Am I being too pedantic?

There is an Australian Government advertisement on my yahoo mail page regarding paid parental leave which states "$570 a week before tax".

To me it is rather ambiguous and should read "$570 per week before tax".

*grin* I tried to email them to point this out but the 'contact us' link doesn't work.

There's no such thing as too pedantic!

And here's an annoying one - the lawyers I type for invariably refer to "an hourly rate of £x an hour".

Grrrr.

What really bugs me here in the UK is things like this: "The basic state pension is currently £97.65 for a single person and £156.15 for a couple. Means-tested top-ups for the poorest ensure single pensioners have an income of at least £132.60 and couples get £202.40. " (Telegraph) Is that per day, per week, per month, per year, or just a one-off payment? In their defense, this particular story does refer later to "the £140-a-week rate", implying that the previous figures were also per week, but all too often such figures are just given on their own.

Likewise I am bothered by tax rates that are given in pence, e.g. "On this peculiar theme, Mr Osborne boasted on the Today programme on Monday of his resolve to keep the 50 pence tax rate, not least, one must suppose, because it makes everyone who does not earn over £150,000 a year feel happy that those who do must pay more tax. However, as Mr Osborne's colleague Vince Cable has conceded, the 50 pence rate raises no money." (Also from the Telegraph, but also widespread.) It's no surprise that a 50 pence tax raises no money - surely it costs more than that to print and post the forms!

If you ask the politicians they will, no doubt, agree that they have to keep improving the situation until everybody has an above average income.

One of the things I've become known for around here is my New York City pedantry, usually in the form of an complaint whenever I come across someone (stupidly, I think) typing "New York City, New York, USA" as a location*.

The other day, I came across an ad on Facebook, suggesting that I buy an apartment in Brooklyn rather than Manhattan. It described the building in which said apartments-for-sale were located as being "minutes from New York City" -- something unbelievable, as anything in New York can't be minutes away from New York.

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* It's fine to use "New York City" when not placing the city within the state. It is not fine to say "New York City, New York." The inclusion of "City" in that instance is like the inclusion of "machine" in "ATM machine" -- at best, it's redundant verbiage.

Is that how "'New York, New York' so good they named it twice" came about?

> 5 were located as being "minutes from New York City" -- something unbelievable, as anything in New York can't be minutes away from New York

One thing I learned when I moved to NY (state) is that when people around here say "City" (as in, "I work in the City" or "We're going clubbing in the City") they mean Manhattan. Otherwise, they'll say Queens or Brooklyn or whatever. It's the same when people in London say the City; they mean a very specific section of London.

In the case of your ad, I'd say the New York part was redundant. But only if you're up on the local lingo.

>7 PhaedraB:
They could have said "minutes away from Manhattan" which, in addition to actually being correct, uses fewer words (and letters).

"ISBN number" ? Another redundancy.

My local newspaper once reported on a 'lone ubiquitous pine tree'. I received no response when I wrote and pointed out the contradiction

Just saw this teaser headline on AOL News:

Tara Lipinski says she remembers a
lot of things about winning gold medal
during the 1998 Winter Olympics.
But one tiny thing still alludes her

It's all just an allusion, I guess.

Oh, dear.

I have the other issue with "New York"--which is that most of the time people assume the city is meant even when you cannot tell from the context whether it is the city or the rest of the big state up here. I edited an article with the vague title of something like "Things to Do in New York" that concerned only things to do in Manhattan--probably what was meant in the first place, but how can one be sure?

Is New York the only US city/town with the same name as the state it’s in?

Off the top of my head, I'm thinking of Oklahoma City and Kansas City, but one big difference is that I don't think anyone ever refers to them without the "City" part of the name--New York City is referred to as "New York" all the time.

>13 ejj1955:
Exactly. And with Oklahoma City and Kansas City, I think the "City" part is legally part of the name. And a necessary one, or else you're talking about a state. "New York" on it's own applies to either the city or the state, and you only need to specify where context doesn't make it clear.

Yes--my original point was that context doesn't always make it clear and yet people don't specify, they assume the city is meant.

But the thing is, most people assume that Manhattan is meant. Though perhaps I'm revealing another aspect of my pedantry about the correct usage of "New York."

12> It's different circumstances, but there's Washington. No idea how people nearby refer to it, but you have the metonymy of "Washington" all the time in the news. When I was little, before I really understood that DC is in a completely different place from Washington State, I could get a lot confused about what was being discussed.

>16 AnnaClaire:, 17 Two valid points.

#13 - And the majority of Kansas City is in Missouri.

There is a Colorado City in southern Colorado.

