Wikipedia talk:Lies Miss Snodgrass told you

Humor and IAR
I just reverted EEng's reversion of edits that had done two things: changed the top box from template:essay to template:humorous essay, and added WP:IAR to the "see also" section. I will explain. About IAR, it's not for nothing that almost every editor who commented "keep" in the recent ill-fated MfD cited IAR explicitly as being the spirit of this essay. This is an essay about "rules" set by some editors, that other editors can do well to ignore. And about the template, it is important first of all to note that it says that the page may, despite having humor, also contain "advice" that implicitly is serious advice. And if you don't want people to see it as containing humor, then you really should remove the joke-y pseudo-quote from Hamlet, and not frame the entire piece around jokey names for a teacher. Now, knowing EEng as I do, I'm sure that he feels sensitive about anything that might detract from his expression of indignation over being told to obey dubious grammar rules, an indignation that is doubtless Serious BiznessTM, and that he will probably want to argue this to death. So: don't. Let's see what other editors say as well. --Tryptofish (talk) 22:12, 9 February 2017 (UTC)


 * Let the arguing begin! The origin of this essay is the suggestion here by . I'm sorry, but I feel that labeling this page as humorous gives entirely the wrong impression. And so does the link to IAR (though I don't feel strongly about that detail) because this page isn't about ignoring rules, but rather about recognizing that certain things aren't rules in the first place. I'm not indignant about being told to obey dubious rules, but I resent the waste of community time by those pushing them.  E  Eng  22:33, 9 February 2017 (UTC)
 * Would you agree to remove the Hamlet "quote" in return for removing the "humor" label? --Tryptofish (talk) 22:40, 9 February 2017 (UTC)
 * Lord, what fools these mortals be. You were right the first time: let's see what others think.  E Eng  22:46, 9 February 2017 (UTC)
 * Good student. I'm right every time. --Tryptofish (talk) 22:49, 9 February 2017 (UTC)
 * I'll bardfan-dancewalk on the side of removing the quote box and maybe adding the reference in the text as something like "as inferred in Shakespeare's quote from Hamlet, (add actual quote portion here)", and then explain what's inferred. Solves a problem but keeps the information. Randy Kryn 23:57, 9 February 2017 (UTC)
 * This is where I wish my glittering array of s didn't glitter quite so much.  E Eng  00:01, 10 February 2017 (UTC)
 * Or that thing I did with the quote, to unhumor it. Apologies for getting into this page, I'm glad the nominator drew my attention to it. Good concept. Will go back to italics now. Randy Kryn 00:22, 10 February 2017 (UTC)

I know what?
The nutshell refers to "before you-know-what happened". I have to admit, no, I don't know what. What was it? --Tryptofish (talk) 00:04, 10 February 2017 (UTC)
 * To respect the privacy of Miss Snodgrass I won't be reviving that painful episode. Perhaps will know of an appropriately delicate way to communicate the essentials.  E  Eng  00:54, 10 February 2017 (UTC)
 * So I take it that it's an in-joke, rather than an historic event. --Tryptofish (talk) 01:07, 10 February 2017 (UTC)
 * You force me to break character so I can so: of course it's not an historic event, but no, it's not any kind of in-joke either. It's whatever the reader wants to imagine it to be.  E Eng  01:13, 10 February 2017 (UTC)
 * Then, really, it's not helpful. I've made it a moot point by making the nutshell a proper nutshell: a summary rather than an introduction. --Tryptofish (talk) 01:17, 10 February 2017 (UTC)
 * That's a definite improvement to move the bloat our of the nutshell. But I don't know what you have against nuns that you want to write them out of history.  E Eng  01:25, 10 February 2017 (UTC)
 * For starters, they're clearly in league with the penguins. They don't just dress like them, but it is obviously no accident that penguins began invading not just Chile but also South Africa during the same time period that the Catholic Church established a strong presence in both regions, including a bunch of nunneries. It's the multi-hemisphere first wave of an Antarctic occupation and annexation movement.  Rome and the Pope are just a public-relations and appeasement distraction while the shadowy Ice Empire gets an unprecedented foothold on two more continents.   — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  23:47, 27 July 2020 (UTC)
 * That's fine, just leave out the wink-wink part, thanks. --Tryptofish (talk) 01:28, 10 February 2017 (UTC)

Focus
I'd like to invoke the nonexistent prerogative of the page creator to ask that this page stay a little more focused on classic school-marmish myths, not every ill-founded claim someone said they learned in school. For example, I don't see Miss Snodgrass telling kids that hyphen is the same as emdash -- quite the opposite, in fact. I'm parking a few of these items here. Feel free to restore a few if you feel really strongly about them.

