I’m a big fan of ProofreadNOW.com, and receive their regular newsletter. It typically includes a column on grammar and how it relates to “AP style”, as well as other proprietary styles for rags like The New York Times and the Wall Street Journal. Geeky stuff for lovers of words.
Yesterday’s newsletter included a short list of terms that can often throw a writer into a roadblock, with their proper punctuation and capitalization falling into a blurry area. Included in this particular list were pairs of similar and often confused terms (disc and disk; follow up and follow-up; Bible and biblical), with a breakdown of their proper usage.
There was a particular pair of terms I thought would fit perfectly into yesterday’s column: “real time” and “real-time”. The proper use of each of those terms has been a source of debate between myself and others a few times over the years. I threw an email to the ProofreadNOW.com editor:
Greetings. Big fan of the regular newsletter.
In this particular batch of tips, I would’ve liked to see a comparative analysis of “real-time” and “real time”. I see the hyphenated version misused constantly, and have developed a bit of a pet peeve over it.
They’re both relatively new terms, so the jury is probably still out. But my argument would be that “real-time” is an adjective, whereas “real time” is a noun. That is, “We receive our real-time news feeds in real time.”
Jace Albao
http://jaced.com
I just received the following reply:
Thanks for your e-mail, and your kind comment about our Grammar Tip letter.
Regarding real time and real-time, the jury has been in since 1993, when the Merriam-Webster 10th Collegiate Dictionary came out. (The 11th came out in 2003.) They agree with you!
In the 10th and 11th you can find this for “real time”:
————————————————————————
Main Entry: real time
Function: noun
Date: 1953: the actual time during which something takes place
-real-time adjective
————————————————————————
Note the date – 1953 – when the term was first used in the public domain.
Thanks for reading!
Yours truly,
Phil Jamieson
The Tail of the Bored Peacock
by Jace Daniel (b. 1969)
Once upon a time in Peacockland there lived a bored peacock. He had the biggest, shiniest, most colorful tail in all the land, and it was a great source of pride. And yet, as popular as he was amongst his peers, he found his life rather uneventful.
“Show me something new,” the bored peacock thought.
One day, the bored peacock tucked in his lustrous tail and jumped with all his might towards the sky. He flapped his wings once, twice, and another three times, and before you could count to thirty-two, the bored peacock was flying away.
“That’s more like it,” the peacock thought.
The peacock soared to the heavens, glancing down only once on Peacockland as it shrank to a small dot below and out of sight. Before too long, the peacock became quite tired. He glided back down to the earth, landing on a bank of sand. There he found an ostrich, standing still, its head buried in the sand.
“Hello,” the peacock said. “What are you doing?”
“I’m hiding my head in the sand at the first sign of danger,” the ostrich explained.
“Sounds like a real gas,” the peacock said. “Let me give it a try.”
So the peacock buried his head in the sand next to the ostrich.
A minute went by once, twice, and another three times, and before you could count to thirty-two hundred, the peacock became very bored.
“What do we do now?” the bored peacock asked.
“We stand here with our heads buried in the sand,” the ostrich explained.
“Well, I think I must be going then,” the bored peacock said, pulling his head out of the sand. “Enjoy yourself.”
So the bored peacock tucked in his lustrous tail and jumped with all his might towards the sky. He flapped his wings once, twice, and another three times, and before you could count to thirty-two, the bored peacock was flying away.
“That’s more like it,” the peacock thought.
The peacock soared to the heavens, glancing down only once on the ostrich as it shrank to a small dot below and out of sight. Before too long, the peacock became quite tired. He glided back down to the earth, landing atop a tall tree. There he found an owl, sitting still, thinking.
“Hello,” the peacock said. “What are you doing?”
“Who?” the owl asked. “Me?”
“Yes,” the peacock said. “You.”
“I’m thinking,” explained the owl.
“About what?” the peacock asked.
“This, that, and the other thing,” the owl said. “To make me wise.”
“Sounds like a real gas,” the peacock said. “Let me give it a try.”
So the peacock sat atop the tall tree next to the owl, thinking.
A minute went by once, twice, and another three times, and before you could count to thirty-two hundred, the peacock became very bored.
“What do we do now?” the bored peacock asked.
“We just sit here atop this tree thinking about this, that, and the other thing,” the owl said. “To make us wise.”
“Well, I think I must be going then,” the bored peacock said. “Enjoy yourself.”