Manhattan is in Kansas.

You mean "there is a Manhattan in Kansas." It should not be confused with the one in New York.

>14 AnnaClaire:: That's more or less what I suspected.

In the style guide I've got our typesetters working to, we ask them to list references to books with the publisher name followed by the city, then either (a) the state abbreviation, if American or (b) the country, if elsewhere (as "Lawrence Erlbaum: Mahwah, NJ" or "Ashgate: Aldershot, UK") ... excepting major capitals (assuming readers know where Berlin is) and New York, for precisely the reason that "Random House: New York, NY" feels, er, like stating the bleeding obvious. :^)

23> and New York, for precisely the reason that "Random House: New York, NY" feels, er, like stating the bleeding obvious. :^

All those poor people in Albany and Rochester and Syracuse, reduced to nonexistence. Though I always did suspect that when my stepmom says she comes from "Upstate New York", she was making up lies to hide her secret past as a spy, or something.

Upstate is anything past Yonkers. Or maybe the Bronx. Or maybe just across the river. Manhattanites don't cross water. Maybe they're all vampires.

Downstate Illinois is anything outside of 294. If you're from Chicago, you know what I mean.

>24 keristars:: That the ", NY" is obvious after "New York", not that the "New York," is obvious before "NY"!

26> But the whole point of this thread (or at least 50% of the point of this thread) is that "New York" is the name of the city AND the state. If it says "Random House: New York", it's not necessarily obvious that you're referring to the city and not the state.

> 25
Downstate Illinois is anything outside of 294. If you're from Chicago, you know what I mean.

or south of I-80! (Cairo, for instance, is downstate.)

Though, actually, "outside of 294" isn't exactly right, because you need to consider the "collar counties", some of which lie outside of 294, but aren't exactly "downstate", either.

>16 AnnaClaire: Brooklyn, for example, was not always part of New York (the city). Indeed, it would by itself be one of the largest cities in the United States. It's also interesting enough in its own right, I daresay.

I’m from Cape Town South Africa; I would go along with message 7’s argument. ‘City’ probably refers to a specific section of the City of New York in this case. Many visitors from the USA I was privileged to host in my home town sometimes also referred to the inner city as ‘Downtown’. Should the writer rather have stated ‘Downtown New York’? It would be interesting to know what the writer had in mind when placing the ad. Could it be the fact that as the ad was on Facebook, the writer wanted to ensure those who were not ‘up on the lingo’ (PhaedraB) such as non New Yorkers or people from outside of the USA could understand the ‘city’ context? Everyone knows New York, not everyone knows Manhattan, Queens, and Brooklyn or any of the other districts of New York.

>27 keristars: Not so. It is clear that the city is meant.

Look at the title page of most any book. The location or locations of the publishers are indicated as cities. Therefore, Random House in New York is in the city New York. There are some requirements when cataloging books using Anglo-American cataloging rules about which cities do not need to have more than the city name listed. New York is clearly one of them. Cambridge, on the other hand, needs to have either Massachusetts or England mentioned to avoid ambiguity. Who does not know where the city New York is? Well, maybe some don't, but they would be scarcely literate enough to read anything published there...

Poke around the Library of Congress website and have a gander at the catalog records.

>28 lilithcat:

Hmph. Collar counties didn't count until maybe 20 years ago. Used to be, you'd drive through cornfields on your way to St. Charles or Park Forest. For us old farts, that means downstate.

(Full disclosure: I was born in Chicago, but did spend a few years downstate. South of I-80, way outside I-294. Total population of the county: 6000. Total population of my town: 1500--on Saturday when all the farmers were in town at the bank. I know from what I speak ;-)

31> Oh, geez, cue my red-face. It never actually occurred to me that "New York" on title pages meant "New York City". I just assumed that it must be near the city, because that's where almost all the big companies I've ever heard of have their offices (if not in NYC, then nearby), but really, it never occurred to me that the city is what is specifically meant in those cases.

I'm familiar with this convention in listing publishers--and, of course, another way in which ambiguity is avoided is that I can't think of a single instance in which one would list a publisher and then list just the state.

It's in less restrictive contexts that it becomes confusing--if, for example, someone asked me where I was from and I answered "New York." Although I'm old enough by now to know that I'd better say "upstate New York" if I want to avoid such ambiguity.

>29 msladylib:
True, Brooklyn wasn't always part of New York City -- in fact, it didn't join the rest of the city until 1898, and was the last borough to do so. And it still maintains its own identity to the extent it can. But it now is a part of the city, so assuming that "New York City" does not extend beyond Manhattan is a bit nuts.

