<![CDATA[English Online Editing and Proofreading - Blog]]>Fri, 07 Jul 2023 17:35:51 -0700Weebly<![CDATA[We are Still Open for Business]]>Thu, 08 Oct 2020 16:03:11 GMThttp://alterenglish.com/blog/we-are-still-open-for-business​Hello, how are you all doing? There are a few words and phrases regularly appearing in the news media since the corona virus pandemic arrived. Covid of course unheard of until this year, lockdown, meaning restrictions to travel, activities and work, social distancing and track and trace are now familiar to most people. There is also second wave, surges, and spikes to add to the pandemic related vocabulary. Unsettling times indeed. 
AlterEnglish is operating as normal with copy editing and English lessons continuing to be offered online.
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  Until next time stay safe. The AE team]]><![CDATA[A Tale of Two Continents with COVID-19]]>Sat, 30 May 2020 05:53:05 GMThttp://alterenglish.com/blog/a-tale-of-two-continents-with-covid-19Living in the age of COVID-19 as an American expat in Thailand has had its upsides and its downsides. The Thai government is much more strict in some ways, for example, I just returned to Chiang Mai after spending 2 months in Surat thani province, and have been under home quarantine for 14 days since arriving. If I didn't live in Chiang Mai I would probably have to be spend it in a government facility, but I can do it at home, and just have to take my temperature every day and phone it in until the quarantine is finished. All of Thailand has a curfew from 11pm to 4am, but I'm actually liking that provision...it makes the nights nice and quiet :). Any public building that one enters, whether it be a bank, a library, 7-11 or shop, usually greets you with a person taking your forehead temperature along with a squirt of hand sanitizer. All these precautions seem to be working. As of today, 28-May, Thailand has had 3,065 COVID cases and 57 deaths. Compare this to the U.S., which just surpassed 100,000 deaths and over 1.6 million cases, and the downside to all that freedom to move about and not wear a mask becomes a little more evident.
]]><![CDATA[Let's Talk]]>Mon, 25 May 2020 08:05:38 GMThttp://alterenglish.com/blog/lets-talkWe are excited to announce learning English has been added to our service. Please visit the English Lessons page for details and how to contact the teacher.
]]><![CDATA[Life Under Lockdown]]>Fri, 22 May 2020 10:13:34 GMThttp://alterenglish.com/blog/life-under-lock-downPicture




This is a guest post from George Squires a former editor of AlterEnglish.com


Hi there how are you doing? The actions taken by governments around the world in response to the coronavirus have varied significantly. In my country of the United Kingdom the regulations have been different in the four nations that make up the Union (four nations one country, I know even us British get confused!) Here in England we continue in quite strict lockdown. Theatres bars, restaurants, most shops, gyms, and public buildings have been closed for weeks. Many thousands cannot work, myself included. We’ve been in isolation since March and the UK government is only gradually easing things for us. Currently there have been 251,000 confirmed cases and sadly 36,000 deaths in the UK.  It’s still difficult to meet with friends and family. We can meet outside with one other person from another household now so I hope to meet my son for the first time in almost three months very shortly.
All the best wishes from England, act responsibly, keep your distance from others, and wash your hands regularly.

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]]><![CDATA[How the letters of the alphabet got their names]]>Thu, 16 Nov 2017 02:46:46 GMThttp://alterenglish.com/blog/how-the-letters-of-the-alphabet-got-their-namesThere seems to be little predictability to the English names for the letters of the alphabet, to say nothing of the names of letters in other languages. Some begin with an e-as-in-egg sound (eff, ell); some end in an ee sound (tee, dee); and others have no obvious rhyme or reason to them at all. How did they get that way?
The vowels are all named after their long forms. In Middle English, these were roughly ah, ay (as in “may”), ee, oh, oo (as in “tool”). But the “Great Vowel Shift” scrambled the long vowels of English over several centuries, starting roughly in 1400. This made English vowels sound different from those in Europe, and changed the letters’ names with them, to ay, ee, aye, oh. U was still called oo after the Great Vowel shift; around 1600 it started being called yoo. The Oxford English Dictionary says of wy, also known as Y, merely that the name is of “obscure origin”. It is at least 500 years old.Top of Form
Bottom of Form

 
The consonants are more regular than first appears. The English pronunciations use a modified form of the system handed down from Latin. “Stop” consonants—those that stop the airflow entirely—get an ee sound after them. (Think B, D, P and T.) Consonants with a continuing airflow get an e-as-in-egg sound at the beginning instead (F, L, M, N, S, X). There are a couple of exceptions. C and G have both stop and non-stop (“hard” and “soft”) sounds, as seen in “cat” and “cent”, and “gut” and “gin”. They are called see and gee because in Latin they were only “stop” consonants and so follow the same naming rules as B and D. (Why they are not pronounced key and ghee is unclear.)
Other anomalies require a bit more explanation. R, which has a continuing airflow, used to conform to the rule above, and was called er. Its vowel changed to ar for unknown reasons. V was used as both a consonant and a vowel in Latin, and so does not fit the pattern above either: it is a fricative (a consonant in which noise is produced by disrupting the airflow), named like a stop. Double-U is a remnant of V’s old double-life, too. J did not exist in Latin; its English pronunciation is inherited from French, with some alternation. Zed comes from the Greek zeta. (Americans call it zee, perhaps to make it behave more like the other letter-names, though the exact reason is unclear.) And aitch is perhaps the greatest weirdo in the alphabet. Its name is descended from the Latin accha, ahha or aha, via the French ache. The modern name for the letter does not have an h-sound in it, in most places. But there is a variant—haitch—thought by some to be a “hypercorrection”, an attempt to insert the letter’s pronunciation into its name. In the Irish republic, haitch is considered standard; in Northern Ireland, it is used by Catholics, whereas aitch is a shibboleth that identifies Protestants. But it is not limited to Ireland: haitch is also spreading among the English young, to the horror of their elders.

