atw: Re: Quick grammar question [SEC=UNCLASSIFIED]

Onya, Howard!  

"non-district specific" grates with me, too. 

Sounds like it might mean "state-specific", "region-specific", 
"territory-specific"    OR  just not specific at all . .. OR whatever..

And some of these rules that assume readers pick the difference between a 
hyphen and an em or en rule don't look very realistic at all, and don't much 
help if you have ASCII text.   ....     

Hands up all those who teach or were taught the use of the em rule, the en rule 
and the hyphen and the distinctions between them  at school ? 

Yep, all the alternatives are much better.      And pause to consider:  how 
would a reader convey the en rule on radio ?   Smaller between-word pauses or 
longer between-word pauses?   Or would between-word pauses not be relevant, 
while non-between word pauses would be ?  

--Peter M


Silcock, Howard DR:
On Tue, 20 Dec 2005 16:53:20 +1100,  you wrote:
> I thought this was all agreed. But now that an element of
> dissent has appeared, I must jump in and support those
> preferring 'non-district-specific' to 'non-district specific'.
> The latter looks ridiculous to me - it's natural to read the
> hyphen as linking only the words it's directly attached to, so 
> it looks as if it means 'specific to non-districts'. And using
> 'non-district specific' alongside 'district-specific' would be
> even more ridiculous - if you put a hyphen between 'district'
> and 'specific' in one you should certainly be consistent and
> do so in the other.
>
> More generally, I'd say there's a problem with attaching
> prefixes like 'non-' to multi-word phrases that don't already
> have hyphens. For instance, if you refer to 'Department of
> Defence personnel', then it might seem you could also
> reasonably refer to 'non-Department of Defence personnel'. But
> to me that looks as ridiculous as 'non-district specific' and
> for the same reason: it looks as if you're talking about 
> personnel from a non-Department dedicated to Defence matters,
> or maybe just Defence personnel from a non-Department
> (whatever that is). In cases like this, I think the only
> solution is to rephrase the whole thing.
>
> Some people put 'non' in without any hyphen at all, but to me
> that looks even worse, because 'non' isn't a word in its own
> right any more than 'pre' or 'anti' are.
>
> And what about 'global'? That would be the best solution, I
> agree, as long as it makes sense in the context.
>
> Maybe we should all just forget about this and look forward to
> our holidays...
>
> Howard
>
>
>> -----Original Message-----
>> From: austechwriter-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
>> [mailto:austechwriter-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of
>> Jill Nicholson
>> Sent: Tuesday, 20 December 2005 14:17
>> To: austechwriter@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
>> Subject: atw: Re: Quick grammar question
>>
>>
>> No, only 2, it is non-district specific.
>> In haste
>> Happy Holidays/Xmas/Whatever Jill Nicholson
>>
>> N&H Communications
>> 2 Park Ave
>> ROSEVILLE,  NSW 2069
>> 61+2+94174302
>> jpnicho@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx
>> www.nhcommunications.com.au everyone
>> Jill
>>
>>> ----- Original Message -----
>>> From: Sonja McShane
>>> To: austechwriter@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
>>> Sent: Tuesday, December 20, 2005 8:58 AM
>>> Subject: atw: Quick grammar question
>>>
>>>
>>> A quick question for the grammarish types. When there are
>>> two categories of information, district-specific and non-
>>> district-specific, do I put the two hyphens in the second
>>> one? I'm pretty sure I do, but not 100%. (It's one of
>>> those very-slow-to-get-the-brain-in-gear mornings!)
>>>
>>> Thanks,
>>> Sonja
>>>
>>> ___________________
>>> Sonja McShane
>>> Panviva Pty Ltd
>>> bh: (03) 9822 0555
>>> mb:  0413 769 548


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