Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2010 November 9

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November 9

Tip of the tongue

THere is a word I'm looking for, and it's been bothering me for close to an hour now. This word (arbitrarily denoted [A]) means something like "means" or "methods" or even "practices", but the word that goes with it is "pursue", I want ot use it in "pursue a [A]" Thanks —Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.92.78.167 (talk) 00:16, 9 November 2010 (UTC)

Pursue a course? WikiDao ☯ (talk) 00:21, 9 November 2010 (UTC)

That could be lots of things. You could try looking up means, method or practice in an online thesaurus and see if your word is there. PrimeHunter (talk) 00:52, 9 November 2010 (UTC)

Avenue? --173.49.78.133 (talk) 01:08, 9 November 2010 (UTC)

End, goal, means, objective, would all work there.... Do you have any more clues about it? Lexicografía (talk) 01:20, 9 November 2010 (UTC)

Regime; regimen? Protocol? Hmmmm maybe not that 194.223.35.225 (talk) 13:28, 10 November 2010 (UTC)

Capitalisation

When people criticise unnecessary capitalisation, why do they often use it themsleves in their criticism? For example, "I Don't Like The Fact That These Words Are Capitalised"? jc iindyysgvxc (my contributions) 05:20, 9 November 2010 (UTC)

Irony? Dismas|^(talk) 05:23, 9 November 2010 (UTC)

Yeah, it's irony (which, as you may remember is just like silvery or goldy, only made of iron). Another example is the title of a recent art exhibit here, which would translate as: "art exhibit with an unnecessarily long title, consisting of ten words". TomorrowTime (talk) 08:06, 9 November 2010 (UTC)

I'd say there are two possible reasons. (1) Illustrating the sort of thing you did, instead of boringly quoting it. (2) Demonstrating how ugly it looks, by carrying it to extremes. And quite possibly both of those. --Anonymous, 09:35 UTC, November 9, 2010.

There's a whole website devoted to How To Write Badly Well... AnonMoos (talk) 12:48, 9 November 2010 (UTC)

See Muphry's law and Fumblerules. -- Wavelength (talk) 16:21, 9 November 2010 (UTC)

movie playlist - what is the word

If a collection of songs is a playlist, what is a collection of movies? What word are people using? Has the meaning of playlist expanded these days? Thanks. --67.22.236.140 (talk) 14:15, 9 November 2010 (UTC)

Youtube uses "playlist" for user-compiled lists of videos. It seems perfectly fine to me to use the word for movies as well as songs - the word itself doesn't say anything about the type of media being played -- Ferkelparade π 14:46, 9 November 2010 (UTC)

I wonder if it could be used to refer to a list of games to be played, or indeed to a list of plays to be performed. —Angr (talk) 17:21, 10 November 2010 (UTC)

bussiness communication

to write an unsolicited letter to the HR manager of the company seeking job in the area of specialization you have done. along with a profile of one page about yourself —Preceding unsigned comment added by 59.96.174.124 (talk) 15:53, 9 November 2010 (UTC)

The relevant article for you is Cover letter. --Zerozal (talk) 16:03, 9 November 2010 (UTC)

You might also find this webpage helpful. Note that for such a letter things like correct grammar, spelling and punctuation will be extremely important, none of which are particularly in evidence in your post. I know this place is informal but it's good to get into good writing habits. --Viennese Waltz 16:13, 9 November 2010 (UTC)