninterested? If you are not sure about the difference between those two words, you are not alone. Many writers find it difficult to distinguish between them.

DISINTERESTED

If you are disinterested, you have no stake in the actual matter, you are impartial or neutral. It is understandable that this word is often used in legal or business contexts.

Can we take it for granted that the judge in this case is truly disinterested?

UNINTERESTED

You should use uninterested if you mean that someone is bored or not engaged.

How can we catch the attention of uninterested students?

Chances are that you will find disinterested used where you would expect uninterested. Not surprisingly, the two words are often confused. But you, as a good writer of English, will of course make the distinction.

Furthermore and moreover

2019-08-19 / admin / 0 Comments

Furthermore and moreover are often understood as synonyms. However, there is a difference in meaning between them.

FURTHERMORE

Use furthermore when you add something to what you just said.

Earlier research has shown that this applies to several sectors. Furthermore, this has been confirmed in our interviews.

MOREOVER

Use moreover to indicate that you add something beyond what has been said, something different. Sometimes moreover could be said to mean ”further and more importantly”.

Using your cellphone while driving is against the law in some countries. Moreover, you risk your own life and that of others.

Sunset behind a town on a hilltop — The sunset was magnificent. Moreover, the whole day had been fantastic with walks in the narrow streets and a gorgeous lunch in the old town.

Furthermore and moreover are transitional words. Transitional words (or transition words) are used to describe relationships between ideas, to help the reader progress from one idea to the next. They can, for example, express addition (also, and, besides, further, likewise, again), contrast (but, however, on the contrary), time (after, before, usually, finally), space (above, below, behind, opposite), details (especially, particularly) and consequence (therefore, hence, consequently, because).

To sum up:
Furthermore (in addition to what has been said) adds information.

Moreover (beyond what has been said) builds up the argument, ”not only that”, adds a reason of a different kind, adds to diversity, ”more importantly”.

Sensible and sensitive

2019-08-01 / admin / 0 Comments

Here you will learn the difference between sensible and sensitive, two words coming from the same Latin root but with very different meanings.

SENSIBLE

If you are sensible, you have common sense, you are reasonable and have good judgement. You don’t make stupid mistakes.

Be sensible! Your chances of winning the lottery are close to nil.

Used about clothes, shoes or other things, sensible can mean practical, functional, not fashionable.

Bob’s wife understood his love for fast sports cars but managed to talk him into buying a sensible car that could accommodate their big family.

A man is cycling on a river wearing sensible weatherproof clothing — Make sure you wear sensible clothing when cycling on the river!

SENSITIVE

A sensitive person can be easily affected or upset by what others say or do.

Why are you so sensitive to criticism?

Being sensitive can also mean that you are understanding and sympathetic to other people’s needs.

As a good mother she was always sensitive to her children’s needs.

Used about things, sensitive means delicate or fragile, easily damaged, needing protection.

A baby’s skin is very sensitive to sunlight.
This is sensitive information.

The corresponding nouns are sensibility and sensitivity.

Big, large and great

2019-07-13 / admin / 0 Comments

Can you sort out big, large and great?

Generally speaking, big describes weight or extent, large is often related to dimensions or volume and great suggests something impressive. Great is often used with abstract nouns.

BIG

Big is used more often than large. In fact, big is one of the most frequent words in the English language. Big may also sound a little less formal than large.

They have a big mansion in the countryside.

Big often means important, powerful, successful:
That’s a big decision.
He is a big tycoon in the automotive industry.

Big can also mean older or elder:
My big brother has helped me a lot.

LARGE

As mentioned above, large often refers to dimension or volume.
They have a large house with a very large garden.
I have a large collection of posters from the 1960s.

Large is more common with some quantity words such as the following:
A large amount
A large number
To a large extent
On a large scale
A large percentage
A large quantity

With food and clothes we use large:
I’d like a large coffee, please.
Those shoes are too large for you.

Large, not big, is used in the combination small, medium, large.

The expression at large has two meanings, 1) free, at liberty and 2) as a whole, in general:
The prisoner is still at large.
These findings relate to society at large.

Big and large are only used with countable nouns (read here about countable and uncountable nouns).
You cannot talk about *big traffic or *large traffic (for the use of the asterisk, read at the end of this text). Instead we use heavy traffic, intense traffic or a lot of traffic.

Big and large often overlap in meaning when we talk about size.
A big house.
A large house.

It is sometimes said that big implies an element of emotion, surprise, etc., especially in fixed expressions such as the following:
Big deal!
She’s a big fan of the Rolling Stones.
He’s a big liar.

A big-headed man is not the same as a large-headed man! A big-headed man thinks he is more important or cleverer than others, while a large-headed man just has a large head.

Susan is my big sister – she is older than me.
Susan is my large sister – she is physically larger than my other siblings.

GREAT

Great implies a large size:
All creatures great and small.

Great often means distinguished, remarkable:
She is one of the greatest novelists of our time.
The performance was a great success.
I have great respect for her abilities.
He has great wisdom.
My cousin is really great at tennis.

To vary your language, you should use synonyms. In a dictionary of synonyms you will find many words to describe size or importance, such as huge, enormous, sizeable, impressive, momentous, substantial, comprehensive, extensive, immense, tremendous, prominent, distinguished, etc.