Vintologi manual of style

[Leucosticte]

I have some trouble telling what are intentional or unintentional deviations from standard style, since some of them occur repeatedly throughout the text. I hesitate to change certain stuff systematically, unless it's desired to switch to a different style, since that could mean hundreds of changes.

E.g.,

> Mental disorders such as Christianity, ocd, depression are all cured by death.

Not sure if you want to capitalize acronyms like OCD. I think different media outfits have different rules on that; e.g. I've seen legislation like the First Step Act capitalized various ways. (FIRST STEP is an acronym, but it's not pronounced letter-by-letter like, e.g., FBI or U.S.) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Step_Act

> Death always leads to reincarnation and a new life, the new life can be better or worse, it is better to die with honor than to end up having a miserable life.

If I were writing it, I would probably split that into separate sentences, or put an "and" in front of "it is better", or use semicolons, etc. But some people use comma splices on purpose. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comma_splice

> such as writing high quality open source software

Do you want hyphens put in there? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open-source_software

> What is important for each individual is the quality of their lives and their individual moral preferences, not how long the individual lives.

I have trouble writing this type of sentence, actually; I'm not sure if you're supposed to say instead something like, "What is important for each individual is the quality of his life and his individual moral preferences, not how long he lives." There's probably a grammatical rule about that somewhere. Maybe some kind of parallelism. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parallelism_(grammar)

> One example of a stateless society is medieval iceland which lasted 290 years, their society was much more stable than any republic and also more stable than the democracy ancient Greece had.

Do you care about the capitalization of iceland there? Actually I notice Greece is capitalized. I see other similar cases, e.g. Nash being capitalized sometimes and sometimes not.

> When the majority of the population does not accept slavery(taxation, military service, etc)

Usually there's not a space in front of the opening parenthesis in this text, although I see a few exceptions. Most writing I've seen has a space in front of it, but apparently it's becoming more popular to not put the space. https://www.quora.com/Is-not-putting-a-space-immediately-before-an-open-parenthesis-becoming-more-popular

 

[Admin]

I have some trouble telling what are intentional or unintentional deviations from standard style, since some of them occur repeatedly throughout the text. I hesitate to change certain stuff systematically, unless it's desired to switch to a different style, since that could mean hundreds of changes.

E.g.,

> Mental disorders such as Christianity, ocd, depression are all cured by death.

Should be small c in christianity.

Not sure if you want to capitalize acronyms like OCD. I think different media outfits have different rules on that; e.g. I've seen legislation like the First Step Act capitalized various ways. (FIRST STEP is an acronym, but it's not pronounced letter-by-letter like, e.g., FBI or U.S.) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Step_Act

Not capitalizing OCD was intentional but maybe that was a misguided deviation since you may want to indicate for the reader it's an acronym.

> Death always leads to reincarnation and a new life, the new life can be better or worse, it is better to die with honor than to end up having a miserable life.

If I were writing it, I would probably split that into separate sentences, or put an "and" in front of "it is better", or use semicolons, etc. But some people use comma splices on purpose. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comma_splice

It's intentional

> such as writing high quality open source software

Do you want hyphens put in there? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open-source_software

Yes it's better to write "open-source".

> What is important for each individual is the quality of their lives and their individual moral preferences, not how long the individual lives.

I have trouble writing this type of sentence, actually; I'm not sure if you're supposed to say instead something like, "What is important for each individual is the quality of his life and his individual moral preferences, not how long he lives." There's probably a grammatical rule about that somewhere. Maybe some kind of parallelism. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parallelism_(grammar)

It's supposed to be gender neutral since you may reincarnate as a girl even if you currently are male.

> One example of a stateless society is medieval iceland which lasted 290 years, their society was much more stable than any republic and also more stable than the democracy ancient Greece had.

Do you care about the capitalization of iceland there? Actually I notice Greece is capitalized.

We should be consistent with that, not sure what's ideal in this case.

Or we can be intentioally inconsistent just to show we dont restrict ourself by rules.

 

[Leucosticte]

The reason I ask is that holy and quasi-holy texts such as bibles and constitutions and Shakespearean plays and so on are allowed a lot of latitude to have their own unique style. Nor is the style necessarily required to be consistent throughout, and people will debate sometimes the reason for why there's a deviation in one place or another.

The U.S. Constitutional convention had a committee of style and people debate whether they altered the course of history by making a few changes here and there that were interpreted as significant. https://www.scotusblog.com/2019/08/the-framers-intent-gouverneur-morris-the-committee-of-style-and-the-creation-of-the-federalist-constitution/

The Bible was originally not divided into chapters and verses, and at times, it's kinda weird why a chapter starts in a certain place; e.g. arguably the last verse of 1 Corinthians 4 belongs in chapter 5, because he's about to tear them a new asshole with regard to what he heard about their fornicating.
https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=1 Corinthians+4&version=KJV

If I do any kind of translating or correcting of anything that's an artistic or holy or legal text, I tend to be a stickler for trying to make the translation as literal as possible to avoid altering the author's intended meaning.

 

[Leucosticte]

> A person that doesn't fear death is a lot more difficult to enslave

I would put "who" unless you're trying to dehumanize him, or avoid making distinctions between people and non-people. https://data.grammarbook.com/blog/who-vs-which-vs-that/who-vs-that/ http://www.thewritingsite.org/who-vs-that/

Supposedly, though,

However, you can use “that” on occasion for the singular person. A writer might do this when referring to someone they don’t know personally or have a name for. For example:


The guy that came to fix my water pipes last year said the pipes were very worn.

