Re: tips digest: November 17, 2003

[Cynthia Bainbridge Mullis, Ph.D.]

I would add a couple these:

appendix                Appendices  (I'm told that appendixes is considered correct also, but I'm unconvinced)

Alumnus/alumni, but also alumna/alumnae.  Almost everyone uses the masculine form even when they refer to a woman or a group of alumnae.

And practically everyone has Curriculum Vitae at the top of their CV - Are they cats with nine lives?  This is such a pervasive error that I am seriously considering changing mine so that it's wrong.  Knowing I've written it right is cold comfort when you worry that your vita will end up in the circular file because everyone is disgusted by your careless typo.

And don't even get me started on the sherbet-sherbert thing!  Fortunately that doesn't come up much in psych papers.

And I too am driven nuts by:
        Students who use the refelxive case wrong (Jim, Bob, and myself believe that . . .)
        Students who start sentences with "Being that we all want to  . . ."
        Also, by people who write "I feel that . . ."  Inside I'm screaming that I don't care how they feel, I want to know what kinds of evidence they have.

I'd better stop now!
        Cindy M.



At 11:00 PM 11/17/2003, you wrote:

TIPS Digest for Monday, November 17, 2003.


Subject: Re: Writing Pet Peeves
From: Marte Fallshore <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Date: Mon, 17 Nov 2003 12:47:49 -0800
X-Message-Number: 11

These are GREAT! Could you compile them, please? I concur with all
others have said, but also go crazy with singular/plural confusion, so
provide them the following:

Frequently Confused Singular and Plural Forms
        Singular                Plural
        alumnus         alumni
        analysis                analyses
        criterion               criteria
        datum           data
        hypothesis      hypotheses
        locus           loci
        medium          media
        phenomenon      phenomena
        schema          schemata
        stimulus                stimuli
        stratum         strata


Of course, as Steven Specht points out, providing it and their using it
are two different things!

Marte Fallshore


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Marte Fallshore
Department of Psychology
Room 462
Central Washington University
Ellensburg, WA 98926-7575

509/963-3670
509/963-2307 (fax)

I teach for free; they pay me to grade. (anon)

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Cynthia Bainbridge Mullis, Ph.D.

Assistant Professor of Psychology

University of Wisconsin - Whitewater

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Whitewater, WI  53190

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Office Hours - Fall 2003

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