Strange Word…

[Neil WyattModerator @neilwyatt]

I usually add a hyphen or space for clarity, but is there a case for 'crossslide' being valid and the only word in the English language with three consecutive esses?

Neil

[Neil WyattModerator @neilwyatt]

[Martin KyteParticipant @martinkyte99762]

My favourite is 5 consecutive ands in a sentence. The Landlord complaining to the pub sign painter for leaving too much sapce between the PIG and AND and AND and Whistle.

:O)

Martin

[Speedy Builder5Participant @speedybuilder5]

Probably not Neil – Illnesss (But may be American) !

[WearyParticipant @weary]

Headmistressship. ??

[Howard LewisParticipant @howardlewis46836]

Depends on your spellchecker.

Mine does not like crossslide, but tolerates cross slide. the same for topslide.

And these are supposed to help us!

Howard

[pgk pgkParticipant @pgkpgk17461]

Hyphenate for clarity since it is a single sub-component…

Who remembers this terrible punctuation exercise: I was plagued by it at school…

James while John had had had had had had had had had had had a better effect on the teacher

[Peter G. ShawParticipant @peterg-shaw75338]

My personal preference regardless any other consideration is to hyphenate on the grounds of clarity, there being too many of the letter "s". This doesn't apply to topslide because there is only one of each letter.

As far as spell checkers are concerned, my admittedly limited experience of them is that they are American in origin, and therefore anything out of the ordinary is likely to default to the American version.

As far as pgk pgk's example goes, in such an instance I would simply rewrite whatever it was meant to be in order to avoid a multiplicity of words.

Peter G. Shaw

(who being well over 50 is assumed to be able to spell correctly, but who in fact resoundingly failed English Language at 'O' Level GCE.)

[Mick B1Participant @mickb1]

Posted by Neil Wyatt on 14/11/2020 14:11:42:

I usually add a hyphen or space for clarity, but is there a case for 'crossslide' being valid and the only word in the English language with three consecutive esses?

Neil

Of course it's valid! There are countless concatenated compound nouns in English; are there rules about omitting any repeating letters just because they may result in unusual combinations?

[BazyleParticipant @bazyle]

Kreuzrutsche, carro transversal, diastávrosi but quite a few EU languages use the same as us.

English doesn't have a word for everything

**LINK**

[Neil WyattModerator @neilwyatt]

Headmistressship seems bit contrived somehow?

Illnesses would be he UK spelling…

What a strange language though

Neil

[norm nortonParticipant @normnorton75434]

Strangeness might be a personal interpretation of what we see

Crossslide is a compounded noun; originally cross slide, then cross-slide but then crossslide might be a compounding too far.

[Mick B1Participant @mickb1]

Neologophobia

[Chris Pearson 1Participant @chrispearson1]

Neither "crossslide" nor "cross-slide" appears in OED. I suppose that the term really should be "across-slide".

[Michael GilliganParticipant @michaelgilligan61133]

This seems sensible advice:

The main problem regarding the use of the hyphen is that there are no fixed rules to guide us. There are however certain broad principles that most authorities accept, […]
A familiar hyphenated word should be converted into an unhyphenated single word unless to do so would result in awkwardness of spelling or ambiguity. For example, 'e-mail' easily converts to 'email', but 'cross-stitch' [because of the resultant 'sss'] does not.

Edit: I have substituted brackets for the original parentheses, to kill the wretched smiley thing

MichaelG.

.

Ref. **LINK** https://queens-english-society.org/basic-written-english-part-3/

Edited By Michael Gilligan on 14/11/2020 21:12:36

[peak4Participant @peak4]

Posted by Mick B1 on 14/11/2020 20:13:30:

Neologophobia

I wonder is anyone ever follows Susie Dent on Twitter.
This was from a recent weekly competition for odd word from another language.

Susie Dent

The worthy runners up were: for ‘poronkusema’: an old Finnish measurement of around 7.5km, calculated by how far a reindeer can travel before it needs to pee.

Bill

Edited By peak4 on 14/11/2020 21:17:44

[Nigel Graham 2Participant @nigelgraham2]

That is only the second publication I have ever seen of the punctuation puzzle offered by Pgk Pgk.

The first, and slightly different, is in the Puzzles chapter of my treasured copy of The Junior Weekend Book, a present to me when I was about 6! Over half a century and a decade ago…..

That book by the way, if not complete detours, is an eye-opener.

It contains instructions for making a basic ridge tent. Fair enough. And then a simple scow – then not content with that, a more boat-shaped rowing-dinghy (i.e. with a sharp end). No nonsense about asking your Dad to saw the wood for you – it implies just getting on and cutting it. Perhaps Dad was assumed to be busy on his Drummond lathe, or planting spuds. Then off to the local water with the un-plimmed craft and no life-jackets, for your Swallows & Amazons adventures. And when you return home, turn to the sweet-making chapter and make some toffee, now that sugar has come off-ration ( mid-1950s). No nonsense about asking your Mum to boil the molten sugar and butter for you… How did my generation survive?

[Mick B1Participant @mickb1]

Posted by Michael Gilligan on 14/11/2020 21:07:41:

This seems sensible advice:

The main problem regarding the use of the hyphen is that there are no fixed rules to guide us. There are however certain broad principles that most authorities accept, […]
A familiar hyphenated word should be converted into an unhyphenated single word unless to do so would result in awkwardness of spelling or ambiguity. For example, 'e-mail' easily converts to 'email', but 'cross-stitch' [because of the resultant 'sss'] does not.

