zendae1 wrote: ↑Fri Jul 21, 2023 3:35 pm
sphere49 wrote: ↑Fri Jul 21, 2023 11:30 am
Would it be OK to point out an editing error? "The combined light of stars along the Milky Way are reflected..." should read "is reflected." Agreement of subject ("light") and verb. I wouldn't trouble to comment about this, but two minutes before opening this APOD I was ranting about this very topic -- the demise of agreement of subject and verb -- in an unrelated email to a friend.
As English was one of my majors eons ago, I've long since given up any hope. I just finished editing 61 game cards in a very complex world conquest board game that friends developed and are ready to release. "Astonished" is an understatement re the unforgivable grammatical gaffes that American-educated people committed in the writing of these. Handwriting is another issue. Can kids even write anymore? In Catholic school in the 1960s we would suffer a blow to the writing hand if we dared to print...I suppose it's all part of "evolution" (says the cheeked tongue)...
afa today's photo, I never knew such luminescent things existed.
I wonder if, before even yak lamps, our ancestors could all see their shadows on all the clear moonless nights. I wonder how intrigued they were by their shadows.
Yak lamps providing light for our ancestors!!! So unbelievably funny!
![😂](//cdn.jsdelivr.net/gh/twitter/twemoji@latest/assets/svg/1f602.svg)
(And before there were yak lamps - before the yaks had the mutation that made lamps grow out of their heads - our ancestors had luminescent galactic cirrus clouds lighting up their nights! Seriously, you're killing me!!!)
But I sympathize with those who make all those English grammar mistakes, particularly those who say "the light of stars are reflected" instead of "the light of stars is reflected". That's the kind of mistake that I make all the time. I try to catch them, and I usually do, but if you read my posts a lot here at Starship Asterisk* you must have seen me making them. You must have.
And there are so many other grammar mistakes I can make - just yesterday I struggled with whether to write "in that manner" or "by that manner". Goodness, the number of mistakes you can make! And now, two seconds ago, I decided to look up the phrase "struggle with whether" because I wasn't absolutely sure you can use it. (Apparently you can.)
Also I had to look up "yak". Yes, I was 95% certain that I knew what a yak is, but 95% isn't good enough, so I had to make sure. And yes, it really is that big wooly creature with big horns that I thought it was.
(My spellcheck protests at the word "wooly". Right, yeah, it should be "woolly".)
Okay, now that I'm talking about that yak that lit up the nights for our ancestors, would you actually say "a congenital headlamp"? Congenital? Would you call that lamp natural, ancestral, hereditary or congenital? Perhaps biological? No, it should be "innate", perhaps? A lamp as a natural born accessory?
In Swedish you would say "medfödd", which means that you were born with something. Imagine a newborn baby boy or girl born with a headlamp peeking out of its forehead. Must have made the delivery of the baby extra painful for Mom.
(Would it have been okay to write "peeking out from its forehead"? )
There are a million grammar questions I could ask you lucky native English speakers, but I never ask. I just plod on, looking up things all the time, and hope you won't catch me making too too many gaffes.
Ann