One of the challenges of the last few months has been accessing materials that my library does not own. With the majority of libraries being closed, we have not been able to borrow these materials from the usual suspects. 

When looking for government publications, one useful source is the Government of Canada Publications website which includes a catalogue of over 502,000 publications and which provides online access to more than 381,000 government publications.

The website offers an advanced search feature which allows you to limit your search by such criteria as department, language, and publication date. The collection includes PDFs …

Coverage, essentially.

You’ll need a little ancient Greek here.

The –demic suffix comes from demos, which means ‘the people’, ‘the community’. Demos is the root of democracy (‘rule by the people’).

The epi- bit comes from the Greek for ‘upon’, ‘at’, ‘close to’. Think of the epicentre of an earthquake.

Pan-, on the other hand, means ‘universal’. Pandemonium is total confusion or chaos; pantheism is the belief that the divine is present everywhere in the universe.

An epidemic is a disease that touches a fairly localised group; a pandemic reaches far beyond the local.

One would therefore say …

Microsoft has decided that it will officially join the ranks of those who consider it an error to put a double space after the end of a sentence.

(Although when I recently typed a sample paragraph in Word with the offending two spaces, no red squiggly line appeared; maybe the change has yet to be implemented, or I need to update my version of Word.)  

Double versus single spacing is one of those long-running controversies that get people — not just word nerds — all hot and bothered. There are those who get positively irrational about it, as often happens with things that …

Properly, it’s normality.

Just as formal leads to formality and final to finality.

But one does also see normalcy, as in this recent New York Times piece.

You won’t see the word normalcy as much outside the US, however. (And whether one has seen the concept there since 2016 is another question entirely.)

Although normalcy was used as early as 1857, the word really only came into its own in 1920, when Warren G. Harding used a return to normalcy as his campaign slogan in that year’s presidential election. He meant the conditions that had existed …

One question that comes up on a regular basis is “why can’t I find a copy of this act on CanLII?” 

One possibility is that the act is an annual statute that only amends another act (or acts), e.g. the Human Rights Code Amendment Act, 2018, S.B.C. 2018, c. 48. Not all amendment acts appear on CanLII; it depends on the jurisdiction.

If you’re not having any luck finding an act on CanLII, and its citation does not begin with “R.S.” (for Revised Statutes), you will probably want to look at the annual statutes for that jurisdiction on …

Oh, Mary Beard! Everyone’s favourite classicist.

She perceptively notes that old-fashioned correspondence offered subtle gradations in formality, which we haven’t quite got right with electronic mail. Beard finds e-mail inappropriately informal, strangely unpersuasive, often annoying, not conducive to genuine expressions of thanks.

Writing a letter also involved a helpful cooling-off period because you had to make the effort to find a stamp and then post your letter; this gave time for second thoughts about sending it at all.

To save her from those late-night missives sent after one glass too many, Beard wishes her laptop had a function that blocked …

I often feel like a grumpy old schoolmaster, rapping the knuckles of my hapless pupils with a ruler when they misplace a comma or mistake who’s for whose.

A certain amount of knuckle-rapping is necessary, but no one who writes about words and writing can afford to be overly prescriptive.

Language changes over time, sometimes for the better. I like text as a verb; it neatly captures a new kind of linguistic transmission we didn’t have when my knuckles were being rapped as a schoolboy. Readers of previous posts will be well aware of new words I am less …

Never underestimate the tendency of people – and legally trained people, especially – to say things twice, unnecessarily.

Both
Think before you (over-)use this.

It is superfluous here: The plaintiff seeks both compensatory and punitive damages.

Co-conspirator
To conspire necessarily involves combination or agreement with at least one other person to do something wrong. Co­- and con– come from the same Latin root indicating joint action, so you need only one of them.

Yes, the OED cites examples of co-conspirator from the 1860s, but they are in a list of co– words that are described as either …

Elderly is a tricky word.

In North America, it’s used as a euphemistic — or at least less harsh — way to say old. Example: The elderly are considered among those at the greatest risk of contracting the coronavirus.

What the threshold age is for that is more difficult to determine. Sixty years is the number generally seen in relation to COVID-19, but otherwise it might be set at 65 or higher. Sixty-five is the new 55?

A further complication is that usage of the word is different in the United Kingdom (and perhaps Australia, New Zealand and other dominions …

LegisInfo provides committee information (e.g. the Standing Committee on Industry, Science and Technology) back to the 35th Parliament, 1st Session (1994). 

However if you need to research parliamentary committees prior to this date, you can use the Library of Parliament’s Canadian Parliamentary Historical Resources. These cover the 6th Parliament (1887-1888) to the 34th Parliament (1988-1993).

Unfortunately, while you can view the committee proceedings online, they cannot be downloaded as PDFs at this time. 

— Susannah Tredwell…