That's pretty common colloquially, I guess. Not sure what the official grammar books would say. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/That

Where you said something like "women that ..." I left it as is for misogynistic purposes.

 

[Admin]

I prefer adding a link over adding an explanation in parenthesis. Examples are

Aumann's agreement theorem tells us thats it's not in your interest to "agree to disagree" 200

Aumann's agreement theorem tells us that it's not in your interest to "agree to disagree"

 

[Leucosticte]

I see a lot of subject-verb disagreement, with regard to number, e.g.

> Effective medicine often have side effects that are harmful while useless medicine often lacks bad side effects since it doesn’t really do anything.

That should either be "Effective medicine often has" or "Effective medicines often have"; but the meaning will be slightly different depending on which you choose. When I see this, I could either correct it by assuming that the subject has the proper number (singular or plural) that you intended and that it's the verb that needs to be changed; or assume the verb is correct and the subject's number is what needs to be changed.

"Effective medicine" could refer to effective medicine in general. In French, by the way, one would use the definite article and put "Le médicament effectif" or something: https://www.frenchtoday.com/blog/french-grammar/french-definite-article/ @FeminismIsCancer

The definite article is also used with general concepts, where in English you’ll use no article. This concept is more difficult for English speakers because you have to add a word where English uses none, so it’s important that you spend time to understand why French uses an article there.

"Effective medicines" would refer to particular effective medicines. I guess the French equivalent would be "Les médicaments effectifs".

One might consider the meaning slightly different, like the difference between money and moneys, or it could just be a stylistic difference.

 

[Leucosticte]

https://brians.wsu.edu/2016/05/19/gerunds-pronouns/

Verb forms ending in “-ing” can function as nouns and are sometimes preceded by pronouns. Such verb/noun forms are called “gerunds.” You’ll often see sentences like this: “I didn’t appreciate him returning the car with the gas tank empty.” But “returning” is a gerund, so it should be preceded by a possessive pronoun: “I didn’t appreciate his returning the car. . . .” Other examples of standard usage: “Their coming to my birthday party was a nice surprise.” “I didn’t like his being rude to his teacher.” “They weeded the garden without our having to tell them to.” “Coming,” “being,” and “having” are all gerunds, and require preceding possessive pronouns (“their,” “his,” and “our”). If a person’s name appears just before the gerund, that too needs to be in the possessive form: “We’re excited about Bob’s winning the tournament.”

Vintologi 16 says:

not getting enough B12 can result in you developing serious mental illness

Colloquially some people will say you but we could also put your.

 

[Leucosticte]

https://brians.wsu.edu/2016/05/16/acronyms-and-apostrophes/

One unusual use of the apostrophe is in plural acronyms, like “ICBM’s” “NGO’s” and “CD’s”. Since this pattern violates the rule that apostrophes are not used before an S indicating a plural, many people object to it. It is also perfectly legitimate to write “CDs,” etc. See also “50’s.” But the use of apostrophes with initialisms like “learn your ABC’s and “mind your P’s and Q’s” is now so universal as to be acceptable in almost any context.

Vintologi 16 says:

STD:s may become is an issue with increased non-biological homosexuality.

Gonna just eliminate that colon and not put an apostrophe.

 

[Leucosticte]

So apparently when phrases like minimum wage are used as adjectives, you put a hyphen. https://www.dictionary.com/browse/minimum-wage

Even minimum wage jobs are like this.

Gonna add a hyphen there.

You can use the threat of charging for child-support to make sure he doesn't try to get involved in you raising the child.

In contrast, I'm removing the hyphen here because it's being used as a noun rather than an adjective. I've seen some writers use hyphens in a kinda similar way before (see, e.g., the U.N. Charter, "Members shall hold immediately available national air-force contingents for combined international enforcement action"), but even there it's an adjective modifying "contingents". https://www.un.org/en/sections/un-charter/chapter-vii/index.html

 

[Leucosticte]

https://grammar.yourdictionary.com/parts-of-speech/nouns/compound-noun.html

• Closed Form: These compound nouns simply push two words together to form a single word, with no additional punctuation or spaces. Examples include softball, redhead, makeup and keyboard.
• Hyphenated Form: These compound nouns connect two or more words with one or more hyphens between them. Examples include six-pack, five-year-old, and son-in-law.
• Open Form: These are compound nouns that function as one unique word, but are still written as two or more separate words, with a space between each component. Examples include post office, middle class, and attorney general.

What about compound nouns; I see some compound nouns in here that are connected with hyphens, like "tax-money" or "trans-women". I think the use of the hyphen has a coolness factor because it seems more British or old-style or something (I forget what era it was when people used to use a lot of hyphens like that). I've been removing them out of habit but maybe they should stay in, idk.

 

[Leucosticte]

What about random capitalization, like people used to do in the 18th century? Maybe that was even accidental in some cases, e.g. when early drafts of the U.S. Constitution were written by hand in a way that might have been ambiguous or prone to error instead of saved by a word processor that would have recorded them as distinct bytes of data without any ambiguity unless the data got corrupted.

 

[Leucosticte]

There's also the use of the ampersand (e.g. males have all the power & reject most females); I've just been leaving that as is cuz that's pretty 18th-century too.

 

[Leucosticte]

https://nearcels.com/threads/what-are-we-dealing-with-here-the-subjunctive-the-conditional-or-what.375/