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	<title>osirra consulting</title>
	<link>http://www.osirra.com</link>
	<description>Precision, insight, delivery.</description>
	<lastBuildDate>Mon, 15 Mar 2010 21:25:21 +0000</lastBuildDate>
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	<item>
		<title>The Natural History Museum&#8217;s em dash faux pas</title>
		<description><![CDATA[The Natural History Museum has followed Expedia&#8217;s bad example in their use of the dash to indicate date ranges.  Remember, kids: en dash for ranges, unless the latter date is not yet fixed (e.g. for living people), in which case use an em dash.

]]></description>
		<link>http://www.osirra.com/2010/03/the-natural-history-museums-em-dash-faux-pas/</link>
			</item>
	<item>
		<title>Expedia.co.uk and the errant em dash</title>
		<description><![CDATA[When you search for flights on expedia.co.uk and click search, you  are presented with a holding screen, informing you that:

Expedia.co.uk is searching for
flights on selected  travel dates:
Mon 23/11/2009 — Fri 27/11/2009

(Obviously the dates in question are those pertinent to your  requested jaunt rather than mine.)
The em dash (—) between the dates should [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://www.osirra.com/2010/03/expedia-co-uk-and-the-errant-em-dash-2/</link>
			</item>
	<item>
		<title>I Gotta Feeling.  So very wrong</title>
		<description><![CDATA[I embrace the evolution of the English language.  But I think that its rules and regulations differ from one medium to another.  Certain contractions (e.g. OMG, FTW, WTF, gotta) are acceptable in instant messenger conversations and text messages, but shouldn&#8217;t be used in more formal forms of communication.
But if you&#8217;re going to use such contractions, [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://www.osirra.com/2010/03/i-gotta-feeling-so-very-wrong/</link>
			</item>
	<item>
		<title>Time separators</title>
		<description><![CDATA[I use colons, as opposed to periods, to separate time units.  Periods are the same as decimal points, which can cause confusion.  Periods should be used after the number of seconds to indicate the decimals thereafter.
The couple met at 9:30am.
He went to bed at 11:45pm.
Schumacher&#8217;s 1:34.236 was the best lap time of the [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://www.osirra.com/2010/03/time-separators/</link>
			</item>
	<item>
		<title>Proofreading: pedantry is everything</title>
		<description><![CDATA[I advertise this site through the likes of Google AdWords.  Most of the interest generated is for the services that we offer.  But occasionally, someone will email me out of the blue asking whether we&#8217;re recruiting, either on a permanent of freelance basis, and offering their own services.
Given the services we offer, I [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://www.osirra.com/2010/02/proofreading-pedantry-is-everything/</link>
			</item>
	<item>
		<title>A single version of English</title>
		<description><![CDATA[Wouldn&#8217;t it be wonderful if there was an internationally-recognised standard for written English?  If people saw the word color (or indeed colour) and didn&#8217;t recoil.  If there was a widely acknowledged view as to whether The meeting Thursday or The meeting on Thursday was acceptable.
I&#8217;m not asking us to can our respective versions [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://www.osirra.com/2009/11/a-single-version-of-english/</link>
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	<item>
		<title>Should of vs. should have</title>
		<description><![CDATA[I have a couple of well-educated ex-colleagues who shall remain nameless who, in the written form, have started using the phrase should of, in the following context:
Mum should of gone to Iceland.
I must stress that this is not the actual phrase they used.  They used more business-like phrases.  But you get the picture.
Speech has always [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://www.osirra.com/2009/11/should-of-vs-should-have/</link>
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	<item>
		<title>Tenet, tennent and tenor</title>
		<description><![CDATA[Yesterday I heard three different words used to mean the same thing—two of them wrongly.
The word that everyone was reaching for was tenet.  And although one person correctly used the word, his colleagues used tennent and tenor.
And their repeated use of the incorrect variants was such that I was forced to question my own confidence [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://www.osirra.com/2009/09/tenet-tennent-and-tenor/</link>
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	<item>
		<title>And vs. but</title>
		<description><![CDATA[I love Elon Schoenholz&#8217;s use of the word and in his review of the Chrome Metropolis bag on the Cool Tools website.  (Lovely website, btw.)
Chrome&#8217;s Metropolis is expensive, and well worth the price if you live car-light and don&#8217;t use a rack and panniers or Xtracycle.
Most people would use the word but after the comma, [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://www.osirra.com/2009/08/and-vs-but/</link>
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		<title>Out of orifice emails</title>
