In a previous blog post we looked at the difference between different and various.
Another word that is used when we talk about difference is diverse.
Diverse indicates that people or things are very different from each other, that they come in a great variety of possible types, styles, etc.
The club offers diverse leisure activities such as golf, hiking, and canoeing.
The bar offered a diverse drink menu.
Another use of the word (and the corresponding noun diversity) is now mainly to refer to people from different social, cultural or ethnic backgrounds, different genders, sexual orientations, etc.
President Trump issued a series of executive orders targeting diversity, equity, and inclusion programs in the public and private sectors.
Diverse comes from Latin divertere, to turn in separate ways.
The English word minute is both a noun and an adjective.
As a noun, minute is pronounced /ˈmɪnɪt/.
A minute is a period of time, sixty seconds or one sixtieth of an hour. They were twenty minutes late.
The train leaves in one minute.
Minute can also refer to a distance, how far you can walk or drive in a minute. Our house is just ten minutes from the bus stop.
Minute also indicates a very short time. Sit down, please; I’ll be with you in a minute.
In geometry, minute is a sixtieth of a degree of an angle.
The noun minute comes from Medieval Latin pars minuta prima, first small part, from minutus, made small. (Second comes from pars minuta secunda, second small part.)
The plural noun minutes refers to a record of the proceedings of a meeting. It comes via French minute from Latin scriptura minuta, small writing. The secretary read the minutes from the last meeting.
The adjective minute, pronounced /mʌɪˈnjuːt/, means extremely small. Just like the noun, it comes from Latin minutus, made small. With such a high resolution, minute details could be studied in the image.
There are many ways to express nothing in English.
ZERO
The most common way to refer to nothing as a number is zero or nought. (Nought is more common in British English.)
Zero comes from Arabic sifr (meaning ’empty’), which lives on in French chiffre and Swedish siffra. Italian zefiro comes from zephyrum, used by the mathematician Fibonacci.
OH (the letter O)
Especially when saying telephone numbers or dates, OH is used
10603 ’one oh six oh three’ or ’one zero six zero three’ 1605 sixteen oh five
And then, of course, we have the well-known secret agent James Bond, 007 ’double oh seven’.
NIL
Nil is used in sports, especially in team games.
At half-time, the score was two–nil.
American English prefers nothing to nil.
The score was three to nothing.
Nil is also used in business language.
The economy is expected to see nil growth next year.
Nil comes from Latin nihil or nihilum, which meant nothing.
Nothing, nada, zilch. Or, a polar bear couple with its cub in a snowstorm.
LOVE
In tennis scoring, love means zero. At the start of a game, the score is love–all. Six–love is called a bagel. Concerning the origin of the word love in tennis, one theory suggests that it may have come from the French l’oeuf, meaning egg. A zero could easily resemble an egg. However, this theory is disputed. There is no documented use of l’oeuf in sports meaning zero. On the other hand, zero on a scoreboard is also called a goose egg or, especially in cricket, a duck egg or a duck.
DUCK
When a batsman in cricket does not score any points (also called runs), it is called a duck egg or a duck.
NADA, ZILCH, ZIP
These are all slang words to denote nothing. Nada comes from Spanish nothing. Zilch was a comic character in an American magazine. The word could also have come from US college slang. Zip also comes from student slang, denoting a zero grade on a test.
NULL
Null is used in mathematics to represent the absence of something or the value of zero.
The word is also used in the legal phrase null and void, which implies that a contract, an agreement, etc., is not legally valid.
CIPHER
Cipher usually means a code or an encoded numeral or letter. It can also mean zero and is often used figuratively to refer to a nobody, someone of no consequence. The word is related to French chiffre and Swedish siffra. It is sometimes spelled cypher in British English.
What’s the difference between unsatisfied and dissatisfied?
UNSATISFIED
When you are unsatisfied, you are not yet satisfied or fulfilled. There is incompleteness, a lack of something. You are not getting everything that is needed. Unsatisfied can refer to both people and things and ideas.
Children often feel an unsatisfied hunger for love and acceptance. The defendant argued that the obligations under the contract were unsatisfied.
DISSATISFIED
When you are dissatisfied, you feel unhappy, displeased, disappointed, frustrated. Dissatisfied refers to how people feel.
Fred was dissatisfied with the wallpaper in his living-room.
Fred was dissatisfied with the wallpaper in his living-room
To sum up,
Unsatisfied = unfulfilled Dissatisfied = annoyed, not happy
Price refers to the amount of money you pay when you buy something.
The price of coffee had gone up by 12%.
Price is also used figuratively in the sense of consequence or cost:
He had to pay a high price for his support of the party’s failed candidate.
Price can also be used as a verb meaning to put a price on something, to say how much something costs or is worth.
He was reluctant to price the old furniture. The young couple thought the house was priced too high. Entrance is priced at €7 for adults and €5.50 for children.
To price in (with the stress on in) has two meanings:
1. To include the cost of something in the total price
You need to price in the cost of packaging and freight.
2. To consider a factor when deciding a price
We must price in the risk of increased raw material costs.
This price for a cellphone seems exorbitant
PRIZE
Prize (with a voiced s-sound) refers to an award earned in a competition or through talent. It is associated with achievement and recognition.