Edit: I have substituted brackets for the original parentheses, to kill the wretched smiley thing

MichaelG.

.

Ref. **LINK** https://queens-english-society.org/basic-written-english-part-3/

Edited By Michael Gilligan on 14/11/2020 21:12:36

Yeah, yeah, yeah – but in the very next sentence he says:

"The hyphen should be used only when it is necessary as an aid to being understood. From this, it follows that if the hyphen is not necessary for that purpose it should not be used."

And it clearly isn't necessary – I've been posting 'crossslide' on here for about 4 years now (except when I forget, as I did somewhere above), and nobody's said they didn't understand.

[HopperParticipant @hopper]

Always opt for clarity. Crossslide is hard to read because of the very unusual string of the same letter and looks like it could be an error or misprint. So it causes the reader to stumble and go back over the word. They will understand it no problem, but it breaks the flow of reading to do so.

Cross-slide is much clearer. The SSS is broken up and the hyphen makes clear that it is a compound noun and the cross slide is not a slide with an unpleasant disposition.

We don't elide top slide or compound slide so I would not do so with cross slide either. Interesting that the two former don't seem to call for a hyphen but the latter still perhaps does, due to that weird string of three S's.

Yes what a weird language indeed.

Edited By Hopper on 15/11/2020 01:59:02

[John OlsenParticipant @johnolsen79199]

The responsibility is pretty much in Neil's court, since the only authority for what is correct in English is usage. The problem is that usage comes down to what editors allow to be used in their publications. The editors all look up dictionaries and grammar guides, which are based on what editors permitted in the past, so it all proceeds in a vicious circle, with no reform being possible. Hence English spelling and grammar is and will remain a nightmare, not helped by the Latin scholars attempting to impose Latin rules on a non Latin language.

John

[pgk pgkParticipant @pgkpgk17461]

Some will argue that language is merely a form of communication and should be allowed to evolve but unless one adheres to some consistent roolz re guarding sintax & gramr 1 riscs confushun & degradasion.
Emoticons are a path to ideography…

xslide, +slide, †lide

pgk

[HopperParticipant @hopper]

Posted by John Olsen on 15/11/2020 06:23:13:

The responsibility is pretty much in Neil's court, since the only authority for what is correct in English is usage. The problem is that usage comes down to what editors allow to be used in their publications. The editors all look up dictionaries and grammar guides, which are based on what editors permitted in the past, so it all proceeds in a vicious circle, with no reform being possible. Hence English spelling and grammar is and will remain a nightmare, not helped by the Latin scholars attempting to impose Latin rules on a non Latin language.

John

Not to mention the Francophiles who added the U to words like honour and harbour to add to the confusion. They Yanks actually have that right with honor and harbor etc.

[pgk pgkParticipant @pgkpgk17461]

National spelling may reflect enunciation: 'har-bore', 'har-ber', ' 'ar-ba' or 'har-brr' (America, Queens english, slang or Scots?)

pgk

[Mick B1Participant @mickb1]

Posted by John Olsen on 15/11/2020 06:23:13:

The responsibility is pretty much in Neil's court, since the only authority for what is correct in English is usage. The problem is that usage comes down to what editors allow to be used in their publications. The editors all look up dictionaries and grammar guides, which are based on what editors permitted in the past, so it all proceeds in a vicious circle, with no reform being possible. Hence English spelling and grammar is and will remain a nightmare, not helped by the Latin scholars attempting to impose Latin rules on a non Latin language.

John

The basic structure of the language may be non-Latin, but it's comprehensively riddled with Latin-based vocabulary. It'd be practically useless without it.

[David NobleParticipant @davidnoble71990]

Posted by Nigel Graham 2 on 14/11/2020 22:24:04:

That is only the second publication I have ever seen of the punctuation puzzle offered by Pgk Pgk.

The first, and slightly different, is in the Puzzles chapter of my treasured copy of The Junior Weekend Book, a present to me when I was about 6! Over half a century and a decade ago…..

That book by the way, if not complete detours, is an eye-opener.

It contains instructions for making a basic ridge tent. Fair enough. And then a simple scow – then not content with that, a more boat-shaped rowing-dinghy (i.e. with a sharp end). No nonsense about asking your Dad to saw the wood for you – it implies just getting on and cutting it. Perhaps Dad was assumed to be busy on his Drummond lathe, or planting spuds. Then off to the local water with the un-plimmed craft and no life-jackets, for your Swallows & Amazons adventures. And when you return home, turn to the sweet-making chapter and make some toffee, now that sugar has come off-ration ( mid-1950s). No nonsense about asking your Mum to boil the molten sugar and butter for you… How did my generation survive?

I realise that I'm off topic here but the above post reminded me of a book which I have. In my previous life, I performed as a magician and collected some old magic books. One of which is 'The Boy's Book of Conjuring' It describes how to make a bowl of fire appear. Are you ready?

Solder a flat plate over half a metal bowl to form a pocket. Half fill this with petrol and slip it into the waistband of your trousers. When you are ready to produce the fire, take out the bowl and drop a small pellet of sodium into it.

David

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