		<description><![CDATA[The Outlook interface for creating and editing your out-of-office email response is dreadful. In Outlook 2007, it constitutes a text-box four lines high, maybe 350 pixels wide for entering raw, unformatted text. Keep typing and you’ll get a vertical scrollbar.
And the interface does not allow for spell-checking.
The dreadfully constrained interface and the lack of a [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://www.osirra.com/2009/05/out-of-orifice-emails/</link>
			</item>
	<item>
		<title>Too high for Nate</title>
		<description><![CDATA[Lots of sites, both professional and otherwise, seem to be using a double-hyphen when they mean to use an em dash.  It’s as if they know that they need a long dash, but can’t be arsed to insert one.
The double-hyphen looks hideous, but it’s as if I should give them credit for trying.  How about [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://www.osirra.com/2009/04/too-high-for-nate/</link>
			</item>
	<item>
		<title>Grammar: supply and demand</title>
		<description><![CDATA[As grammar and spelling standards continue to slide and txt-speak continues to gain prevalence, will demand for skills in grammatical correctness (e.g. proofreading) increase because of the shortage of skilled resources, or decrease owing to the reduced demand?
]]></description>
		<link>http://www.osirra.com/2009/02/grammar-supply-and-demand/</link>
			</item>
	<item>
		<title>The space line continuum</title>
		<description><![CDATA[The space immediately after a link should never form part of the link itself. And the space after a portion of a sentence emphasised via a different fount should never share that of the emphasised portion.
Laziness through double-click and &#8220;intelligent&#8221; drag selecting gives an outcome that jars.  With me at least.
]]></description>
		<link>http://www.osirra.com/2009/02/the-space-line-continuum/</link>
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		<title>Carriage return, line feed</title>
		<description><![CDATA[I read with interest and some amusement today’s news of Luc Costermans breaking the world blind road speed record.
My favourite part of the article was the paragraph-hungry BBC’s decision to separate these two sentences into two paragraphs.
Two years ago Mr Costermans completed a tour of France piloting a light aeroplane.
He was accompanied by an instructor [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://www.osirra.com/2008/10/carriage-return-line-feed/</link>
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		<title>The difference a letter can make</title>
		<description><![CDATA[There are a couple of word pairings that differ by a single letter but whose meanings are completely different.
Encourage: inspire with confidence; give hope or courage to
Entourage: support group
Homophone: one of two or more words with different origins and meanings but sounding the same
Homophobe: one who hates or fears homosexual people
Any other non-trivial examples?
]]></description>
		<link>http://www.osirra.com/2008/09/the-difference-a-letter-can-make/</link>
			</item>
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		<title>Pluracy</title>
		<description><![CDATA[It would be lovely if the plural of apex was apices and if that of annex was annices.
]]></description>
		<link>http://www.osirra.com/2008/09/pluracy/</link>
			</item>
	<item>
		<title>Ben Dirs: crimes against the apostrophe</title>
		<description><![CDATA[During the BBC’s online Olympic coverage this morning, there was the following update at 10.45:
1045: And we’re off – Sarah Stevenson versus Maria del Rosario Espinoza of Mexico. Can the Doncaster lass keep her head while all around her are losing theres’? The 20-year-old Mexican is the current world middleweight champion, a title she won [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://www.osirra.com/2008/08/ben-dirs-crimes-against-the-apostrophe/</link>
			</item>
	<item>
		<title>‘I have never ended on an unstressed syllable!’</title>
		<description><![CDATA[A fabulous article articulating the tension between journalists and sub-editors in the newspaper industry. Lots of sweariness, some beautiful humour and some artistically-crafted, unedited prose. Well worth a read.
]]></description>
		<link>http://www.osirra.com/2008/07/%e2%80%98i-have-never-ended-on-an-unstressed-syllable%e2%80%99/</link>
			</item>
	<item>
		<title>Is that shoe pastry?</title>
		<description><![CDATA[A wonderful miscorrection of the Economist by Stephen J. Dubner on his Freakonomics blog on the New York Times website.
In the extract below from the Economist’s London Stock Exchange index, he suggests that pasty should read pastry.
&#8220;In the hills north east of Mexico City it is not uncommon to find Cornish pasties for sale.&#8221;
Some research [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://www.osirra.com/2008/07/is-that-shoe-pastry/</link>
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	<item>
		<title>Apostrophe madness</title>
		<description><![CDATA[Now I love the apostrophe as much as the next man, assuming of course the next man is an apostrophe-crazed fool. But there is one use in particular that aggravates the shit out of me: when people head documents Do’s and Don’ts.  Or Do’s and Don’t’s.  The latter may be worse, with two [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://www.osirra.com/2008/06/apostrophe-madness/</link>
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