52 thoughts on “Our Daily Thread 1-20-17”

  2. Re: My 9:51 last night. I was saying that Elvera was going to watch TV until the end.
    What I did was the usual, “YOU”RE UP ALONE’
    She ended the TV and came to bed with me.

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  4. Chas, notice who took that photo? It’s a sunset. Taken out my back window as I sit right here at my desk. (Actually I was probably standing next to the picture window that’s beside my desk, but that is the gorgeous view I get from right here.) I’ve seen very few sunrises in my life, and probably never one that spectacular.

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  5. Haha, I was thinking wow, Cheryl was up early!! 🙂 gorgeous sunset, of course.

    It’s raining here but I still had one more trash can to fill and haul down to the curb — I got wet doing that, but it’s done.

    I flipped on CNN briefly and noticed in their text that went up under the live view of Trump attending church this morning that they spelled Bible (twice) using a lower-case “b.” AP style has, of course, long called for Bible to be always capitalized. I’m guessing it was a CNN call and it’s not the first time I’ve seen it that way in the media in recent years. It’s likely intentional in many of those cases, maybe just a result of not knowing any better in others.

    It’s going to be a very interesting day. One of our local shop keepers announced in FB last night that his store would be closed to observe the Day of Mourning (post accompanied with a weeping Statue of Liberty). The melodrama is running high.

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  6. So, you had a shower after all?

    Lower case b is not unusual. I don’t like it, but I see it Christian publishing house books all the time. Cheryl, of course, will know best.

    I’m wondering if God sent a huge storm this morning on purpose. I’m not going to Zumba–the teacher is busy protesting on the Golden Gate bridge.

    Strange times. I woke at 3 from the rain and prayed for quite a while–for safety, of course, for family on the road, for you all, for our nation.

    Now I get to revisit Samson and friends. What a cheerful day!

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  7. I haven’t seen the lower case “b” often, and only in general media references here and there fairly recently. It does, of course, look odd and goes against the long-standing style, so it always makes me wonder, Hmmmm, wonder if someone is trying to make a point?

    This inauguration day — and the flurry of protest and emotions that surround it — is unprecedented in so many ways. Might also be a good day to stay off social media for the most part.

    And, yes, I did get a shower — but now I have a new shower curtain. 🙂 An elf sent it, apparently.

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  8. Good morning. My friend, Karen, has set her Facebook profile photo to black. Does anyone get the sense of grand scale spiritual warfare? I am so sad about how her husband insists on listening to the news that stirs her up in an unhealthy way. My CA friend/former apartment mate plans a visit next week. I hope all will go well with that. At least her Facebook profile photo is not black.

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  11. As for bible, I believe it is lower case unless you are referring to The Holy Bible. Or The Revised Standard Version, as those are actual titles. A bible, or book, for gardening is only capitalized when the full name is given. That said, as a believer in the Lord Jesus Christ and in honor of His Glory, I will continue to capitalize Bible when I am referring to the Written Word of God. They are just trying to make the capitalization match their beliefs, I suppose.

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  13. “AP Style Bible. The AP Stylebook has a number of different rules and guidelines to follow when referring to the Bible in your text. Capitalize Bible, without quotations marks, when referring to the Scriptures of the Old Testament or the New Testament.”

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  14. That photo looks like the sunrises and sunsets I’ve been seeing all week as I’ve been driving to and from work! Such glorious handiwork. No pictures for me as I’m driving.

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  15. Re lowercase “bible”: When I entered publishing more than 20 years ago (yikes, a quarter century next year!), I hardly ever saw it. The word “bible” simply means “book,” so one might see “The Cook’s bible” and the like (interestingly, usually with a lowercase “b” in recognition that it isn’t the Holy Bible . . . though I don’t know if they are still lowercasing the “b” these days). By the time I went freelance, I was seeing it lowercase occasionally in books that came in to be edited (I might have only seen that once), a little more often in submissions, but still not very often. Now I get it lowercase in at least a third of the manuscripts I edit. I always change it, and I always tell authors I’m changing it, but it still surprises me every time I see it. I have seen it in print that way once or twice, but generally not, and I assume it’s ignorance when I see it considering that the Christian authors I edit are doing it more and more themselves. And they don’t capitalize “Scripture” or “Word” either, probably more than half the time they don’t capitalize those, and the style for Christian publishing houses is to capitalize those (but not biblical, scriptural, or godly). So basically I’d say (in my experience) that over the last 15 years we’ve gone from “Bible” being nearly always capitalized to it being capitalized two-thirds of the time among Christians and maybe half among unbelievers.

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  17. AP stylebook has long been journalism’s “bible.” 🙂 When a new edition comes out, it’s funny to see how we all look for what’s new, what they’ve changed.

    Backyard finally became OK as one word, not long ago. Overdue.

