Dear Blogosphere,
I need your help.
In my last post, I talked about the muscle memory involved in getting on and off bicycles.
I don’t know if I should blame muscle memory, deadline stress, or just poor typing skills for another problem that plagues my life. You see, no matter how hard I try to stop myself, I keep adding the letter ‘g’ to scientific words that end with the letters ‘-in’.
Just today, I’ve typed the following words: chromating, catening, cadhering, cytokerating, ubiquiting, and Hercepting.
Words that I type more frequently, such as protein, are seldom blessed with the extra letter.
How can I find eliminate my g-spot?
Yours truly,
Cathering Ennis.
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I like chromating!
There are some words that I frequently type incorrectly, always the same ones and all I can do really is slow down typing when approaching them or go back and correct them- not helpful, sorry.
How about using auto-correct in whatever siftware you use?
‘cadhering’ is my fave. Sorry I can’t help.
Maybe you should just go with it? It spices up the scientific writing a bit!
Who decided that protein names should end in -in anyway? Was it the same persion who decided that metals should end in -ium?
Not all metals, Frank.
Al.
Well, not all (Copper, Iron, Silver e.g.). But after a certain point naming conventions settled on -ium. Alumin(i)um was an interesting case – it went from Alumium to Aluminum to Aluminium, but the ACS decided to prefer Aluminum.
To answer my own question, I guess IUPAC was the body that standardised on the -ium ending for metals.
I’d heard that for various
entomologicaletymological reasons aluminum is ‘correct’. I don’t know that the others are ‘incorrect’, though.That’s interesting. The IUPAC name is aluminium, though they accept aluminum as an alternative presumably to keep the ACS happy. The topic seems to get people on Wikipedia quite agitated.
I like the “g” at the end!. Cath, maybe you’re creating a new word for protein signaling, eg: ubiquitin signaling = ubiquiting… uh?
I talked about the muscle memory involved in getting on and off bicycles.
Muscle memory? How does that work?
People throw that term around a lot, especially at gyms (I just returned from the gym). I tend to get in arguments about it, because I think the memory, or increased efficacy, resides in the neurons, not in the muscles.
Sabbi, I often mistype my own name as Caht, which gets autocorrected to Chat. So, yeah, I have to slow down and track back quite a bit too!
Bob, I may have to resort to that, but given the number of protein names involved and the fact that I’d have to set each autocorrects in Word, Outlook, Pages and Gmail, I was hoping for more of a global solution!
Richard, it does sound the most like a real word!
Anna, the various PIs I work with may disagree!
Frank and Richard, my high school chemistry teacher told us (possibly inaccurately) that the people who named the element got to set the name, and that they chose -um. So the correct name is indeed aluminum. But they were WRONG, WRONG I TELL YOU!!! HAD THEY NEVER HEARD OF SODIUM, CALCIUM, and so on for half an hour. At this point someone would inevitably start singing “You can call me Al”.
María, it’s an interesting idea! And chromating = chromatin modifying, and so on. Hmmm. I think this is the best solution so far 😉
Kristi, it was my brother-in-law who introduced me to the concept. He’s a ski instructor, and in that context I can see and feel what he means. I’m sure you’re right about where the memory is stored, but it’s obviously the muscles that ultimately execute the remembered task, hence how the term developed among the people who use it the most…?
chromating
Sounds like a method for disposing of dead bodies by dissolving in a vat of potassum dichromate.
Choirmasters also talk of muscle memory, and I am never sure what it is.
Was there not a recent post about “verbifying” words? I think what you have here is inevitable. It’s the
Englishscientific language exerting a Lamarckian influence through your fingers, creating new verbs (hm, mis-typed that as “bervs” the first time… hm…) as youspeaktype.I tend to add silent “e”s to words from time to time, for unknown reasons. Most irritating.
… and here I was thinking that the mispronounciation of Aluminium in this part of the world was similar to the example of “Nucular”, so favoured by a certain former US President. You mean that there is some basis to it? Any periodic table I’ve ever seen spells it the same way?
Frank, thank you for the completely normal and in no way scary comment!
Richard, yeah, that was me whining. I think we concluded it was OK in some circumstances. Just last week I verbed “kettle”. My exact words were “can I kettle? I’m feeling a bit deadliny”.
Larmarckian influence, eh? Interesting…
Darren, I’m afraid there is some basis to the whole aluminum thing. Sorry to be the bearer of bad news.
I think you should restore cosmic balance to your writin by removin all the g’s from words that end in them.
Yes, I’m not into autocorrect either (they always suggest correcting my name to Rabbi Lall and I just don’t have time to go to rabbinical school). Maybe you can tape your left thumb and forefinger together to make you think twice about hitting the G key?
