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BLUF: A military standard to make writing more powerful

animalz.co

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Re: BLUF: A military standard to make writing more powerful

#131
post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>the verb 'to entitle' is a strange one in that it is often tricky to pin down what would be the subject of an active sentence using entitle as a verb. It isn't difficult at all. E.g. in "This coupon entitles them to cheese", "this coupon" is clearly the subject. You may be thinking about thematic structure more than grammatical relations.

So—if I am entitled, what is doing the entitling? You rewrote the word as active which I guess is a valid point but a complete departure from conversation and not at all in good faith, my friend.

If you are genuinely entitled, you are probably entitled by law, by convention, by the terms of some contract. There's some framework, and some reason within it, that you are owed the thing.

We also seem to use "entitled" to mean that someone thinks they are owed things when they aren't - you often find this in rants about individual jerks or millennials in general. There's no subject to be had in that use because the entire point is that it is not legitimate.

I think the latter sense is always an adjective. The former sense clearly can be a transitive verb, and I have not found a seemingly grammatical utterance that can't be described that way (I think - IANALinguist). The fact that the subject can be left unspecified is a feature of the passive construction in general, and an often-stated motivation for some of the criticism it receives.

Re: BLUF: A military standard to make writing more powerful

#132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Was that the wrong link? I was excited that someone had done the digging in language log to find a post that clarifies (I'd bet there's a few), but that one doesn't seem relevant.

It seems to be relevant in that it describes how the common formation of adjectival phrases in English (from which these new transitive formations discussed in the Language Log are a deviation) is based on adjective + prepositional phrase, and our subject sentence follows that pattern - "entitled" is being used as an adjective, and "to jump pay for the time you spent in training last year" is a prepositional phrase.…

It's maybe obliquely relevant, but I don't think it actually clears up any of the questions at hand.

> "entitled" is being used as an adjective

But... I think that's always kinda what's going on with the passive? I can call someone entitled (although it usually takes a different connotation), but I can also call something "thrown" (eg. "The thrown ball strikes the catcher's mitt."). I think it's nonetheless uncontroversial that "the ball was thrown" is passive voice.

FWIW, checking a couple dictionaries (MW and AHD, chosen for being freely searchable online rather than quality) both list "entitle" as a transitive verb and seem (harder to be sure of with the interface) to omit separate mention of "entitled".

Re: BLUF: A military standard to make writing more powerful

#133
post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>the verb 'to entitle' is a strange one in that it is often tricky to pin down what would be the subject of an active sentence using entitle as a verb. It isn't difficult at all. E.g. in "This coupon entitles them to cheese", "this coupon" is clearly the subject. You may be thinking about thematic structure more than grammatical relations.

So—if I am entitled, what is doing the entitling? You rewrote the word as active which I guess is a valid point but a complete departure from conversation and not at all in good faith, my friend.

I think you might have misread my post (?) I was just giving an example of an active voice sentence with 'entitle'. There is nothing special about 'entitle' that makes it difficult to identify what the grammatical subject of the sentence is.

My post was in response to the claim that "it is often tricky to pin down what would be the subject of an active sentence using entitle as a verb".

Re: BLUF: A military standard to make writing more powerful

#134
post #3

This is a sore spot for me, someone sending an IM with a quick "Got a minute?", which pulls me out of my thought zone. And once I answer back, I have no idea how long it is going to take for them to tell me what their issue is (could be 30 seconds, or a couple minutes -- I've often waited for 10 minutes, then got up to go for a meeting, and they get upset when I don't answer). I'd much rather them just tell me what p…

What about replying with a link to this article :- )

Re: BLUF: A military standard to make writing more powerful

#135

I naturally write in an inductive style, data+evidence followed by conclusion. And gosh darn, don't I just feel brilliant when, after I've laid out all my evidence and my deserving reader has been inevitably led to the only possible conclusion, mine, they agree with the only possible conclusion, mine. My reader is so lucky to have me as a writer. Well, at least I was made aware of this particular conceit by some rhet…

That was an inductive style comment itself? :- ) at least not BLUF (it didn't start with "they should be fired")

Re: BLUF: A military standard to make writing more powerful

#136
post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I use to do this (with an "EOM" on the end) but gmail doesn't lend itself well to this.

this was a common msft corp email technique in the 90s. it worked really well

We did this too at my first job, and I also included SOM and MOM for start and middle.
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