]]><![CDATA[March 11th, 2017]]>Sun, 12 Mar 2017 01:02:30 GMThttp://alterenglish.com/blog/march-11th-2017Greetings everyone! It's March 2017 and time for us at AlterEnglish to raise our standard edit rate a smidgeon (that's an old holdout from British English :)). Our super-low rate of THB 350 ($10) per 1,000 words will henceforth go up to the still-great bargain of THB 400 ($11) per 1,000 words. We hope this doesn't cause any inconvenience for anyone out there, it's still a great rate, and we still do great work for all your editing needs.
All the best!
The AlterEnglish editing team
]]><![CDATA[Happy New Year - 2017, 2560 in Thailand, from all of us at AlterEnglish :)]]>Wed, 04 Jan 2017 02:48:38 GMThttp://alterenglish.com/blog/happy-new-year-2017-2560-in-thailand-from-all-of-us-at-alterenglishMore Colorful Britishisms from our resident Brit, George
While our beloved British editor  is freezing his knickers off in Northern England, he's been coming up with some more unusual "twistings" of the English language from his neck of the woods. Enjoy!

Booze related
on the pop - a drinking session. I heard it at football yesterday criticism of a player not trying  "Looks like he's been on the pop!" ie hungover
Pie-eyed - drunk
General
Early doors - early in the day, first into an event. Seems to come from when drinkers got their first drink of the day but now used generally.
Pack it in - generally used to mean stop but I overheard two old ladies, " She's 94, stopped eating, I think she's ready to pack it in"
 
Yorkshire/Northern dialect
The dialect spoken 100+ years ago in this part of the world has virtually gone. Mostly it remains in accent and pronunciation eg  "Daya wan' mil wi yer tea?" ie do you take milk in your tea. But I heard some just recently.
Ginnel - alley between houses
Gi owar - stop it or I don't believe it, Give over
Flit - move house
'appen - perhaps
siling it down - raining heavy
while - until "I'm working while 7"
 
Slang
Proper - truly, very

]]><![CDATA[British-isms]]>Thu, 24 Nov 2016 03:21:44 GMThttp://alterenglish.com/blog/british-ismsBritish Expressions can  be a real bugger (pardon the Australian English) for those of us who are more used to American English. As an American-born editor, I often ask our British editor, "Where did you guys learn English"? Just kidding, of course, but some "British-isms" are rather colorful, nonetheless. Here are a few.......

Tosser, Wanker - idiot
Give you a Bell - call you
Gutted- Devastated
Lost the Plot - Gone Crazy
Kip - Sleep or Nap
Bee's Knees - Awesome
Know your Onions - Knowledgeable
Dodgy - Suspicious
Wonky - Not right
Whinge - Whine
Arse-Over-Tit - Fall over
Dog's Dinner - Dressed Nicely
Made Redundant - Fired From a Job
Fancy - Like
]]><![CDATA[ Testimonials ]]>Mon, 21 Nov 2016 02:05:48 GMThttp://alterenglish.com/blog/-testimonialsThank you for your fast and professional work.  W.
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Many thanks for the prompt service. S.
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]]><![CDATA[The difference between “less” and “fewer” ]]>Mon, 31 Oct 2016 00:58:58 GMThttp://alterenglish.com/blog/the-difference-between-less-and-fewerFrom the archives of the Economist

The Economist explains

The difference between “less” and “fewer”
Aug 27th 2015, 23:50 by R.L.G.

MANY people insist on a bright-line distinction between “fewer” and “less”, and get quite agitated by the subject. David Foster Wallace’s novel Infinite Jest featured the Militant Grammarians of Massachusetts, who boycott stores with signs reading “12 items or less”. A few vigilantes have defaced such signs in real life. What is the distinction, and why does it matter?
Nouns can be “count nouns” or “mass nouns”. Count nouns are usually distinct things that can be counted, and take a plural: think “houses” or “shirts”. Mass nouns can’t usually be counted or made plural: think “water” or “oatmeal”. (They can sometimes be counted, as in a fancy restaurant offering several different waters, but “water” in ordinary use is otherwise a mass noun.) Under the traditional rule, “fewer” goes with count nouns and “less” with mass nouns. Hence “My sister has fewer shirts than I do”, but “My brother has less oatmeal than I do”. The rule was first proposed in this form in 1770 by Robert Baker in Reflections on the English Language.
But Baker expressed this as a preference, not a rule, perhaps because there are many shadings on it. The mass-count distinction does not always line up with the real-life properties of things: “clothing” is a mass noun (so it’s “less clothing”) but “clothes” is a count noun (so “fewer clothes”). Clothes are discrete items—like a typical count noun. And yet you can’t count them: “he is wearing four clothes” makes no sense. Meanwhile, some count nouns don’t represent discrete things at all. Take time and distance: years and miles are count nouns, but they represent arbitrary sections on a continuum. This probably is why many people find “I’ve lived here less than three years” more natural than “I’ve lived here fewer than three years”. And “less” is almost always more natural than “fewer” after one, in sentences like “that’s one less thing to deal with”.
Finally, there is the question of style. “Fewer” is never used with mass nouns, but in casual speech, “less” is often used with count nouns. “She won’t go out with anyone with less than three cars” is fine for the bar stool, but using this phrasing in print is likely to attract an editorial correction. The so-called rule has never reflected reality: as far back as the ninth century we find Alfred the Great writing swa mid laes worda, swa mid ma (“be it with less words or with more”). Even so, it is a good guideline for formal writing—and good for keeping the Militant Grammarians of Massachusetts out of your supermarket.

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