Jenny, you mean like Sarah Paling?
Sabbi, LOL! That sounds very distinguished, and definitely better than Chat.
Maybe an electric shock device on the g key?
I hate autocorrect (except on the iPhone. It’s nice there) because it means I have to retype something three times. I could turn it off I guess, if that’s possible in lousy, awful, stinking Office 07.
Apparently Al was called alumium first, then quickly changed to aluminum. Several years later some British journal editors (no comment) insisted on aluminium, presumably because they’d never heard of platinum, etc. I prefer the ‘wrong’ variant because it’s prettier, but wouldn’t lose much sleep about it if IUPAC started using aluminum.
I hate autocorrect (except on the iPhone. It’s nice there)
My cell phone (not as fancy as iPhone, I have to admit) keeps changing Anna to Bomb. I write my name at the end of the message and then press send…
This phantom -g thing reminds me a bit of the Bristol dialect. Any word that ends in -a (e.g. area, idea, Canada) has a phantom -l added (e.g. areal, ideal, Canadal).
ITYM ‘Canadial’.
ha…that makes us (canadians) sound like some kind of drink (a cordial?).
@Anna, Yea i’ve given up on the automated text function on my cell, and just sadly resort to spelling out each word, even it though it takes me about 20 mins a msg. although, if my name kept changing to ‘bomb’ i might be tempted to going back to automated.
Frank, this reminds me of every Brit I have ever met – end a word with a vowel and start the next word with a vowel, and they put a phantom r there.
As in, Anna{r} and I are going shopping.
It’s so…quaint.
p.s. it took me three goes to get that example to render without a (r) symbol. And it seems impossible to type an (r) with a space in front of it. How dismal.
MT4. You know it makes sense.
If anyone’s interested, my friend taught me a trick for typing words that the iPhone keeps auto”correcting” to something wrong: just put a z and a space at the end of the word, and then delete the z. Very handy.
Frank, ah yes, I noticed that myself when visiting the Bristol Areal. And I’ve heard several people say Canadia instead of Canada, very odd!
Jenny, quaint??!! What about North Americans turning t sounds into ds? Preddy weird, that 😉 I’ve given up on asking for water in restaurants, because I have to ask up to 3 times before the server understands me, so now I just ask for warder like everyone else.
Tronna. That’s where I live. Tronna.
lousy, awful, stinking Office 07
I see that RPG and I, for once, are in complete agreement. Although why he’s talking about the International Tournament of Young Mathematicians, I do not know.
I just met someone from Tronna. Will blog later.
I hope neither of you were drinking warder
That would be Eva, I presume?
We were drinking beed.
Wait…
s’called muscle memory cos it’s a form of memory residing in your cerebellum which allows for unconscious muscular activity.
Yeah, sorry…late, OT & geek. the trifecta of pointless commentin
Go boil your neurons, you unfettered electrophysiologist.
You were only off-topic from the post itself though, not from (some of) the other comments!
I’m just not sure I can say Aluminum. I’d feel like I’d taken a brick to the head at some point. For some reason I imagine this would have happened in Anartica. Apparently this a cold continent in the southern hemisphere. I’m guessing it’s near Antarctica someplace…
I’ve heard people say Anartica and Antartica before, and also refer to the Artic. I never know whether they are incorrect, or if it’s my choice to pronounce the first C that’s provincial and/or ignorant! I also pronounce the T in often, FWIW.
I am now so confused about the whole Al element and what it rightly should be called in English that if ever forced into a conversation where I’m running the risk of having to say it I’m afraid I’ll run off screaming…Please don’t start on continents as well! 🙂
Oh, FFS. I’m now writing about imaging, and keep typing “imagine”. Can’t win.
It’s ok Cath, CIHR deadline is tomorrow, then it’ll all be over. 😉
*runs away
Ah, but the internal deadline is today! I started replying to work email at 6.20 am, a new record I think, and probably won’t stop until around 10 pm.
…and the ResearchNet website is down. In both languages. Mais bien sur.
Yeah, we noticed that too. C’est dommage.
J’ai submitté le grant! Et maintenant je bois de biere. Tres bien.
Zut alors. Nous esperons de le submitter (?) aujourd’hui.
[multiple apologies to true Francophones for the preceding. I, like many Canucks, am semi-bilingual – i.e., speaking one and a half languages.]
Well, when the CIHR email came through saying they’d extended the deadline by a day, I emailed our own grants office to ask if the internal deadline was being extended too. They didn’t reply (checks – still haven’t), so I thought I’d play it safe and get it in before the original deadline.