My favorite of these pretentious euphemisms is “curate.”
My grandchildren have curated several dead grasshoppers in the garage. My uncle curated coins. I have curated many pictures of naked celebrities. Here’s one that really exists online: “Nearly every major news organization is using Twitter’s new lists feature to curate tweets about the earthquake.”
Right.
Dudes, I am not a curator.
The true meaning of any word has two components, denotation and connotation. For example, “average” and “mediocre” mean exactly the same thing in terms of denotation, but have different connotations, so that “average” is absent of any implied judgment, while “mediocre” is used as a pejorative. “Curate” and “collect” may be very similar in denotation, but have different connotations. In that case, “collect” is the neutral word, while “curate” is approbatory and respectful.
If you run an art museum, and you go through hundreds of possibilities, selecting only the most worthy, and you have complete professional responsibility for their presentation and preservation, based upon your specialized training and experience, then you are a curator.
If you put a few pics or tweets online, or even if you put millions, as I have, you’re just “collecting” or “organizing” them, or “assembling a collection.” You ain’t a friggin’ curator, sparky.
The possessive after “s” or “z” is debatable.
Forming the possessive of polysyllabic words ending in “s” or “z” probably occasions more debate than any other subject in the world of grammar and orthography. If you look at ten different dictionaries and style manuals, I think you might get ten different answers.
The Chicago style manual says:
It depends …
1) add the ‘s in most cases (congress’s responsibility, Texas’s flag, Descartes’s essays, Ross’s explorations)
2) Add only the apostrophe when you are referring to Jesus or Moses!!! (The pope speaks in Jesus’ name, about Moses’ leadership.)
3) Add only the apostrophe for multi-syllabic words that end in the unaccented “eez” sound. (Ramses’ tomb, Euripides’ plays). It does not specify an exception for monosyllabic singular words ending with the “eez” sound, so if your name was Joe Bees, it would be “Bees’s knees.”
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Other style manuals specify a difference between words ending in the “s” sound versus the “z” sound. Therefore, they would write
Dickens’ novels
Harris’s novels
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Still other manuals completely outlaw the trailing “s” for all proper nouns ending in “s.” Therefore, if you follow that guideline, never write “Dylan Thomas’s poetry.” It must be written as “Dylan Thomas’ poetry”
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I don’t really give a good goddamn. As Churchill once said of another tricky grammatical rule (don’t end sentences with prepositions), “That is a rule up with which I will not put.”
A preposition is a horrible thing to end a sentence with.
I will die on the hill of “insure” and “ensure” being non-interchangeable.
Is it really “an historical”? It kinda sounds okay but it contradicts the usual rule of using “an” before a vowel sound and using “a” before a consonant. Unless this is an exception of some sort.
Apparently “an historical” is historical!
From the web:
“Both ‘an hospital’ and ‘a hospital’ are correct, though the silent ‘h’ is not common anymore. There is sometimes a perception that using the silent ‘h’ is more correct because it’s more traditional, but it doesn’t really matter. Almost all English speakers say ‘a hospital.’ … The word ‘history’ is similar to ‘hospital.'”
Merriam-Webster says:
“‘Historical’ is used as the general term for describing history, such as ‘historical society,’ while ‘historic’ is usually reserved for important and famous moments in history such as ‘a historic battle.’ Concerning using ‘a’ vs. ‘an,’ either is fine, but ‘a’ is more common.”
I tested myself by saying some phrases without thinking, and I always say “I don’t have A history book in my locker” and “I have to get to A hospital.”
and “hand-made”, yeah OK if you really need to clarify that you didn’t use your feet. But “artisanal” should be pronounced “artis – anal”.