And keep in mind that such an exclusionary assumption is no less offensive to residents of Queens, Staten Island, or the Bronx.

>27 keristars:, 31, 33: Indeed, as msladylib says. If all the other book references are listing city names (London, Amsterdam, Sydney...) then upon seeing "New York" among them it follows that this too is the city name, not that we have suddenly become vaguer. So I have one section that says...

...
Stern, D.B. (1997). Unformulated experience: From dissociation to imagination in psychoanalysis. Hillsdale, NJ: Analytic Press.
Terr, L. (1990). Too scared to cry. New York: Harper and Row.
Vaillant, G. (1977). Adaptation to life. Boston, MA: Little, Brown and Company.
...

(Now I have to hope that Harper and Row actually are in NYC or else it all falls apart!!)

Spam, anybody?

Flag those puppies.

> 40

Probably. But I, for one, am not clicking on that link to find out!

I notice that the Brits are avoiding pointing out that 'The City of London' is actually a small part of London, England that almost no-one lives in and is often called 'The Square Mile', which not too unreasonably reflects its geographical size.

43 > 'The City of London' is actually a small part of London

Hey, I mentioned that in #7! Is it because I'm American it doesn't count?

>45 PhaedraB:

My apologies.

Not sure if I should ressurect this thread, but it showed up on my front page due to that deleted post and I just wanted to comment on this from 3>

"Likewise I am bothered by tax rates that are given in pence, e.g. "On this peculiar theme, Mr Osborne boasted on the Today programme on Monday of his resolve to keep the 50 pence tax rate, ..." "

I too hate this with a passion! It's "percent", taxes are a *percentage* of income! No wonder they complain that people aren't maths savvy, if not even journalists understand a simple percentage...

Isn't an archaic expression meaning 50 pence (out of 1 pound) or basically meaning the same thing as 50%.

(I'm assuming that you're pound equals 100 pence like our dollar equals 100 pennies, but I'm not sure that's correct).

Yes, that's it, but it just *feels* all wrong mathematically (yes, I'm a words AND numbers gal :))

After all, when we get asked how much we get deducted from the gross salary, I don't say 40 pence (that would be nice, hehe), I say 40%.

I don't think it can be an archaic expression since before the 70s there were 240 pence to the pound. Whatever this is, it's newfangled :)

The issue with "On this peculiar theme, Mr Osborne boasted on the Today programme on Monday of his resolve to keep the 50 pence tax rate, ..." is that it actually refers to 'pence' as a rate. A rate must be in the form of 'x' units per 'y' units, or no units (which is what 'percent' is). For example, miles per hour is a rate. 'Miles' alone is not a rate, and neither is 'pence'. But, if the rate is, say, 40 pence per pound, one can, with minimal math skills, figure out that this rate is the same as 40 pence per 100 pence, which is equal to 40 per 100, which is equal to 40 percent ('percent', after all, is short for the Latin per centum or per 100). To refer to a 50-pence rate assumes, even if unknowingly, that the reader already knows that it's pence per pound (and that one pound=100 pence). I personally think journalism should not assume much prior knowledge on the part of the reader, especially when it's just as easy to say, for example, "...keep the 50 percent tax rate..."

Hope that wasn't too pedantic.

Os.

>52 Osbaldistone:
The reason for this oddity in British usage is simply that we used to have a much more complicated currency, and it was easier for most ordinary people to visualise "a shilling in the pound" than "five per cent". Even more so if it's not a round number. My older British relatives always talked about taxes that way.

Of course, it becomes rather a pointless affectation if you're still doing it forty years after the switch to decimal currency, especially if you habitually drop the "...in the pound" bit.

>52 Osbaldistone:. Mr Osborne boasted on the Today programme on Monday of his resolve to keep the 50 pence tax rate,

You misunderstand that nice Mr Osborne's meaning. What he means is that if you earn £Millions you will only pay 50p tax. That's why it doesn't make any revenue and why it cannot be expressed as a percentage.

The Premier of Western Australia is determined to amalgamate city councils despite opposition from almost everyone. I found this in my local paper:

"Fremantle council needs a 'public relations officer local government reform'.

An ad for the job says the year-long gig will be critical as the port city is embiggened after it swallows East Freo and parts of Melville and Cockburn."

Not in any of my dictionaries but a web search suggests that it appeared in "Lisa the Iconoclast" — the 16th episode of the Simpson's 7th season. Made up but a perfectly cromulent word.
see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lisa_the_Iconoclast

Edited to say I personally don't like it in what seems a formal context.

I agree - what is wrong with 'enlarged' or 'expanded'?

The embiggened port city will be ginormous.