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Stan Carey

@stancarey.bsky.social

4.5K followers 250 following 1.6K posts

Editor, writer, lapsed biologist in the west of Ireland Copy-editing, writing: https://stancarey.com Language: https://stancarey.wordpress.com Strong language: https://stronglang.wordpress.com 🎞 https://letterboxd.com/stancarey 🦣 @[email protected]

stancarey.com

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Stan Carey @stancarey.bsky.social · Nov 10

I should introduce myself, now that the world is ending. I'm a freelance copy-editor/proofreader from Ireland. And I write, mostly about language: stancarey.com
stancarey.wordpress.com

I hike a bit and always have a book on the go and a film in mind. Background in biology; environmentalist at heart

Stan Carey editing and proofreading | Tidy, tighten, or transform your text

stancarey.com

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Stan Carey @stancarey.bsky.social · 35m

It's probably not well known outside of linguistics circles – much of it went over my head a lot of the time. But I loved its humour when I understood it (I used to link to it from my blog sometimes) and am sorry to see it end.

Stan Carey @stancarey.bsky.social · 38m

I wondered about that distinction too. I didn't read OpenAI's report, but it was also discussed a little in the latest episode of @manymindspod.bsky.social: manyminds.libsyn.com/the-age-of-s...

Many Minds: The age of social AI

AI therapists and caregivers. Digital tutors and advisors and friends. Artificial lovers. Griefbots trained to imitate dead loved ones. Welcome, to the bustling world of AI-powered chatbots. This was ...

manyminds.libsyn.com

Stan Carey @stancarey.bsky.social · 42m

Yeah, it's been such a fixture. Huge credit to them for sustaining it this long

Stan Carey @stancarey.bsky.social · 13h

"Language has been verbing for as long as it has languaged." New post on Agatha Christie – as a verb stancarey.wordpress.com/2025/10/11/t...

to Agatha Christie (v.tr.)

The conversion of nouns to verbs (to impact, to medal, to leverage, to architect) is a continual object of criticism and word rage. But language has been verbing for as long as it has languaged. In…

stancarey.wordpress.com

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Reposted by Stan Carey

James 🎃 Harbeck @sesquiotic.bsky.social · 5d

Yeah, I got several gigs writing articles on language, and I started @stronglang.bsky.social with @stancarey.bsky.social , and I met a whole bunch of people who are friends now.

Conrad Hackett @conradhackett.bsky.social · 6d

Has anything great happened in your life because of social media?

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Stan Carey @stancarey.bsky.social · 13h

"The marginalisation of local and Indigenous knowledge has long been driven by entrenched power structures. GenAI puts this process on steroids."

More good reasons to resist and refuse this technology

Aeon Magazine @aeon.co · 21h

The training data for generative AI is far from the sum total of human knowledge. As well as oral cultures, many languages are absent, creating significant blindspots in AI’s understanding of human experience

Generative AI has access to a small slice of human knowledge | Aeon Essays

Huge swathes of human knowledge are missing from the internet. By definition, generative AI is shockingly ignorant too

buff.ly

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Reposted by Stan Carey

Jessica Kant @jessdkant.bsky.social · 4d

To be candid, I want the bubble to burst. Because it will eventually and inevitably, but the longer the current charade goes on the more our planet and communities are decimated— and the more dependent we become on the few powerful people left who control those resources.

Jessica Kant @jessdkant.bsky.social · 4d

Energy requirements for AI mean that the only way for the bubble not to burst would require companies to multiply their carbon footprint to an unimaginable degree. Right now, while AI is barely functional and mostly a novelty for the lazy, it requires so much energy that data centers rival cities.

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Reposted by Stan Carey

Jessica Kant @jessdkant.bsky.social · 4d

So when I hear of students being encouraged to use GPT in college I don’t hear innovation. I hear cognitive atrophy, the inability to think critically for oneself, and total dependence on vulnerable centralized repositories of data for knowledge without ever understanding how knowledge is generated.

