Before and after
Well. I'm back at work. There's this one line of editing that I'm looking at and I'm intrigued at what is 'right', what is 'wrong'.
Original sentence:
The teacher who came into the class was saying, 'Open your English books to pages 24 and 25 and do Exercise A and Exercise D.'
Correct sentence:
The teacher, who came into the class, was saying,' Open your English books at pages 24 and 25 and do Exercise A and Exercise D.'
I was discussing some scripts with a couple of my authors, who are very experienced teachers, and as always, we were arguing over the differences in British and American spellings for certain words. Hence, I'll share with you what I've learned ever since I started doing this…For the benefit of students who will sit the local examinations, please know that we use the Oxford Advanced Learner's Dictionary as a point of reference (the other dictionaries are correct, but when it comes to solving ambiguities, decide with the OALD). Hence, even though Malaysia uses British English, the following stands correct:
Organize, not organise
Organization, not organisation
Realize, not realise
Realization, not realisation
In the OALD, the definition for the above headwords are also accompanied by this line, 'in BrE also …', and this line occurs for many other words where two versions of the spelling are acceptable. When this happens, we always take the first word as THE correct way of spelling or saying something.
Mum got back last night. She called me around 9-ish, upon arrival at KLIA, reminding me to come pick her up in my car.
'Make sure you drive your car. '
'Uh. Yeah… why?'
'Just make sure it's YOUR car… not his.'
'Erm…'
Following which, Eric and I had to go into a short discussion of plans as to where to place his car.
'What's wrong with taking my car? You can always sit in the back what…'
'Yeah but she threatened to take a cab back if we went in YOUR car!!'
*Loud chuckle*
'I know it's strange but we will have to go in my car. She insisted.'
'Wokay… anything you say…'
When we reached Sentral, Mum was already waiting for us. We put her things in the boot, and then, I opened the back seat door, following which there was a short struggle between Mum and me for the back seat.
'What are you doing? Let me in!!!'
'Ma, you're supposed to take the front passenger's seat lah!'
'I WILL NOT!!! You go in front…!!!'
'Ma what's wrong????'
'Just go in front!!!!'
And then, she PINCHED me on the arm, forced me out of the way, planted herself in the back seat and closed the door. We were all laughing at her strange behaviour, even louder when she said very loudly, 'Eric, next time you have one of her girl-friends tagging along with with the two of you in the same car, get her to sit in the back and let her friend sit in front, and see if she LIKES that!!!'
Mothers. Hah.
January 26th, 2005 at 1:12 pm
The original sentence sounds a lot more correct to me. that said, BOTH sentences seem to be very dodgy to me.
certainly not something I would use.
I just realised I have yet to sit in the backseat of MY car ever since I got it… weird.
January 26th, 2005 at 11:15 pm
omg. is dat really english? i never knew my english so teruk lar. i mean those 2 sentences… all sounds correct
January 27th, 2005 at 11:18 am
Actually, the Oxford English Dictionary (the actual OED, not the OALD) prefers “realize” to “realise”. You’d be surprised to learn that -ize suffixes are not really American inventions. Link
I prefer -ize endings myself.
As for which sentence is correct, I would say they are both correct, but the first one sounds better. Often, the easiest way to check usage is to google it and see what turns up. Link
January 27th, 2005 at 11:22 am
Oops, your blog software mangled my google link.
Here it is in Tinyurl:
Link
January 27th, 2005 at 2:53 pm
wow! wait a second… I think I just entered the matrix by swallowing the wrong pill.
all my life I was raised to believe that “organiZe” is evil! pure evil… now it is correct?
*arrrGghhHH* my world is crumbling on me. HelP!
January 27th, 2005 at 3:09 pm
OUP invariably uses the -ize ending for the confusing sets, so in every OUP publication (dictionaries, reference materials, storybooks, online materials), you’ll see those words spelt such… hence the OED of course, opts for what I’ve listed above.
The above is set for the benefit of Malaysian students. The MOE recognizes the OALD as the reference dictionary, just like how the Kamus Dewan is recognized as the reference dictionary for Bahasa Melayu (or is it Malaysia?).
January 29th, 2005 at 11:49 am
Just thought of this:
It’s ‘exercise’ not ‘exercize’ and thus ‘realise’ may come more naturally. I love American English and spelling it as ‘realize’ though. Pronouncing ‘realization’ sounds more rough, sharp, more… American, compared to the knight-holding-cup-of-tea ways of pronouncing ‘realisation’. However, I prefer pronouncing ‘Z’ as ‘Zak’. More oomph.
However, these are merely minor annoyances in comparison to things that make me twitch in mother-never-teach-you-England rage, like ’stuffs’.
February 1st, 2005 at 2:12 pm
oh well. the moment i leave this place, i’m going throw all these things to the wind. and be a true blue sociolinguist. while that lasts, of course.