Saw this devastating mistake on The A.V. Club. Sucks when copy editors don't even realize this:

Ouch. Another example of the limitations of spell-check.

Are there any Aussies or Kiwis who could help me with the pronunciation of "larrikin"?

(Online guides have 3 different ways to say it.)

"Belgium wanna apply same law as in France"

What really tilts me is that it's the CORRECTED thread title, because it used to be ""Belgium wanna apply same law than in France". The mods in NVG should just fix the whole title if they're going to fix anything at all.

Trying to find correct grammar in NVG is like trying to find common sense in the Tea Party. I wouldn't even read that forum if I were you and interested in remaining sane.

I read that site daily, and the comments section of half the articles contains a grammar and punctuation nit correcting something with disgust.

Haha...I just went to the AV club and read their most recent article...and this was the third comment:




I had to Google what that meant...god those guys are nerds...

You had to Google the word "superlative"? You're kidding right?

To be fair, it's not exactly a word that has metastasized within most English-ejaculater's lexicons.

Boom roasted

This one is correct.

*English-ejaculaters'

[boom].[/roasted]

Pretty nitty itt.

Thanks!

fyp

Settle this one for me. In a discussion of a conference at which the group reached consensus A and consensus B I tried to ask a follow-up question that was phrased "and did you attend the conference where those two [stumbled as I tried to state the plural of consensus]."

I ended up with consensuses but I can't find a definitive answer.

Yeah, "consensuses" is correct. Also, from Garner's Modern American Usage (concerning the pluralization of words of Greek and Latin origin):

One reliable guide is this: if in doubt, use the native-English plural ending in -s. That way, you'll avoid the mistakes involved in hypercorrection, which is rampant with false foreign plurals (as when people say or write ignorami instead of ignoramuses, thereby betraying something quite ironic).

So, say we have a list whose items are separated by semicolons.

Example:

On the trip, the explorer brought the following items: five dickered ****ter-vockers; seven bulimic spiderhenries — of the Venezuelan hitlercock variety; penisspider Lichtencauchten.

---

A thought crossed my mind: What if the reader interprets everything after the em dash as being parenthetically offset w/r/t "seven bulimic spiderhenries." And so is using em dashes within these lists correct?

I think you would use commas instead of semicolons there? A semicolon would be more appropriate if it was like

On the trip, the explorer brought the following items: five dickered ****ter-vockers, three purple ****ter-vockers and nine radioactive ****ter-vockers; seven bulimic spiderhenries of the Venezuelan hitlercock variety, six impolite spiderhenries, two violent spiderhenries and a partridge spiderhenry; and a penisspider Lichtencauchten, a Panamax Lichtencauchten and a Poopmax Lichtencauchten.

Basically you only want to use semicolons when you have several similar items in a group, and more than one such group. Am I right?

TTI,

I think it's clear enough in that case that the information about spiderhenries after the em dash is restricted to what comes before the next semicolon. The bigger problem with that particular example imo is that there doesn't need to be an em dash there at all. In general, I think semicolons represent hard enough stops that I have a hard time imagining a list where an em dash would confuse the point in the way you're presenting. It might foul up a list with commas on the other hand.

Garcia's also right, commas would be correct in that list. I was taking for granted for the sake of argument that it was a list where semicolons were being used properly.

ETA isn't the reason for using semicolons in a list that the list contains internal punctuation?

You can use semicolons w/ any lists in which some of the individual items have commas or whatever.

Oh yeah I realized this after I wrote it. Just assume it's something that actually requires the em dash.

Okay just making sure. Lol those list items were so ******ed.

Only in this thread, garcia, will we criticize you for putting a question mark at the end of that sentence. This demands a period. The qualifier "I think" at the beginning already implies your uncertainty. You don't need to add a question mark at the end, because you're not asking a question.

"I think you would use commas instead of semicolons there."
or
"Wouldn't you use commas instead of semicolons there?"

This can also be applied to sentences like "I wonder why he didn't show up?"

No, it's clear you do wonder, so just write "I wonder why he didn't show up."

But it's kind of like people who end sentences with an upward inflection?
So that everything they say sounds like a question?
And it always sounds as if they are uncertain?
No matter what words they happen to be blurtin?

(Worst poem of all time.)

I learned to do this when I was a consultant, when talking to clients and superiors (in a hierarchical sense), to sound less confrontational — I have a tendency to let people know pretty quickly that I think I'm smarter than they, and the false question inflection softened that.

Regarding your question about punctuation: I would eschew dashes within list items, even when those items are separated by semicolons (and certainly when using commas), because an em dash has, in a sense, the same "rank" as a semicolon so confusion is likely even if as a theoretical matter the sentence can only be parsed one logical way. In other words, when using the big three punctuation marks — em dash, semicolon, and colon — you have to be particularly careful not to mislead as each can separate clauses. Thus, if you find yourself wanting to include a dashed parenthetical with a list item, and using parentheses isn't appropriate, you'll probably want to rework things.