So the bored peacock tucked in his lustrous tail and jumped with all his might towards the sky. He flapped his wings once, twice, and another three times, and before you could count to thirty-two, the bored peacock was flying away.
“That’s more like it,” the peacock thought.
The peacock soared to the heavens, glancing down only once on the owl as it shrank to a small dot below and out of sight. Before too long, the peacock became quite tired. But he kept flying higher, higher, and higher, and before long, the blue sky turned to black, with the peacock’s brilliant shimmering feathers lit up by stars. He flapped his wings one thousand, two thousand, and another three thousand times, and before you could count to thirty-two million, the peacock was zooming through the vastness of space, glancing down only once on the earth as it shrank to a small dot below and out of sight. The peacock let out his tail, its spectacular blues and greens and silvers and purples and crimsons casting wonderful colors into the endless void. The peacock screamed in delight, blaring his joy across the galaxies.
“YES!” the peacock exclaimed. “THIS IS MORE LIKE IT!”
Nobody ever saw the peacock again. But on a clear night, if you look north in the sky when the starlight is just right, you just might see a glorious array of colors more beautiful than a perfect dream.
And you won’t be bored.
Not that I didn’t know it was there, but yesterday I popped my cell phone into Video Mode for the first time while having a typical conversation Vivor. His eyes are glued to the Chuckit! Ball Launcher, which I’m holding in the same hand as the phone.
Doesn’t end, right? Here’s the next project: the Fibonacci Hanging Pot Rack. I’ve even got the surplus lumber, screws, caulking, stain, and paint. And I found a circular saw I had in the shed. Now I just need the dowels.
I smell a Golden Rectangle Backyard Deck on the horizon…
Ha.
Made a Home Depot run on the Fourth to pick up some supplies for my weekend painting project of the kitchen and living room. While I was there I saw a dude down one of the aisles that I’ve known for probably about thirty years. But he didn’t know me. I’m talking about this guy, the elderly gentleman who’s been jogging around town for decades. The guy who looks just like my maternal grandfather, Gilbert Chase Freeman, who you can see here and here.
I’ve been meaning to flag this guy down for a while, ever since I realized a few years ago that he’s still around doing his thing. Now was my chance, of all the days, of all the places. I went up to him, introduced myself, told him I’ve seen him jogging around town since the eighties, and explained that he looks exactly like my Grandpa. He was startled for a moment, probably puzzled that I was mistaking him for an Home Depot employee, but then graciously granted me some conversation. And a photo.
The first thing I noticed once he opened his mouth is that he’s from New York. We talked about the city for a bit. He’s from Upper Manhattan, and moved to Los Angeles back in 1956.
His name’s Pat Levine (Lavine? LeVine? Lavigne?), and says he “only” jogs about ten miles a week because his knees are giving out. Back in the day, he’d run seventy miles a week. You go, Pat!
It was one of those extra super double awesome random moments that make life interesting around every corner. I’m really developing an appetite for these types of coincidences. More, please.
I live on a block that has been inhabited by wild peacocks for over half a century. They’re part of the landscape; on any given moment you can look out your window and see a couple of them nosing around your porch, or leaping across the backyard lawn from one garage’s roof to another. You’ll even see a mother (fyi: a dull grey peahen; the gaudy luminescent blue/green big-tailed cocks are the males) scooting down the sidewalk followed by four or five of her chicks, looking like the Partridge Family.
Visitors typically trip out that there are peacocks living in the neighborhood. Some folks won’t even believe you until they see them with their own eyes. It’s like they equate these majestic birds to mythical creatures like unicorns and centaurs.
Anyway, one of the most noticeable characteristics of these peacocks has gotta be the sound they make. They go off like clockwork in the morning, blurting and blaring a chorus of sound waves that Naylor accurately describes as “cats and dolphins with megaphones”.
Today, Sunday, they got up late. Really late. I either slept through their morning song, or they’ve been silenced for some reason.
And then, it dawned on me:
THE FIREWORKS THREW ‘EM OFF.
That’s right. This place is like a war zone during Fourth of July, an occasion that usually starts a few days prior and and lasts a couple days afterwards. The booms, which often go well into after hours, will wake the peacocks.
It’s been a few nights of this. It seems the peacocks are severely jetlagged, and haven’t had a good night’s sleep in about a week. This Sunday morning’s apparently been one they’ve used to play a little catch up on the snoozing, sleeping in until noon. I joined them.
Good morning.