(They've never been the same in modern typography; there's just not a distinction in handwriting or on most computer keyboards. These characters have separate glyphs in Unicode and distinct usage. They can also be found in the editing tools under the Wikipedia edit window, in both the "Insert" and "Wiki markup" views.) (This is true of most such words, but there are exceptions, e.g. inflexion, complexion. Consult modern dictionaries if uncertain, and use the predominant spelling.)
 * "The hyphen (-), the minus (−), and the en dash (–) are all the same; the lowercase x and the multiply sign (×) are interchangeable."
 * "The -xion suffix is obsolete and has been replaced with -ction, as in connection."

 E Eng  18:05, 12 February 2017 (UTC)

'Tis good
Tony (talk)  08:15, 13 October 2018 (UTC)
 * Thank you, . Perhaps you will enjoy WP:Principle of Some Astonishment. EEng 14:22, 13 October 2018 (UTC)

Miss Snodgrass
Sounds a lot like the Miss Thistlebottom of Steven Pinker's lectures on good writing. I wonder if they ever co-taught, or if they conspired with Strunk and White back in the day... The Blade of the Northern Lights ( 話して下さい ) 18:14, 13 November 2018 (UTC)
 * Thistlebottom is her married name. I doubt she was ever within 1000 miles of Strunk and White. EEng 18:21, 13 November 2018 (UTC)
 * Touché. And a clever plot, looking like 2 people at once... oh damn it, now they'll contact me from beyond the grave to finalize my destruction. Ah well, I await my impending doom. The Blade of the Northern Lights ( 話して下さい ) 18:37, 13 November 2018 (UTC)

"to include:" versus "including:"...
Interesting essay! Thanks!

It reminds me of something I find very jarring, every time I come across it. It is extremely common in documents written by those who work for the US DoD, and sometimes by former DoD personnel. Near as I can tell no one else uses it.

When listing a possibly incomplete list of sub-elements DoD personnel precede a list with "to include:", where everyone else precedes a list with "including:". It took me multiple encounters to figure out all "to include:" meant was "including:". It still jars me, every time I come across it. I have to remind myself I know what they really meant, every single time.

Do any respected style guides recommend this use of "to include:"? How did the DoD come to insist on this? Geo Swan (talk) 16:26, 27 July 2020 (UTC)
 * To my recollection I've seen to include in contracts and other statements of what is projected to be in future: Adjacent to each base will be accommodations for dependents, these accommodations to include shops, stores, schools, and recreational facilities. Including is timeless, however; the foregoing could have read ... accommodations for dependents, including shops, stores .... It sounds like you've been seeing to include in contexts where it shouldn't be used, such as descriptions of conditions already extant. Paging Wikipedia's style-manual maven, . EEng 21:05, 27 July 2020 (UTC)
 * I agree with EEng, and have seen "to include" in the same legalese context about future conditions. Given WP:NOT, use of it on WP would be rather limited (maybe for something like ongoing legal negotiations when terms so far have been disclosed in RS). I've also seen "to include" in technical standards, in basically the same sense (typically in describing what an implementation must do to comply with the spec).  But, yeah, there's probably no non-quoted construction in which "including" can't be substituted, and it'll read less stilted than "to include".  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  23:36, 27 July 2020 (UTC)

Randomizer
My intention with this edit was to create a silly little randomizer that would switch between a spaced en-dash and an unspaced em-dash every time the page is purged (with an Easter-egg link to reload the page on-click). To see it in action, just click on the hyphen in that version. (Only 50% chance of it changing on any given click, of course.) Thought it would be a funny addition, but I defer to you. -- Tamzin [cetacean needed] (she/they) 21:39, 1 August 2021 (UTC)
 * That certainly is clever but I fear it may be too subtle – I mean, how is anyone to even know it's there so that they may partake in the fun? However, one never knows but that an application of such a contrivance might come in handy someday, and should that day ever come I will certainly use your contrivance as a model. E<b style="color:blue;">Eng</b> 02:48, 2 August 2021 (UTC)

Suggested addition
Because earlier today I had to revert the incorrect correction at the buttermilk article for the third time, I was thinking about adding a line about "drunk" being the correct past participle for the verb sense of drink. There was a snodgrassism that it should be "drank", which is the simple past tense, not the participle. Probably rooted in some puritanical nonsense about avoiding the word drunk because of its other use as a synonym for intoxicated that ruffled the feathers of prohibition advocates or some such. "It is drank" is never a correct construction, because drink follows the same pattern as other irregular one-syllable verbs with a short I, like swim-swam-swum; sing-sang-sung; ring-rang-rung; sink-sank-sunk, etc. What do others think about adding this? oknazevad (talk) 16:30, 22 August 2023 (UTC)
 * Sounds reasonable, but I don't think you mean "smug". :-)  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  22:35, 22 August 2023 (UTC)
 * I blame autocorrect. I'd like it to be phrased in a way that fits with the street of the examples so it doesn't stick out like a sore thumb. oknazevad (talk) 02:26, 23 August 2023 (UTC)