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Judy G. Russell
January 31st, 2008, 04:56 PM
I don't remember seeing any references to this here, and know folks in this section will LOVE this website. So I'm reposting the following from the newsletter of the New England Historic Genealogical Society:


Research Recommendations: AskOxford.com
by Michael J. Leclerc

AskOxford.com is a free online resource produced by the Oxford University Press (OUP). The publishing house of Oxford University in England, OUP is the publisher of the Oxford English Dictionary among other things. This site provides tremendous assistance with English words and language, including spelling, grammar, and writing. The AskOxford home page shows you the word of the day, quote of the week, quotes and words from OUP publications, and featured questions from the Ask the Experts section.

The section on Global English points out that English is spoken as a first language by more than 300 million people worldwide, while millions more speak it as a second language. One in five of the world’s population is a competent speaker of the language. There are six main regional standards of English: British, U.S. and Canadian, Australian and New Zealand, South African, Indian, and West Indian. OUP includes many regionalisms in their publications.

The Ask the Experts section has a database built from questions sent to the OUP’s Oxford Word and Language Service team. For example, you can find their answer to questions such as:
What is the longest word in the English language? [it isn’t what you think it is]

Are there any words that rhyme with orange?

Are there any English words containing the same letter three times in a row? [besides brrr and shhh?]

What comes after primary, secondary, and tertiary? [and do we as genealogists really want to trust vigenary sources?]

Is there a word for nephews and nieces collectively?
Also in the Ask the Experts section, you can find a Jargon Buster tool that gives clear and concise definitions for grammar and literary terms. You can also find collective terms for animals. This might come in handy for describing the time your seafaring ancestor ran into a gam of whales or a huddle of walruses. The World of Words section gives you abstracts from various OUP resources, including the Concise Oxford Dictionary of Linguistics and the Modern Welsh Dictionary. In A Word A Year, Susie Dent selects a single word to represent each of the last hundred years. Vox pop was the word of the year in which I was born. You can find a list of the one hundred most common words in English: number one is the and number 100 is us. There is also a list of the Top 100 Quotes from the Oxford Dictionary of Quotations, with entries from Aristotle in the fourth century B.C. to Barbara Cartland in 1993.

Better Writing contains many tools useful for everything from emails to compiled family histories. Spelling and Grammar Tips will help you to avoid common errors, such as whether you should use which (or who) and that in a sentence, when to use less or fewer, words that often get confused (such as adopted and adoptive or continuous and continual), and common spelling errors. Plain English gives you tips for user-friendly writing, such as making average sentence length 15 to 20 words, avoiding sexist usage, and using only as many words as you need. For those of you confused by emoticons and modern abbreviation, you can discover what your grandchildren mean when they write BBL, KWIM, RUOK, and YMMV. You can also find out what :-* :-V and :-/ mean.

www.AskOxford.com (http://www.AskOxford.com) should be bookmarked in your browser if you do any kind of writing. You will find it an invaluable resource as you research your family history and communicate with others about your findings. BCNU!

France International
January 31st, 2008, 06:29 PM
I remember I dealt a word with 3 same letters in a row: OOOLOOBALLONG

--Mike

----- Original Message -----
From: "Judy G. Russell" <jgr1 (AT) jgrussell (DOT) com>
To: <Dixonary (AT) googlegroups (DOT) com>
Sent: Thursday, January 31, 2008 5:56 PM
Subject: [Dixonary] OT: AskOxford


>
>
> I don't remember seeing any references to this here, and know folks in
> this section will LOVE this website. So I'm reposting the following
> from the newsletter of the New England Historic Genealogical Society:
>
> >
> > Research Recommendations: AskOxford.com
> > by Michael J. Leclerc
> >
> > AskOxford.com is a free online resource produced by the Oxford
> > University Press (OUP). The publishing house of Oxford University in
> > England, OUP is the publisher of the Oxford English Dictionary among
> > other things. This site provides tremendous assistance with English
> > words and language, including spelling, grammar, and writing. The
> > AskOxford home page shows you the word of the day, quote of the week,
> > quotes and words from OUP publications, and featured questions from the
> > Ask the Experts section.
> >
> > The section on Global English points out that English is spoken as a
> > first language by more than 300 million people worldwide, while
> > millions more speak it as a second language. One in five of the world’s
> > population is a competent speaker of the language. There are six main
> > regional standards of English: British, U.S. and Canadian, Australian
> > and New Zealand, South African, Indian, and West Indian. OUP includes
> > many regionalisms in their publications.
> >
> > The Ask the Experts section has a database built from questions sent to
> > the OUP’s Oxford Word and Language Service team. For example, you can
> > find their answer to questions such as:
> > What is the longest word in the English language? [it isn’t
> > what you think it is]
> >
> > Are there any words that rhyme with orange?
> >
> > Are there any English words containing the same letter three times in a
> > row? [besides brrr and shhh?]
> >
> > What comes after primary, secondary, and tertiary? [and do we as
> > genealogists really want to trust vigenary sources?]
> >
> > Is there a word for nephews and nieces collectively?
> > Also in the Ask the Experts section, you can find a Jargon Buster tool
> > that gives clear and concise definitions for grammar and literary
> > terms. You can also find collective terms for animals. This might come
> > in handy for describing the time your seafaring ancestor ran into a gam
> > of whales or a huddle of walruses. The World of Words section gives you
> > abstracts from various OUP resources, including the Concise Oxford
> > Dictionary of Linguistics and the Modern Welsh Dictionary. In A Word A
> > Year, Susie Dent selects a single word to represent each of the last
> > hundred years. Vox pop was the word of the year in which I was born.
> > You can find a list of the one hundred most common words in English:
> > number one is the and number 100 is us. There is also a list of the Top
> > 100 Quotes from the Oxford Dictionary of Quotations, with entries from
> > Aristotle in the fourth century B.C. to Barbara Cartland in 1993.
> >
> > Better Writing contains many tools useful for everything from emails to
> > compiled family histories. Spelling and Grammar Tips will help you to
> > avoid common errors, such as whether you should use which (or who) and
> > that in a sentence, when to use less or fewer, words that often get
> > confused (such as adopted and adoptive or continuous and continual),
> > and common spelling errors. Plain English gives you tips for
> > user-friendly writing, such as making average sentence length 15 to 20
> > words, avoiding sexist usage, and using only as many words as you need.
> > For those of you confused by emoticons and modern abbreviation, you can
> > discover what your grandchildren mean when they write BBL, KWIM, RUOK,
> > and YMMV. You can also find out what :-* :-V and :-/ mean.
> >
> > 'www.AskOxford.com' (http://www.AskOxford.com) should be bookmarked in
> > your browser if you do any kind of writing. You will find it an
> > invaluable resource as you research your family history and communicate
> > with others about your findings. BCNU!
>
>
> --
> Judy G. Russell
>
> *-- jgr*
>

