English questions

[Vijay]

Both sound fine to me. I have a slight preference for (b), since it’s slightly more concise. But you can make (a) more concise as well if you use direct speech:

a′) "When people ask me whose side I'm on, my first instinct is usually to respond, 'Not yours!'"

To me at least, it would also be fine to add with after answer. The only difference to me is that answer is less formal/more informal than respond (respond is more formal/less informal than answer ).

[Raphael]

In German, it's apparently usually considered bad style to use the same word too often in one sentence, paragraph, or short text. Is that the case in English, too?

[zompist]

In German, it's apparently usually considered bad style to use the same word too often in one sentence, paragraph, or short text. Is that the case in English, too?

Yes, though you can't really apply the idea too mechanically. Obviously, if you're talking about crocodiles, you're going to use the word "crocodile" a lot.

It's hard to come up with an example offhand, so I've altered a passage from one of my comics reviews. See if you can spot the jarringly re-used word!

Content: the title could just as well have been Misanthropy Theater. They are mostly satirical stories of slackers in dead-end jobs, their general sense of being smarter than everyone else tempered by a realization that this is getting them absolutely nowhere. The latest installment, "QA Confidential", starts out discussing temp jobs, and moves on to the dilemma of QA (no one, but no one, wants to see the bug you've found). Much of this is blisteringly satirical (and even insightful), and you won't want to miss the hilarious media parodies, such as the Tetris-like game called Shit Keeps Falling.

At the same time, repetition is one of the oldest stylistic tricks in the book. A classic example is Marc Antony's speech in Shakespeare's Julius Caesar, with the repeated refrain "And Brutus is an honorable man." Cleverly, Antony makes each repetition more and more ironic. It wouldn't work as well if it wasn't an exact repetition.

[Raphael]

Thank you!

It's hard to come up with an example offhand, so I've altered a passage from one of my comics reviews. See if you can spot the jarringly re-used word!

Content: the title could just as well have been Misanthropy Theater. They are mostly satirical stories of slackers in dead-end jobs, their general sense of being smarter than everyone else tempered by a realization that this is getting them absolutely nowhere. The latest installment, "QA Confidential", starts out discussing temp jobs, and moves on to the dilemma of QA (no one, but no one, wants to see the bug you've found). Much of this is blisteringly satirical (and even insightful), and you won't want to miss the hilarious media parodies, such as the Tetris-like game called Shit Keeps Falling.

"Satirical"?

(In a recent post in the Random Thread in Ephemera, I originally wanted to use the word "now" twice in the same line, but then decided to change the first "now" to "at this moment". That led me to ask my question here.)

[Linguoboy]

In German, it's apparently usually considered bad style to use the same word too often in one sentence, paragraph, or short text. Is that the case in English, too?

I've seen the opposite parodied, generally in the context of feature writing. But it was so pounded into me in my writing courses that I've had to go back and relearn when using the same word again can be effective rather than dull.

[zompist]

Thank you!

It's hard to come up with an example offhand, so I've altered a passage from one of my comics reviews. See if you can spot the jarringly re-used word!

Content: the title could just as well have been Misanthropy Theater. They are mostly satirical stories of slackers in dead-end jobs, their general sense of being smarter than everyone else tempered by a realization that this is getting them absolutely nowhere. The latest installment, "QA Confidential", starts out discussing temp jobs, and moves on to the dilemma of QA (no one, but no one, wants to see the bug you've found). Much of this is blisteringly satirical (and even insightful), and you won't want to miss the hilarious media parodies, such as the Tetris-like game called Shit Keeps Falling.

"Satirical"?

Right. In this example, the idea is that the second use of the word adds little-- it just feels like it's repeating an idea already expressed.

(In a recent post in the Random Thread in Ephemera, I originally wanted to use the word "now" twice in the same line, but then decided to change the first "now" to "at this moment". That led me to ask my question here.)

You can generally get away with re-using grammatical words.

[Vijay]

In German, it's apparently usually considered bad style to use the same word too often in one sentence, paragraph, or short text. Is that the case in English, too?

Yes. One of my schoolteachers (incidentally, one of the few who really liked me at the time) was really strict about this.

