diving semantics

[nimoh]

not really scuba related, but definitely a question on linguistics. I am booking a hotel room with a park and fly option (one night stay, multiple days of parking).

The following is on the hotel's website:

Rate Description: Park Before You Fly Includes Choice Of Room Parking For 8 Days And Transportation To /From Airport Terminal.

What does this mean?

Do I have to choose between parking and the shuttle, or is that one choice, and the other is no parking and no shuttle?

What is meant by "Room Parking"...I want to park my truck

What is with all of the capitalization?


After calling the hotel, it seems there is no choice to be made. Park Before You Fly includes the additional parking and shuttle service

All my questions are intended to be rhetorical, just thought it was a funny sentence, and somewhat on topic

 

[RJP]

Rate Description: Park Before You Fly Includes Choice Of Room Parking For 8 Days And Transportation To /From Airport Terminal.

What does this mean?

Just needs two commas.

 

[nimoh]

Just needs two commas.

Park Before You Fly Includes Choice Of Room, Parking For 8 Days, And Transportation To /From Airport Terminal.

I assume you meant this? Now it seems I have three choices...room, parking and shuttle

 

[RJP]

Park Before You Fly Includes Choice Of Room, Parking For 8 Days, And Transportation To /From Airport Terminal.

I assume you meant this? Now it seems I have three choices...room, parking and shuttle

No, you have NO choices. "Park Before You Fly" includes three things:
Choice of Room
Parking for 8 Days
Trasportation to/from

I suppose it could also benefit from a colon after the word "includes"

 

[nimoh]

No, you have NO choices. "Park Before You Fly" includes three things:
Choice of Room
Parking for 8 Days
Trasportation to/from

I suppose it could also benefit from a colon after the word "includes"

yes, I interpreted it the same way, and after a phone call to confirm, it is the case. However, at the very least it is an awkwardly worded sentence.

 

[RJP]

yes, I interpreted it the same way, and after a phone call to confirm, it is the case. However, at the very least it is an awkwardly worded sentence.

I guess I read enough awkwardly worded copy on a day-to-day basis that I was able to read it perfectly fine. Did you actually think you had to choose between a room, parking, and shuttle to/from airport?

 

[nimoh]

I guess I read enough awkwardly worded copy on a day-to-day basis that I was able to read it perfectly fine. Did you actually think you had to choose between a room, parking, and shuttle to/from airport?

no, didn't actually read it that way, just thought that it could be interpreted that way. Given the context, there would be no reason for someone to park there for 8 days, without needing a shuttle anyway.

I was just contributing this sentence to the linguistics discussion. I have no unresolved confusion about it

 

[lanta]

Reminds me of the character Charly (played by Cliff Robertson in the movie with the same name) when he's asked to punctuate:

that that is is that that is not is not that that is not is not that that is that that is is not that that is not is not that it it is

 

[agilis]

Some people have a lot of time on their hands. To be clear, I'm not describing people who wear wrist watches.

Malcolm X ( I had the pleasure of meeting him twice while an undergraduate) wore one on each wrist.

Wrist watches were seldom worn by men before the First World War. Women might, as a fashion accessory, usually on a ribbon. Gentlemen would carry a pocket watch. Poor people seldom owned a timepiece, and really didn't need one. Time was seen more as something organic, or less critical. There were factory whistles and large clocks on public buildings that told the hours. In the countryside, daybreak and sunset, and maybe something to announce mid-day, like the classic lunch bell. Before the railroad revolution, there were dozens of time zones in the US, always reflecting the solar positions at that particular latitude and longitude. When trains began to have spectacular head-on collisions Congress mandated the uniform series of time zones we still use.

WW1 changed all that, when close coordination of infantry and artillery actions required officers to have an accurate timepiece, coordinated with all other units involved in a planned action. The difficulty of holding miscellaneous objects, like a map, whistle, handgun, and pocket watch led to the obvious solution of strapping the watch on one's wrist. Thus was born the man's wrist watch with it's masculine war-connected cachet.

It's interesting that some scuba gauge/computer issues attempt to deal with the same issues facing WW1 field officers.

A very famous book "Eats shoots and leaves' by Lynne Truss does a wonderful job of explaining the uses, logic, history and indispensability of punctuation. She introduces the reader to Aldus Manutius, a 15th century Venetian printer who developed and regularized most of the punctuation we use, and admits that one of the great disappointments of her life was having been born far too late to have his child.

We are now in a period of linguistic devolution, the erosion of significant elements of punctuation as they become increasingly misunderstood and frequently misused. Even the NY Times has stopped using semi-colons in standard news stories. The cancerous spread of abominations like texting is helping move this sad process along, as is the tendency of people to rely on internet misinformation instead of reading books. Libraries close, bookstores go out of businesss, newspapers disappear, and print media in general is on the brink of extinction.

Who cares? Those of us who read junk written by the semi-literate, and those of us who require precision. Actually, we all need precision, clarity in written material. That we don't get it is illustrated by some of the posts here.

 

[RJP]

Wrist watches were seldom worn by men before the First World War.

Largely due to the fact that they weren't really available before the First World War... I'm guessing.