Archive for May, 2010

Siphoning off Mistakes from the OED

May 23rd, 2010

There has been a lot of coverage recently of an apparent mistake in the Oxford English Dictionary (OED) that has gone unnoticed for almost a hundred years.  The OED definition of ’siphon’ states that siphons move liquids from one container to another using “the force of atmospheric pressure”. However, last week Physicist Stephen Hughes of Queensland University of Technology in Australia spotted and pointed out that it is actually the force of gravity that moves the liquid.

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We have a great deal of sympathy for the OED editors here; it is surely inevitable that any piece of work that has around 290,000 entries is going to have the odd tiny error, and, as the OED’s Margot Charlton said, “The OED entry for siphon dates from 1911 and was written by editors who were not scientists”.  Furthermore, it seems there is actually some debate about whether the definition is absolutely wrong (see this piece in The Register). However, the lively and entertaining debate that Hughes’ eagle eye has provoked just goes to show that sometimes a willingness to challenge even the highest of linguistic authorities can help make everybody better off.

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Thankfully, the OED people’s relaxed and up-front approach is also to be commended. We are really pleased that they have not tried to pass the mistake off as a copyright trap or – as they are sometimes called – a Mountweasel. Editors and language lovers remember how The New Oxford American Dictionary, in August 2005, revealed that the second edition contained at least one fictional entry under the letter E, inspiring lots of people to go hunting for it. This was later determined to be the word ‘esquivalience’, defined as “the wilful avoidance of one’s official responsibilities”, which had originally been added in the first edition from 2001. As the text of the book was distributed electronically and therefore very easy to copy, it was a deliberate mistake intended to trip up the unwary. It certainly caught out dictionary.com, which was conned into including an entry for it – although funnily enough it has since been removed! We suspect that the next edition of the OED, due to be published later this year, will be absolutely clear about the forces of gravity and atmospheric pressure in its definition of ’siphon’ – or will, at the very least, be sure to refer to the debate!

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My Blue Pencil Sponsors Daily Writing Tips

May 4th, 2010

Daily Writing Tips is one of the best sites on the Internet for anyone interested in improving their writing.  Every day the editors and writers behind Daily Writing Tips add a new grammar, spelling, punctuation or vocabulary tip to the site.  It has a massive audience of both native and non-native English writers and, if you check it out for yourself, you’ll soon see why.  Most people will find something of interest, whatever the purpose or subject of their own writing; the tips are helpfully broken down into categories such as Business Writing, Fiction Writing, Misused Words and Word of the Day.  For those who would like to be more actively involved in the site, the forum provides a lively community of language lovers and learners.

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One of the reasons we launched mybluepencil.net is that, as more and more people find themselves with a need to express themselves in writing, be it in their blog or through tweets and texts, we believe it is important that they do so with confidence and pleasure.  Writing shouldn’t be something people feel embarrassed about or that prevents people from getting their ideas across.  That’s why we’re so happy to be sponsoring a site like Daily Writing Tips!

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