UKC

It's been a slow week. I've been reflecting on the importance of good grammar in climbing. Thus far I have come up with:

Capital Letters

"The problem with Stoney Middleton is all the polish"

- a common and reasonable complaint

"The problem with Stoney Middleton is all the Polish"

- this is simply not an acceptable thing to say in 2020, even if you did vote Leave

The Oxford Comma 

"Go in direct to the anchor, rethread, and lower off"

- Good practice for cleaning a route

"Go in direct to the anchor, rethread and lower off"

- at best you're going to be stuck, at worst you're going to die.

Garden Path Ambiguities

"The old man the crag"

- Unclear whether we are going to climb at the Old Man of Hoy today, or whether Stanage is being guarded by a phalanx of the elderly

Dangling Participles

"The woman belayed the man in the puffer jacket"

- Is he going to tear some terrible holes in his expensive Rab, or is she simply keeping warm?

Affect vs. Effect

"The wet conditions affected the route"

- And that's why I fell off at the crux!

"The wet conditions effected the route"

- The sudden drop in temperature after the rain brought the icefall into condition

Altogether vs. All together

"Altogether the route was climbable"

- despite the poor conditions and the seepage

"All together the route was climbable'

- taking combined tactics to a whole new level 

Hordes vs. Hoardes

"There were hordes all over Tremadog"

- a common problem at weekends

"There were hoards all over Tremadog"

- protected by a fierce Welsh dragon.

"A lot" vs "alot"

"I enjoyed that climb a lot"

- I bet you did, it looked great. 

"I enjoyed that climb alot"

- your logbook makes pedantic snobs like me cry

GEt, a, liFE..!)

It's reading week; I was supped to go winter climbing, there is no winter...I HAVE NO LIFE!

I've got Reading Week next week, hoping to get blown off some Munros

But I've always wondered why when I work at a university in south Wales our teaching break is named after a town on the M4 corridor in England...

You've got a typo in your hordes paragraph dude...

Other than that I'm into this, I also have no life. 

You forgot all the breaking devices we read about... 

I'm struggling to see the ambiguity that occurs if the oxford comma is missed?

Haahaha that is particularly apt given my own recent inability to distinguish between

"An assisted braking device"

- useful when sport climbing

"An assisted breaking device"

- useful when torturing terrorists to find out where the bomb is hidden

Very good!

It's a bit tenuous, but if you remove the Oxford comma it could imply that you re-thread and lower off simultaneously, which as a general rule isn't a great idea.

Grammar, the difference between

"Knowing your shit" and

"Knowing you're shit".

I presume this means you had enjoyed a hearty meal in preparation for heading to the Highlands. Nice coinage but I fear it may anger the traditionalists. 

Why cry? The alot is an amazing creature, it comes in so many flavors and so many people seem to enjoy talking to them.

http://hyperboleandahalf.blogspot.com/2010/04/alot-is-better-than-you-at-ev...

Ah, the alot! I had forgotten about that wondrous creature!

Exactly, if you read the wiki on Oxford comma it states how both using it and not introduce ambiguity. The sentence should be phrased in a way in which it is clear.
 

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serial_comma#Creating_ambiguity

My wife got this t-shirt for her birthday recently.

"Let's eat kids!
Let's eat, kids!
Punctuation saves lives."

Always gets some positive feedback : )

Good stuff. I once managed to sub into a Scotsman piece "sheath tossing" rather than the intended "sheaf tossing" - very embarrassing and I didn't sleep much that night when I realised (just after it had gone to press) what I'd done.

Also, a few years ago a very well-known outdoor writer (sorry, writer on the outdoors) wrote of experiencing "deja vous" - which I liked. He also used the concept of deja-vu wrongly, but then that's commonplace across an enormous proportion of the population.

A minor point - but not so minor, given that you're being so didactic here - your dangling participle example is not a dangling participle. However much I look at it, I can't see the participle.

The Dawesian Comparison

”belaying” vs “f*cking belaying”

Bravo, I throughly enjoyed that. 

Our cats are called Dave and Javu, they're 11 & 10 and were kittens when those TV channels were popular (which helped "encourage" the name Javu).

Our previous vet said that cat owners had a better sense of humour (with respect to names) than dog owners.

That's good (although I had to look up Javu).

Pretty sure that's right - there definitely seems to be more variety and inventiveness with cats' names as compared with dogs - although our cat is simply Jack (or often JC). I've known a couple of Schroedingers - which is pretty obvious - plus some mad names eg Grapefruit Lambada. Susan Calman has various female cats with names such as DCI Jane Tennison (which she insists on being used in full). You tend not to get dogs with names like that.

Your vet is absolutely right, Michael. Our neighbor's dogs are called Dog 1 and Dog 2. Our cats are called Marie and Antoinette

God damn it, you're right. It's just a garden variety ambiguity caused by not clearly matching the subject with the intended predicate, isn't it?

Who doesn't enjoy a soft top rope catch?!

Does giving cats funny names but not dogs reflect purely on the owners, or is it also about the different natures of the animals? Cats are more aloof and pompous (for which, I love them) and hence aloof and pompous names are more appropriate. Dogs are a bit more salt of the earth, slavishly loyal, and desperate to please (for which, I love them) - giving them silly names just feels a bit mean when all they want is your love.

Also, it's one thing to shout "here Rover!" in the park. Quite another to shout "here Grapefruit Lambda" or "to heel DCI Jane Tennison". Funny looks, etc.

Are they, or did they used to be, Siamese?

Watch me.

Watch ME!

Probably a bit of both - cats have a reputation for being more eccentric and mind-of-their-own-ish than dogs, and there's probably also a correlation between there being a fairly high proportion of women "owning" cats and women also reading more novels (or watching TV equivalents) than do men, with names of book characters etc then being given to the cats. Calman also has one called Dr Abigail Bartlet, for instance.

Not long after I moved to Glasgow in the mid-1980s, I was walking along my street when a bloke - slightly aggressively - started shouting "Davie! Davie!" I scarcely knew anyone in the area at that stage and I've always been David or Dave, but it still sounded like they were shouting at me - before I realised that Davie was a doberman

Incidentally, I'm just back in from driving across Stirling (semi-awash again) and saw a van that I've seen once before. It's a horse vet's van and the company is Neigh Bother - which is very good, but wouldn't work south of the border.

PS - I've seen mention of a hamster called Sir Edmund Hillary.

In the days before political correctness my parents named their cat “Enoch” apparently this is because Enoch Powell famously said to send all blacks home. The cat was black and if he wandered off they wanted him to get sent home.
To be clear their views were the only blacks  which should get sent home where lost cats not people. 

Although their previous cat was a male called Prudence so maybe Enoch isn’t so odd.

Putting this on a thread about grammar is somewhat worrying due my complete lack of ability on the subject. To be fair that is probably clear from the above.

I'm sure I've read that before.

It's important to me that Gramma doesn't find out I tempted Grampa to the crag when he should have been fixing her new en-suite.

I once climbed with a bloke who claimed he'd called his dog Grieg because it used to pee agin t'suite.

It appears that you're right, just did a search and I mentioned their names back in 2010. Give yourself a "good memory" award 🏆

Unless of course you too were sad enough to do a search - in which case I'll take that cup back thank you.