User:Jeeves

Most of what I do on the Wiki is copyediting. I don't really create articles, I just like to fix up the ones that are already here.

Suffix Abuse

My personal English-language pet peeve. As a linguistics student, I of course disdain prescriptive "grammar rules" and have great tolerance, even awe and respect, for the dynamic nature of the English language. But this really bothers me:

The excessive and silly elongification of English words must be preventiated at all costs! Death to the derivational suffixationalizers!!

Think before you coin, plz.

Words liberated so far

• intermingle mingle
• transcribal transcription
• disputation dispute
• syncretistic syncretic
• agriculturalists farmers
• prehistorical prehistoric
• ritualistic ritual
• traditionalistic traditional
• ceremonious events ceremonies

And at the phrase level...

Weird phrases

• make reading more readily available make reading easier

Don't use OFTEN so often!

Often I find articles which often use the word often too often. I will often edit these articles to use the word often less often, especially since the authors of such articles often lack the authority to say whether something really happens often or happens not so often. People often think that using the word often sounds more encyclopedic and will lead people to believe that they are often smarter than they are. However, I think this is often transparent.

Suggested Alternatives

• frequently
• generally
• usually
• in general
• for the most part
• typically
• sometimes
• on occasion
• (this space intentionally left blank)

In one article (beef) I removed 7 occurrences of "often"! Why do people like this word so much? Does it sound good, or have some kind of encyclopedic mystique? Perhaps we'll never know. It's probably often a side-effect of collaborative authorship.