on a gravestone do quotations written in italics also require quotation marks

When using a renowned poet's quote on a gravestone does one write the quote in italics and also use quotation marks around the quote?

grammar - What is the grammatical function of the NP (or clause?) in this sentence?

I just came across this sentence in a newspaper:

The mill ceased production in 1982, an early warning of another revolution on a global scale.

I know it is a perfectly grammatical sentence and I've seen a lot of similar ones. But I'm wondering what grammatical function the latter NP (or clause?) plays. It looks like a relative clause without "which is", right? Does this grammatical role have a name?

word choice - If you can't use “he”, “she” or “they” in a sentence, what do you use?

I was waiting for a plane to take off last week, when we had to taxi back to the terminal building to disembark a sick passenger. We weren't told whether the passenger was male or female.

I was thinking about how to tell people about it, but realised I couldn't say that 'He' or 'She' disembarked, because I didn't know the sex. I couldn't say 'They' because I knew there was only one and I couldn't say 'It', because it wasn't an object. Without saying 'The sick passenger' disembarked, what word could I use?

How do we use the possessive case (i.e., 's) with "or"?

I'm having a hard time finding out what the grammar is when we want to use "or" and possessive. If, for example, I want to refer to the information of a person or an organization, do I say, "that person or organization's information," or, "that person's or organization's information."

Example:

Please collect that person or organization's information on the appropriate form.

-or-

Please collect that person's or organization's information on the appropriate form.

I have looked and looked on the internet at various grammar sites. There are plenty that address the situation when there's a compound possession (i.e., when "and" is used), but none I can find that address the situation when it's not but rather is the possession of one or the other.

On this site, I felt hope when I found the following question:

Using possessive apostrophe with "or"

But then I saw it was wrongly closed as off-topic, saying it should be for the English Learner's site. I'm not an English Learner. It's a legitimate question.

Now, that question does offer one answer, but that answer is obviously wrong because it calls "John or Mary" a noun phrase, which is a phrase that serves as a noun, when it is not a noun phrase but is two distinct nouns conjoined by "or."

When we say "John and Mary's," that's compound possession, which indicates that John and Mary collectively share whatever it is, but when we say "John's and Mary's" that's not compound possession as it indicates that John and Mary each own the ensuing noun, so if the ensuing noun were "information," then it would refer to John's information and Mary's information, like John's address and Mary's address, which may not be the same.

From this, we know that the presence of a conjunction doesn't necessarily indicate compound possession, and when the conjunction is "or," it certainly seems that it wouldn't because "or" specifically indicates one or the other and not both, but therein lies the rub because it makes sense in my head to say "John's or Mary's" or "that person's or organization's," but what sounds right to my ear is "John or Mary's" and "that person or organization's," which is why I'm seeking an answer, an answer I haven't been able to find and hope someone here can definitively provide with some grammar source material that specifically addresses the possessive case with "or" rather than only addressing "and."

Answer

The Punctuation Guide, which draws its rules from APA and the Chicago Manual of Style, distinguishes between joint or shared possession and individual possession. In joint possession, only one 's appears at the end, since both of them possess the same thing together. In individual possession, 's is used before each noun phrase, to indicate that each person separately possess at least one of the things.

We were at Stanley and Scarlett’s house. (shared possession: Stanley's house and Scarlett's house is the same house)

France’s and Italy’s domestic policies are diverging. (individual possession: France's policies are not the same as Italy's policies.)

Both these examples (and the others) use and. However, the same logic should apply to other conjunctions. Attend to this usage in the explanatory text on the same page:

You should, of course, observe your publisher’s or instructor’s requirements.

In this case, the publisher may have different requirements than the instructor's. They are not the same. This is an example of individual possession, just like what showed up before. The Chicago Manual of Style, 7.23: Joint versus separate possession also includes an example of discrete possession with or:

Gilbert’s or Sullivan’s mustache

In general, it is hard to imagine an example of shared possession involving or. Outside of logic, or is almost always disjunctive and exclusive (see, e.g., Legal Beagle for an explanation). That would suggest the resulting possessive must be individual.

That said, not everyone follows Chicago, APA, or a website called The Punctuation Guide. In the wild, usage involving individual possession nonetheless may only put the noun phrase after the conjunction in the possessive case (Jason Nice, Sacred History and National Identity, 2009):

Recent scholarship has focused upon France or England's ethnic and/or political origins ...

