'The word pedants' top 10 | It's specific, not Pacific...' blog discussion.

Patr100

etruscanshades wrote: »

YES! Unless you're Jeg the Peg (with his extra leg)

I think you meant Jake the Peg.

-

bargepole

People sometimes say to me "There's no need to get pedantic".

My reply: "You're quite correct, I have no need to get pedantic, because I am already pedantic".

Another favourite, usually when correcting someone's misuse of language, is the phrase "You're too clever by half", to which my response is "No, actually you're too stupid by one third".

hennypenny_2

flimsier wrote: »

I haven't read the whole thread, but I agree with the whole post, except for 110%. You can, of course, give 110% of something, including effort. It just depends what you're measuring. I might now in writing this post be giving 200% of the effort I gave last night into writing some other post (though I'm not sure how you accurately quantify effort). Martin may have earned 750% of my salary in the last month.

Do you mean Martin may have earned 750% more than your salary and that you may be giving 200% more effort than you did last night?

quoia

Paul_Brown wrote: »

It irritates me that quantum leap is used to suggest significant progress where as it is an near infamtesimally small increment.

AGREED! Obviously it's metaphorical but should mean an ABRUPT or SIGNIFICANT change and not a relatively imperceptible step that, whilst forward, does NOT take you drastically nearer the target. (Interesting spelling :rotfl: )

KimYeovil wrote: »

But... but... but... surely 'infinitesimal' is just as opposite and different from 'quantal' as an enormous leap is from a quantum one.

I think we need adjudication from Quasar on this one but surely one thing a quantum jump is not is infinitesimal - it is discrete and measurable.

Kim, I couldn't decide if you were agreeing or disagreeing with Paul, or what a quantal had to do with it. The "size" of "your" quantum seemed to change between statements - and Paul was suggesting the error of claiming a QL, whilst "discrete and measurable", if it was relatively zero progress

jools0001 wrote: »

Good point. I think 'quantum' refers to indivisibility, not smallness. So quantum leap could be perfectly logical if it's used to mean something going from one state to another in one step rather than by increments.
...............................

Jools, not sure the "indivisibility" aspect is relevant to a QL or QJ. The "one step" is more literal to quantum mechanics than the metaphorical usage Paul means, and the "by increments" is actually nearer the truth. I agree with Paul that if at the outset your target is considered to be 20 years away, approximately 250 steps to be achieved at about 1 per month, and after 2 years you are at step 25, then you are on target but not really anything else. If by some luck, some lateral thinking and a donation of £1 billion, you get to step 150 in the following 6 weeks, then I think you could claim a QL forward.

Jezaroo wrote: »

To quote the physicist Dennis Overbye: "A person who wasn't outraged on first hearing about quantam theory didn't understand what had been said".
Quantal means having one of only two possible states, and a quantam leap, literally, is when an electron or atom changes from one to the other. And yes, these are very small changes. A typical atom has a diameter of 0.00000008cm. From here you can get into Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle where, in a nutshell, an electron doesn't exist until it is observed. Or, it is at once everywhere and nowhere.
It is this radical thinking, that gave rise to the phrase Quantam Leap, to quote Chambers:a sudden spectacular advance, esp one which dramatically skips over intermediate stages of understanding or development.
I gleaned most of this from Bill Bryson's 'A Short History of Nearly Everything'

Whilst the physicality of the actual QL really IS INFINITESIMAL (to us at least), from the ELECTRON'S point of view .....

... a Quantum Leap ....

... is actually ...

HUGE

:) :) :) :)

quoia

ViolaLass wrote: »

It really doesn't, you know. The teacher had probably allowed for bonus marks to be earned which, in this case, pushed the poster over 20 marks.

In which case the essay WAS NOT "marked out of 20" but AT LEAST 25.

Who knows, maybe EVERYBODY ELSE at etruscanshades' school may have written a physics essay at exactly the same time and they all got 50 marks each.

That would mean etruscanshades ONLY got half marks, a 50% score at the very best, after all it may have been possible to get 60 marks - who knows.

Sadly that may have made etruscanshades the dunce of the physics class and not the genius they have always thought they were - still clutching on to the evidence of this "success" even to this day, 50 years on.

Sorry to burst your bubble after all this time - it must be so disheartening

ViolaLass

Ah, I see, we're on to the RANDOM words in CAPITALS bit of the argument now, ARE we?

quoia

ViolaLass wrote: »

Ah, I see, we're on to the RANDOM words in CAPITALS bit of the argument now, ARE we?

Nothing RANDOM about mine, not sure about YOURS

And I see you are on to the "attack" the layout and presentation of a post rather than discuss its content bit of the argument :rotfl:

Absoluutbeginner

My teeth grind when someone says "sikth" when they mean "sixth" - as in "it is the sixth of May," or "he came sixth in the race." :mad:

I hear it so often now that I'm almost beginning to doubt myself - so is it "si-k-th" or "si-x-th"? :eek:

ndglass

Has anyone noticed the vastly increased use of "ones" as in: those (or them) ones, when those is sufficient? There are other instances too when the word ones is over used.

Footpather

Absoluutbeginner wrote: »

My teeth grind when someone says "sikth" when they mean "sixth" - as in "it is the sixth of May," or "he came sixth in the race." :mad:

I hear it so often now that I'm almost beginning to doubt myself - so is it "si-k-th" or "si-x-th"? :eek:

That is annoying, along with quarter pronounced as 'corter'.