My daughter won first prize in the baking competition.
A prize flower or animal is one that is of very good quality, one that has won or deserves to win a prize.
A prize idiot is the same as a complete idiot.
As a verb, to prize has two meanings:
1. To value highly
That old photo is one of my most prized possessions.
2. To force open (sometimes also spelled prise)
I prized the lid open with a spoon. She prised the little boy’s fingers apart and took the pill from him.
Some language purists would maintain that each other refers to two people or things and one another to more than two, but the general opinion now is that the two expressions are interchangeable. However, one another is often seen as being more formal.
The two animals stared fiercely at each other. We have known one another for years.
Knowing when and how to use brackets and parentheses can be challenging. We will try and sort out the problem here.
Round brackets
Round brackets are used
to add extra information in text
Leonardo da Vinci (1452–1519) is considered one of the greatest artists ever. Cary Grant (born as Archibald Leach) starred in over seventy films.
to add personal comment
Hum in Croatia is the smallest town in the world (and very beautifully situated on top of a hill).
to define an abbreviation or acronym
UNITAR (The United Nations Institute for Training and Research) has its headquarters in Geneva, Switzerland.
to refer to another part of the same text
Exports increased by 6 % (Table 3). Production time can be reduced by using a new application (see Chapter 6).
in referencing
Such methods are based on direct observation (Jones et al., 2012).
Square brackets
Square brackets are used
to show that text has been added to a quotation
Several new products were introduced [on the company’s website].
to show that part of a quotation has been omitted (by using an ellipsis)
Relatives, friends and neighbours as well as his landlord, his employer, his former professor […] had all come to congratulate him.
(The Chicago Manual of Style recommends using the three dots without brackets. The Modern Language Association, on the other hand, recommends brackets to distinguish this kind of ellipsis from an ellipsis in the original text.)
when you capitalize the first letter of a quotation that is not capitalized in the original (or use lowercase where the original is capitalized)
Original:
The professor said, ”Perhaps the best example of Renaissance architecture is St. Peter’s Basilica in Vatican City”.
Paraphrased:
The professor told his students that ”[p]erhaps the best example of Renaissance architecture is St. Peter’s Basilica in Vatican City”.
around the Latin abbreviation sic (read more here).
To sum up:
Use parentheses to add information to something you have written.
Use brackets to change or add comments to somebody else’s words that you are quoting.
Braces (Curly brackets)
Curly brackets are mainly used in computer programming, mathematics, and science. They often identify the elements of a set.
Angle brackets (Chevrons)
Angle brackets are seldom used in English. They may indicate a website or something said in a foreign language. In some languages, double angle brackets are used instead of quotation marks.
Brackets and parentheses are punctuation marks used to set apart a segment of text from the surrounding text. (By the way, parentheses is the plural form of parenthesis).
You are, of course, aware of the fact that British English and American English do not always agree. BE lift is elevator in AE; a BE pavement is a sidewalk in AE. Holiday is vacation, handbag is purse, queue is line, tube is subway, etc.
When it comes to brackets and parentheses, the situation is just as confusing.
These marks
are called brackets or round brackets in British English. In American English they are parentheses.
Brackets in American English are called square brackets in British English. They look like this:
Then we have these:
They are called braces in both British and American English, but in BE they are also called curly brackets.
Historically, the earliest form of brackets were angle brackets or chevrons. They look like this:
In a later post we take a look at how to use these brackets and parentheses.
Sic comes from Latin and means so, thus, in this manner.
Sic erat scriptum means so written, thus it had been written.
When quoting something, writers may use sic to indicate that a word or phrase that looks wrong is indeed an exact reproduction of the original—the mistake appears in the source. Quotations should always be in their original form.
Sic is usually written in square brackets: [sic]. The word sic is often seen as a loanword that does not require italics, but in the United States, sic is usually italicized.
Sic can be used to mark an actual error or misprint or a conspicuous detail in the text, a word that seems odd or erroneous.
Since sic is used to draw the reader’s attention to a mistake by the writer, it often indicates disapproval and may signal superciliousness or be condescending. You should use caution when writing [sic] in order not to sound haughty or malicious.
There [sic] son had graduated from Cambridge. The correct spelling is, of course, their.
She carries out research at the John [sic] Hopkins University. This is a common error. The correct name is Johns Hopkins University, named after the entrepreneur and benefactor Johns Hopkins. His great-grandmother’s name was Margaret Johns; she married Gerard Hopkins and they named their son, the benefactor’s grandfather, Johns Hopkins. His grandson had the same name.
You can find a number of Latin abbreviations used in English here.
I recently found out that the email system at my web host has failed. Emails and messages sent to copyeditor.se were supposed to be forwarded to another of my email accounts. This has worked well in the past, but for several months no forwarding has taken place. I was travelling abroad from June to the middle of September and was not aware of this problem until now.
With the help of my web host I have now been able to locate and read the missing emails and messages. I’m happy to see that so many are interested in my book and asked where they can get it. I have referred them to this page.
I apologize for not having replied to emails and messages.
No contact
I have also had problems with my newsletter campaign provider and have not been able to send any newsletters for quite some time. I have now changed to another platform and hope to send newsletters again soon.
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