France and England have different ethnic and political origins, right? Nonetheless, the author and the editor(s) permitted "France or England's." So while the logic in Chicago and others may be sound, outside the confines of a style guide, actual published usage varies. Usage books may bemoan using only one 's for an individual possessive (for example, Bryan Garner spends three paragraphs pointing out errors in possessives involving and in Garner's Modern English Usage, 2009, p. 713), but whenever a usage guide can complain about a phenomenon for three paragraphs, that means the practice is widespread. Make your own decision on whether that is appropriate.

meaning - Proper use of "old brother" and "young brother" compared to "older brother" and "younger brother"

For my entire life, I have been using "older brother" and "younger brother" whenever I write a story in English. I know that "older brother" and "younger brother" are applied to blood-related persons. But what about "old brother" and "young brother"?

I recently read some translated Chinese web-novels that use "old brother" and "young brother" to refer to non-blood related persons. So I started wondering, could "old brother" and "young brother" also be applied to blood-related persons in actual English? For example, instead of using "My older brother and I always go out on a walk in the morning", can we use "My old brother and I always go out on a walk in the morning"?

I read a forum post that *said we use "my old brother" when we refer to our only brother (who is older than ourselves): http://forum.thefreedictionary.com/postst86814_my-younger-brother.aspx
(< scroll down to post by Romany.)

Once upon a time...when Drago and I were educated, there was a "rule"
which only allowed one interpretation: "Younger" indicated that there
were TWO brothers (One is young, the other is younger). "Youngest"
gave no indication of how many brothers one had. And if one only had
one brother, and he was younger than the speaker then one said "My
young brother" - no superlative used.

Like many of the rules which were falsely attached to English, this
one is no longer applicable except in academic writing. But it did
help to clarify the situation, so I still use it - mainly because it

clarifies things in my own head.

In that case, wouldn't using "my old brother" when describing blood related person(s) be correct, or at least acceptable?

If yes, in that context, does "my old brother" mean that my brother is very old (as in 50+), or is it just the same as "my older brother" (can be any age)? Is there a historical precedent of using such terms during a certain era? Or, do we only use them when we consider the cultural differences? Or, can we also use them in the literary writing? Or, how about in the day-to-day conversations as well?

Lastly, in what other situations can we use "old brother"?

---

• = the original forum post by Romany used "young brother" instead of "old brother"

comparisons - What is the difference between "history" and "log"?

In computer science, "log" is often used over "history" when keeping track of events (see /log and .log in Unix filesystems, and "git log" with the Git version control system). I can see that "log" is shorter, so that is one advantage over "history". However with "history" there is less confusion because it does not have a second meaning, as far as I could tell. Whereas "log" is also used in mathematics.

1. What is the difference between "history" and "log"?


2. When to use "log" over "history"?


3. When to use "history" over "log"?


4. Why is "log" often used in computer science?

Answer

The word log originated from its usage in 'Ship Log Book', which originally referred to the book for recording readings from the 'Chip Log' (apparatus containing an actual wooden log, giving it the name).

The usage of word log thus is more accurate when used for maintaining well defined records in a more or less scientific way to potentially derive specific information in the future like ship's speed or investigating issues in computer software.

A log does captures historical information but lacks narrative and is generally very specific in its scope.

In computer science it makes sense to use the word log because computer logs keep track of well defined(and formatted in most instances) events and related information.

I hope this helps.

word choice - What's the difference between "Weltanschauung" and "worldview"?

On an academic legal blog I visit, from time to time I see people using the word Weltanschauung where I feel worldview would have sufficed. It all seems a bit ostentatious to me, as I'm pretty sure that Weltanschauung had a precise academic usage before it became (fairly) common lingo. If in fact there is a difference between the two words, can someone demonstrate that difference to me, and illustrate with a couple of sentences when one word would be a better choice than the other?

Answer

Weltanschauung is used as an English word, from the German because the English worldview is too vague and not comprehensive enough. (For anschauen = to look at, rather with the meaning "to take a good look at", for schau = to show, display, as opposed to blicken = to look, or aussehen from sehen = to see).

Primarily it means a way a person looks at the phenomenon of life as a whole. Some people (particularly those who have not lived very long) have not formed any broad (inclusive, even "sophisticated") view of life. Others consider a large number of factors before forming their overall view — maybe in their seventies — of the phenomenon of human existence. Typically a person's Weltanschauung (as an English word we drop the capital letter required of all German nouns) would include a person's philosophic, moral, and religious conclusions — including e.g. the duality of spirit and matter — and perhaps their conclusions about the origins of the universe and of the development of life. They would also have conclusions about the state, society, politics and economic activity. I suggest def. "A person's conclusions about existence (however tentative) at a particular time of life, after taking a good look at everything they have come across about". What do the German philologists say about my amateur offering?