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Stan Carey @stancarey.bsky.social · 14h

2013 feels like an entire lifetime ago in internet years

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Stan Carey @stancarey.bsky.social · 14h

I reviewed SpecGram's Essential Guide to Linguistics back in 2013 stancarey.wordpress.com/2013/09/05/b...

Book Review: The Speculative Grammarian Essential Guide to Linguistics

Every serious field of study deserves a satirical wing, and linguistics is blessed in this regard with Speculative Grammarian, a journal some say is now centuries old. SpecGram, as it’s known to fa…

stancarey.wordpress.com

Stan Carey @stancarey.bsky.social · 14h

Speculative Grammarian, a long-running publication of satirical linguistics, is winding down specgram.com #linguistics

SpecGram—Speculative Grammarian

Speculative Grammarian: the premier scholarly journal featuring research in the neglected field of satirical linguistics.

specgram.com

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Stan Carey @stancarey.bsky.social · 2d

Yes: "would've" is a contraction of "would have". I address this in paragraph 1.

Reposted by Stan Carey

Peter Sokolowski @petersokolowski.bsky.social · 2d

spidermanicule

Steven Van Impe @svanimpe.bsky.social · 6d

#EarlyModern meme! #BookHistory

The bottom of a page of printed text, showing three hands (or printers' fists) pointing at each other.

The spiderman meme: three spidermen pointing at each other.

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Stan Carey @stancarey.bsky.social · 2d

spidermanicule is the best blend I've seen in aeons

Stan Carey @stancarey.bsky.social · 3d

The elusive triple "is"! languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=3452

Language Log » The elusive triple "is"

languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu

Stan Carey @stancarey.bsky.social · 3d

Some authors who have used "would of", etc:

Hilary Mantel, Margaret Atwood, Raymond Carver, Patrick O'Brian, Sylvia Plath, Shirley Jackson, Octavia Butler, Raymond Chandler, Dashiell Hammett, James Baldwin, Anne Tyler, Elmore Leonard, Carson McCullers, Terry Pratchett, Dylan Thomas, Agatha Christie

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Stan Carey @stancarey.bsky.social · 3d

Basically yes, though NB I'm not a linguist either. "Thing is" seems to have become a kind of fused unit, the "is" having been bleached of its former copular function. But I wouldn't call "thing is" a word just yet!

Stan Carey @stancarey.bsky.social · 3d

I'd say that falls under lexicalization. But something different from "would of" (or "would've of") is going on, syntactically, with "is is", a construction that has attracted a lot of attention from linguists ygdp.yale.edu/phenomena/do...

Double is | Yale Grammatical Diversity Project: English in North America

ygdp.yale.edu

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Reposted by Stan Carey

Benjamin Dreyer @bcdreyer.social · 3d

And whatever would of walked there, would of walked alone.

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Stan Carey @stancarey.bsky.social · 3d

oh no

Stan Carey @stancarey.bsky.social · 3d

Don't mind me, I'm just here fantasizing about a publicly available exchange between the two of you on the subject of English usage

Stan Carey @stancarey.bsky.social · 3d

"would of" (and "shouldn't of" and "ought to of") get the green light from Shirley Jackson AND Benjamin Dreyer

Benjamin Dreyer @bcdreyer.social · 3d

I’m happy to take credit for encountering the Let Me Tell You examples in copyediting and merrily thinking If that’s what Shirley wants, then we’re good to go.

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Reposted by Stan Carey

Ellen Forget @ellenforget.bsky.social · 6d

Can anyone recommend an academic audiobook that was well done? Looking for a good example of how to handle citations, footnotes, bibliography, etc. in audiobook format. Ideally an academic monograph. Please only recommend if you've read the audiobook and thought it was well done.

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Stan Carey @stancarey.bsky.social · 3d

Not something I can help with, I'm afraid, but I've passed it on to someone who might

Stan Carey @stancarey.bsky.social · 3d

Oh yes! I read that marvellous collection before I knew you copy-edited it. Glad to get this insider report.

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