[Rounin Ryuuji]

I think, with repetition, anything that calls attention to itself in a text multiple times as "unusual" is likely to be perceived as stylistically odd or poor (if you describe a tree multiple times as bearing "inflorescences" rather than "flowers", it will sound strange), as will anything that's trying to be "cute" and say "Look how very erudite I am", especially tagging dialogue with words other than "said, asked, answered, replied, continued" (I personally also mildly dislike post-dialogue subject-verb inversion — I think because this is not normative in declarative sentences elsewhere in non-poetic English — but this is stylistically normative, just not my preference). This can also have unintended consequences when you get semantic drift, and ejaculated ceases to be a usual synonym of "exclaimed".

[Vijay]

Yes, but some people (such as my teacher) actually force such awkwardness with arbitrary rules like "don't repeat any words!"

[Travis B.]

Yes, but some people (such as my teacher) actually force such awkwardness with arbitrary rules like "don't repeat any words!"

That reminds me of the arbitrary rule some people have to avoid the passive voice at all costs (despite how useful the passive voice can be).

[Ryusenshi]

You can add "despite not even knowing what the passive voice is".

French teachers are also extremely hostile to any form of repetition. French journalists similarly avoid using the same word twice, which means they often resort to clichés: if you're writing something about the city of Marseilles, you can't write "Marseilles" twice, so you'll say "the Phocean city" ("la cité phocéenne" ) instead; nobody knows what "Phocean" even means, but God forbid that you say something original! Similarly, Japan is always "the land of the Rising Sun", the English language is always "Shakespeare's tongue", etc.

[Travis B.]

French teachers are also extremely hostile to any form of repetition. French journalists similarly avoid using the same word twice, which means they often resort to clichés: if you're writing something about the city of Marseilles, you can't write "Marseilles" twice, so you'll say "the Phocean city" ("la cité phocéenne" ) instead; nobody knows what "Phocean" even means, but God forbid that you say something original! Similarly, Japan is always "the land of the Rising Sun", the English language is always "Shakespeare's tongue", etc.

Thankfully I have not encountered anything of this sort from any of my English teachers, and it does not seem that English writing in general goes to such ridiculous lengths.

[Rounin Ryuuji]

I also never did.

I also think it's perhaps amusing how you can often find some proscribed form being used in some famous author in some nondescript and natural fashion that nobody would think to question in ordinary speech:

"And when the party entered the assembly room it consisted of only five altogether—Mr. Bingley, his two sisters, the husband of the eldest, and another young man." (Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice, Chapter 3, last sentence of the fourth paragraph, beginning a sentence with "and"; sometimes proscribed, this is very common and widely-understood in English.)

Split infinitives were historically rare, but I can find a few sparse citations as early as the mid 1300's, in a passage from Richard Rolle: "“yeve me grace to have most deynte to inwardly loke and þynk upon þat blessed face”; they don't seem to have been very common until sometime in the Nineteenth Century.

Some forms, no matter how long their usage, however, never seem to be seen as very "elegant" — Chaucer is, I think, the first citation of I guess, but I still probably wouldn't use it in literary narration.

The long and the short of the matter is, I think, that people who want to make stylistic recommendations shouldn't speak in absolutes, and more ought to describe what is perceived as "standard" and "correct" by speakers of the language, rather than insisting that certain things that weren't common before but make sense (like infinitive-splitting) or things that only apply in some cases must apply in all (like repeating words) are absolute truths.

[Travis B.]

One of my favorite examples of once-proscribed forms that were actually found well back in the history of English is singular they, dating back to Middle English, found in Wycliffe's Bible and the writings of Chaucer.

[Raphael]

Could someone provide a simple set of rules for which words usually are or aren't capitalized in English-language titles of books, other texts, movies, and so on?

[Travis B.]

Could someone provide a simple set of rules for which words usually are or aren't capitalized in English-language titles of books, other texts, movies, and so on?

There are multiple style books out there, but the general rule is you capitalize all initial and final words, and all other words except articles, prepositions, and coordinating conjunctions.

[Raphael]

Thank you!

[Travis B.]

Thank you!

Apparently, from what I just read, you are also supposed to write medial words shorter than four letters as lowercase as well, but to me that would seem strange for content words that just happen to be short.

[zompist]

There is no one answer. Here's a pretty reasonable set of rules from the MLA (Modern Language Association):

https://uaccm.libguides.com/c.php?g=601884&p=4168336

And here's a differing set from the APA (American Psychological Association):

https://apastyle.apa.org/style-grammar- ... title-case

The difference is mostly in whether to capitalize the longer prepositions (APA says yes, MLA says no); they also disagree on "if".

One of the MLA's examples is "What Americans Stand For"; so, without saying so, they capitalize prepositions without an object. The APA doesn't give guidance on this...

[Raphael]

Thank you, too!