Plurals in English, by George Carlin

This may or may not have been written by George Carlin. Since there's no profanity, he probably didn't write it. But, it's still funny.

George Carlin: The English Plurals

We'll begin with a box, and the plural is boxes,
But the plural of ox becomes oxen, not oxes;
One fowl is a goose, but two are called geese,
Yet the plural of moose should never be meese;
You may find a lone mouse or a nest full of mice,
Yet the plural of house is houses, not hice.

If the plural of man is always called men,
Why shouldn't the plural of pan be called pen ?
If I speak of my foot and show you my feet,
And I give you a boot, would a pair be called beet ?
If one is a tooth and a whole set are teeth,
Why shouldn't the plural of booth be called beeth ?

Then one may be that, and three would be those,
Yet hat in the plural would never be hose;
And the plural of cat is cats, not cose.
We speak of a brother & also of brethren,
But though we say mother, we never say methren.
Then the masculine pronouns are he, his & him,
But imagine the feminine: she, shis & shim !

Let's face it - English is a crazy language.
There is no egg in eggplant nor ham in hamburger;
Neither apple nor pine in pineapple.
English muffins weren't invented in England.

We take English for granted,
But if we explore its paradoxes,
We find that quicksand can work slowly,
Boxing rings are square;
A guinea pig is neither from Guinea nor is it a pig.
Why is it that writers write, but fingers don't fing,
Grocers don't groce and hammers don't ham ?

Doesn't it seem crazy that ...
You can make amends but not one amend ?
If you have a bunch of odds and ends ...
And get rid of all but one of them,
What do you call it ?

If teachers taught, why didn't preachers praught ?
If a vegetarian eats vegetables,
What does a humanitarian eat ?

Sometimes I think all people who speak English
Should be in an asylum for the verbally insane.
In what other language do people recite at a play,
And play at a recital ?

We ship by truck but send cargo by ship ...
We have noses that run & feet that smell;
We park in a driveway & drive in a parkway.
And how can a slim chance & a fat chance be the same,
While a wise man & a wise guy are opposites ?

You have to marvel at the unique lunacy of a language
In which your house can burn up as it burns down;
In which you fill in a form by filling it out,
and in which an alarm goes off by going on.
And in closing .....

If Father is Pop .....
How come Mother's not Mop?

Know Your Organization

Technical Writers work with just about every department within a company. They get a feature description from a Product Manager, an implementation detail from R&D, and the terminology spin from Marketing. They may also deal with Support, Deployment, and whatever other deparments exist in their companies.

When dealing with all these different groups, especially when working in a large company, it helps to understand how the groups work together. This knowledge helps the TW more efficiently deal with his or her tasks, avoid hitting management walls, and know who they need to talk to. Unfortunately, it is only gained after working for the company for a long time.

Some illustrations, like the one below, of different org types were posted over at Bonker's World.

Which one is your current company most like?

[Source: Bonker's World]

Make your life easier - customize your MS Word toolbar

You can make your life a lot easier by customizing the MS Word toolbar with functions that you often use.

Here's how.

1. Click the dropdown arrow () in the toolbar.
2. Select More Commands...
3. Click Popular Commands.
4. Select any command from the list and then click Add>>.

Add whatever commands you usually use. Note the following:

• You can add a button to run a custom macro.
• You can add a separator by selecting which is at the top of the list.

I usually add these commands:

• Para Keep With Next - let's you turn on/off the keep with next attribute.
• Para Page Break Before - adds a page break before the current line of text.
• Style - shows the current style and allows you to select a new style.

Reopening Old Google Chrome Tabs

I have Google Chrome (GC) configured to open whatever tabs were previously opened when the browser was closed. This setup is great since I often have 10-20 tabs open, and reopening them 1 by 1 would be a pain.

Unfortunately, what happens is that sometimes I'll have 2 separate GC windows open, usually one of them with 20 different tabs (let's call it A) and another with only 1 tab (called B).

A problem occurs if I close the window A first and then window B. Since GC only remembers the tabs on the last window (B) that was closed, when I restart GC it gives me the tabs from window B. Bummer.

There is another feature in GC that let's you open a closed tab. The keyboard shortcut is Cntl-shift-Tab. When you accidentally close a tab, just type the keyboard shortcut and it reopens the closed tab.

And now for the cool part....

When you open GC, if you type Cntl-shift-Tab, it reopens a closed tab from even before you closed the browser. I my case above, when GC is restarted, window B opens. If I type Cntl-shift-Tab, it opens browser window A that was closed!

Count the Number of Words using JavaScript in Adobe Acrobat

This is the best hack that I've come across in the last several years.

Many times I wanted to count the number of words in a PDF document. The normal way to do this task is to save the file as a Word doc and then open it in MS Word that calculates the count. You can also upload your file to an online site that will count it (although most companies would probably frown upon sending your precious data to some random 3rd party site).

Today I stumbled across an Adobe forum thread that said that Acrobat can run JavaScript. Hmmm... And then I found another site that explains how to create a custom tool in Acrobat. Put these two together and you get a toolbar button in Adobe Acrobat to count the number of words in the doc.

Here's how to make it work. Note that this is for Acrobat DC.

1. Open Acrobat.
2. Click Tools.
3. Click Action Wizard.
4. In the button list under the toolbar, click New Custom Command.
   This window opens:
   
   
   
5. Click Execute JavaScript.
6. Change the Label to something useful, like "Count words in document".
7. Change the Tool tip to something useful, like "Counts the number of words in the current document".
8. Click Command Options...
9. Paste in the following code:
   /* Count number of words in document */
var cnt = 0;
for (var p = 0; p < this.numPages; p++) cnt += getPageNumWords(p);
app.alert("There are " + cnt + " words in this file.");

10. Click OK.
11. Click Don't show options, options are always the same.
12. Click OK.

You now have a custom command. All that's left to do is make the button that calls it.

1. Right-click in a blank part of the toolbar.
2. Click Customize Quick Tools.
3. Expand the Action Wizard section.
4. Find your new command and select it.
5. Click the Add to Toolbar button on the right side of the window.
6. Click Save.

That's it! You can now open any PDF and just click the button to get a word count.

[Source: KHKonsulting and Adobe]