ktinkel
January 31st, 2008, 08:59 PM
I don't remember seeing any references to this here, and know folks in this section will LOVE this website. So I'm reposting the following from the newsletter of the New England Historic Genealogical Society:Very cool site — thanks.

Mike
February 1st, 2008, 02:15 AM
<file file file>

Toni Savage
February 1st, 2008, 06:10 AM
Hi Kathleen!

A lurking former player!!

Wanna come out and play??

-- Toni Savage


--- On Thu, 1/31/08, ktinkel <ktinkel (AT) broadlyspeaking (DOT) com> wrote:

> From: ktinkel <ktinkel (AT) broadlyspeaking (DOT) com>
> Subject: [Dixonary] Re: OT: AskOxford
> To: Dixonary (AT) googlegroups (DOT) com
> Date: Thursday, January 31, 2008, 9:59 PM
> Judy G. Russell;41640 Wrote:
> > I don't remember seeing any references to this
> here, and know folks in
> > this section will LOVE this website. So I'm
> reposting the following
> > from the newsletter of the New England Historic
> Genealogical Society:Very cool site — thanks.
>
>
> --
> ktinkel
>
> :::
> — Kathleen

Dodi Schultz
February 1st, 2008, 11:16 AM
Toni, I don't know how you posted this to the list, but apparently in HTML
or something other than plaintext, since TAPCIS brought me only a header
and not your message.

--Dodi

Judy G. Russell
February 1st, 2008, 01:37 PM
I remember I dealt a word with 3 same letters in a row: OOOLOOBALLONG

I suspect that's not recognized as an English word by too many dictionaries!

Paul Keating
February 1st, 2008, 04:53 PM
Dodi,

The reason you didn't get the message is that in the quoted portion there is
an em-rule. This, not being being in codepage 437, caused the entire message
to be rendered in quoted-printable. I think you may have told CompuServe
that you don't want to see quoted-printable, or, more likely, you have told
it you don't want to see binary, and it treats quoted-printable as binary.
Tapcis doesn't know about quoted-printable, so if CIS hadn't stripped out
the message text, the offending bit would have appeared thus:

Very cool site =E2=80=94 thanks.

Annoying, perhaps, but not much more than that.

It can be _really difficult_ to notice that a quote contains a character
that is going to trigger a quoted-printable flip. If I'm typing a message
myself, having to enter a special character may make me think twice. But
when I quote a message, it will hardly ever occur to me to proofread it for
special characters. Even if I do, I might miss one, because double quotes
don't draw attention to themselves the way inch-marks do; and even if I
notice a diacritic or a dash, I really can't remember anymore which are
"allowed" and which not. For example, I know at the moment, because I've
just checked, that e-circumflex is ok, o-circumflex is not; o-umlaut can be
uppercase, o-grave can not. But by tomorrow I will have forgotten again.

This has happened before and it isn't going to stop, no matter how careful
we try to be, when it occurs to us to be careful. You may want to consider
telling CompuServe to be less agressive about what it strips out of your
emails.

--
Paul Keating
The Hague

----- Original Message -----
From: "Dodi Schultz" <SCHULTZ (AT) compuserve (DOT) com>
Toni, I don't know how you posted this to the list, but apparently in HTML
or something other than plaintext, since TAPCIS brought me only a header
and not your message.

Dodi Schultz
February 2nd, 2008, 12:11 AM
Paul, it's not CompuServe "stripping out" anything from my messages. I've
instructed TAPCIS to bring me only headers, not full messages, on binary
material, 99 percent of which is either garbage trailing some kind of spam,
or an HTML duplicate of the plaintext message (AOL routinely does that, and
it can't be stopped). If any such stuff turns out to be a document I'm
expecting, or a photo sent by a friend, I send TAP back to fetch it from my
mailbox; it's told to delete everything else.

I see no reason to be including diacriticals or other binary triggers in
game-related messages, and dashes are easily indicated--it seems to me--by
double hyphens, no?

--Dodi

Daniel B. Widdis
February 2nd, 2008, 12:27 AM
DS> I see no reason to be including diacriticals or other binary
DS> triggers in game-related messages

To be fair, the message indicated it was Off Topic (OT).

DS> and dashes are easily indicated--it seems to me--by
DS> double hyphens, no?

Some software (MS Word, MS Outlook, et. al.) are "smart" enough to replace a
double hyphen with an em dash. This particular em dash was in the sender's
(not a regular player) signature.

--
Dan