Crosby and heavy type

Here you can discuss all things Ancient Greek. Use this board to ask questions about grammar, discuss learning strategies, get help with a difficult passage of Greek, and more.
Post Reply
Altair
Textkit Neophyte
Posts: 51
Joined: Wed Jun 14, 2017 5:35 pm

Crosby and heavy type

Post by Altair »

I am more or less a native American English speaker and know a lot of Chinese. I think there may be yet another issue.
"What use of the noun do the heavy type endings suggest[]?"
In my opinion, this sentence is neither idiomatic nor grammatical in standard American English. I had to read it three or four times to understand what it meant. In standard American English, this would be:

"What use of the noun do the endings in bold (type) suggest?"

I found quite confusing the lack of a hyphen in the phrase "heavy type," the odd choice of words to describe the font style, and the slightly inadequate visual representation of the font.

C. S. Bartholomew
Textkit Zealot
Posts: 1259
Joined: Mon Sep 19, 2011 10:03 pm

Crosby and heavy type

Post by C. S. Bartholomew »

Altair wrote:I am more or less a native American English speaker and know a lot of Chinese. I think there may be yet another issue.
"What use of the noun do the heavy type endings suggest[]?"
In my opinion, this sentence is neither idiomatic nor grammatical in standard American English. I had to read it three or four times to understand what it meant. In standard American English, this would be:

"What use of the noun do the endings in bold (type) suggest?"

I found quite confusing the lack of a hyphen in the phrase "heavy type," the odd choice of words to describe the font style, and the slightly inadequate visual representation of the font.
I find no fault with the syntax of:
"What use of the noun do the heavy type endings suggest?"


Heavy type is a transparent synonym for bold type, used by the page layout people I used to work with.

*****Heavy type is the term used in Crosby and Schaeffer teachers manual top of page 15.****

I had not the slightest difficulty understanding the sentence. I live in a port city where ESL (Koine English) is the language spoken on the street.

Postscript: Back in the 80s I shared an office with native speakers of Mandarin and Cantonese who spoke to each other in English. My workload wasn't very demanding so occasionally I would help the engineers clean up their English in technical publications. The guy from Hong Kong needed no assistance. I recall an engineer from Korea who needed help with syntax, particularly the use of the English direct article.

Years ago I was introduce to a professional translator from a tribal culture in Central Asia (goatherders who live in tents). She spoke perfect English, zero accent. Much more intelligible than a native of rural Alabama who has lived on the west coast for 40 years.
Last edited by C. S. Bartholomew on Sat Mar 03, 2018 7:10 pm, edited 6 times in total.
C. Stirling Bartholomew

Altair
Textkit Neophyte
Posts: 51
Joined: Wed Jun 14, 2017 5:35 pm

Crosby and heavy type

Post by Altair »

I find no fault with the syntax of:
"What use of the noun do the heavy type endings suggest?"


Heavy type is a transparent synonym for bold type, used by the page layout people I used to work with.

I had not the slightest difficulty understanding the sentence. I live in a port city where ESL (Koine English) is the language spoken on the street.
You made me doubt my memory, so I did a search for "heavy type" on the English Wikipedia, the font of all knowledge :) . Nothing turned up at all, but there was a result for "bold type." I also searched for "heavy type" in Google and got nothing relevant for the first two pages. There were results, however, for "heavy typeface" and "heavy font." Perhaps "heavy type" is not a very common term.

Also, during my education, I was taught that it was mandatory to put a hyphen when the grouping of a compound modifier will not be clear to the reader. I personally would never write "heavy type ending" or even "bold type typing," but always "heavy-type ending" or "bold-type ending'' to avoid precisely the confusion I initially had, thinking about "heavy syllables" and similar terms. Moreover, in my English, "bold-type endings" is just not an idiomatic phrase. I would always rephrase it as "endings in bold type" or something similar.
Postscript: Back in the 80s I shared an office with native speakers of Mandarin and Cantonese who spoke to each other in English. My workload wasn't very demanding so occasionally I would help the engineers clean up their English in technical publications. The guy from Hong Kong needed no assistance. I recall an engineer from Korea who needed help with syntax, particularly the use of the English direct article.

Years ago I was introduce to a professional translator from a tribal culture in Central Asia (goatherders who live in tents). She spoke perfect English, zero accent. Much more intelligible than a native of rural Alabama who has lived on the west coast for 40 years.
Years ago, I really struggled using bilingual Collins dictionaries, I had difficulty understanding many of the entries. Only after some time did I realize that the issue was that the definitions were written with British English in mind. For instance, don't "table" matters in England and the US and expect the same result, because the expression has opposite meanings depending on where you are.

Back to Mandy's journey, I think that Jeidsath's suggestions are good, but do you think Mandy is likely to get anywhere useful using this book? I am not familiar with it, but seeing Latin endings in a book teaching Greek gives me pause when considering the average learner nowadays.

User avatar
jeidsath
Textkit Zealot
Posts: 5332
Joined: Mon Dec 30, 2013 2:42 pm
Location: Γαλεήπολις, Οὐισκόνσιν

Re: Crosby and heavy type

Post by jeidsath »

I split this to keep the original thread focussed.
“One might get one’s Greek from the very lips of Homer and Plato." "In which case they would certainly plough you for the Little-go. The German scholars have improved Greek so much.”

Joel Eidsath -- jeidsath@gmail.com

C. S. Bartholomew
Textkit Zealot
Posts: 1259
Joined: Mon Sep 19, 2011 10:03 pm

Re: Crosby and heavy type

Post by C. S. Bartholomew »

*****Heavy type is the term used in Crosby and Schaeffer teachers manual top of page 15.****

Yeah you're right, a typical user of Microsoft Word will use the term bold type. But in the old days, the typesetters and page-layout people that worked with a large library of typefaces used the words heavy and light as normal adjectives in reference to different typefaces. Heavy and Bold we're not strictly interchangeable.

RE: British English
I just finished reading an Icelandic novel translated into British English. I'm used to it, been reading British authors since I learned to read.
Last edited by C. S. Bartholomew on Sat Mar 03, 2018 7:11 pm, edited 1 time in total.
C. Stirling Bartholomew

mwh
Textkit Zealot
Posts: 4791
Joined: Fri Oct 18, 2013 2:34 am

Re: Crosby and heavy type

Post by mwh »

I don’t understand what this thread is doing here at all. It has nothing to do with Greek.

Post Reply