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  22. Cheryl, you’re not far enough north, or you could still get up at a comfortable hour in the morning and see the sunrise in the winter 🙂

    Janice, I would be hesitant to call protesting against any earthly ruler anything to do with spiritual warfare. We must be careful not to confound our temporary nations with the kingdom of God. The president of the U.S. can be an instrument for good, certainly (even Nero was used for good), and also for evil (for every earthly ruler is a fallen human), but he wields no authority in Christ’s kingdom. Before God he stands or falls in what he does with Christ. He will be held accountable for what injustice is done during his administration – injustice happens during every administration – and only the blood of Christ can cover his acts of omission and commission. If he rejects that way of escape, the full weight of his sin will be his to bear for eternity. There is no special position in the eyes of God to those who wield political power on earth. If anything, they are under greater responsibility. In the words of Justin Martyr to the emperor Antoninus Pius, in his plea that Christians be no treated as criminals: “For we forewarn you, that you shall not escape the coming judgment of God, if you continue in your injustice; and we ourselves will invite you to do that which is pleasing to God.”

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  23. DJ, book publishing (at least in the CBA world) uses the Chicago Manual of Style (CMS). For spelling, we use the Merriam-Webster’s Dictionary (which has had “backyard” for a long time, but still persists with “mind-set”); for specifically religious terms (such as whether or not to capitalize “the Flood”), the go-to source is The Christian Writer’s Manual of Style, and publishing houses tend to use their own small style guides to express variations from those.

    Most authors that I edit haven’t consulted any style guide, of course, so they’ll end up making it up as they go. In their use of numbers, if I am editing for a publisher I go with CMS. If I’m editing an individual who plans to self-publish, I tell them I’m editing for CMS style, but if they prefer AP style that is OK too. (Personally I prefer AP style for numbers, and that’s how I generally write unless it’s for publication.) But they can’t just make it up as they go along.

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  24. The tree in the header now is the blue spruce in front of our front door before it had shaken off the last snowfall in December. I thought it pretty cool how the pattern of the overlapping snowy branches resembles a snowflake.

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  25. Pretty header pictures today.

    What are CMS style and AP style for numbers? Sometime back I learned some rules for when to use digits and when to use words, but don’t remember those rules exactly. Numbers fewer than a certain number of digits were to be spelled out (for example, one digit numbers should be in letters), but beyond that, I don’t recall much.

    I guess I should have called myself Six Arrows rather than 6 arrows, then. Shows how much I learned. 🙂

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  26. I find it very frustrating that I missed any part of the inaughuration and I go on line to look and all I can find are photos and news feed of the prostesters. I don’t want to see that

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  27. Roscuro, I was not referring to the black profile photo as the spiritual warfare in absence of other things. The spiritual warfare is going on in my friend’s heart because she is a baby Christian made afraid to step into a church where she wants to be baptized. To me, black is a symbol of death. One thing the black profile photo can mean is contemplation of suicide. I did post a question to my friend on her page asking what her black profile photo means to her because it can mean different things to different people.

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  28. Janice, I just find it quietly amusing that, I assume, the black profile is supposed to be some sort of protest but then they are saying black is back and that is very un politically correct. Like wearing a white hat in the cowboy shows to show who is the good guy.

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  30. I wear black much of the time. It wears better, because small stains don’t show, and generally lasts longer than other colours. I associate black with mourning and sorrow, though that isn’t why I wear it. Johnny Cash wore black out of concern for others:

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  32. Six Arrows, I don’t know the precise details of the AP style, since I haven’t used it at all since I took Journalism in college. (I got an A, if that counts.) But basically it spells out one to ten and then uses numerals for higher than ten. So it will say, “Robert McLaughlin, 11, and his sister Janice, six . . .”

    CMS style is somewhat complicated, but the basic overview is this:

    * Numbers one to one hundred are spelled out.
    * Numbers that can be expressed as two words are spelled out (five thousand but 29,000).
    * If a number is the first word in a sentence, it is always spelled out (even if it is 1952).
    * Percentages are not spelled out (2 percent) unless the first word of a sentence.
    * Within the same paragraph, if two or more numbers are used in the same context, be consistent with their use. For example, if you are speaking of two old sisters, you wouldn’t say that Mabel is ninety-nine and Sabrina is 102; you’d choose one or the other. However, you can say that 102-year-old Sabrina loves fruit and her usual lunch consists of two apples, three pears, and four or five bananas, since the numbers have a different “context” than age.
    * There are other details. For example, I don’t know if it’s CMS or the Christian Writerr’s Manual of Style that specifies this, but one wouldn’t write “second Corinthians five” but 2 Corinthians 5 (unless the 2 was the first word in the sentence, in which case you would indeed spell out “Second,” but not 5). And words that are traditionally shown one way would be exceptions, like World War II. (I haven’t looked up the style of that one, actually; I know sometimes you see it as 2, but I’m pretty sure the traditional way to write it is still the one considered correct.)

    Sometimes if an author has a strong preference, or has been consistent in use of something contrary to style, it is allowed. If I were to edit a book by a primary school teacher, for instance, and she gave ages several times per page of her book and she always used numerals, I’d probably let it be (or would check with the publisher to see if the author had expressed a preference and if the publisher cared either way). Since a six-year-old is always going to write “I am 6 years old,” I would be inclined to think that usage is OK, as long as she is consistent in the book. But the publisher might say no, change it, in which case I’d let the author know we’re changing it. (And if she argues with me, I’d go back to the publisher.) Sometimes authors choose really dumb things to fight over. (I don’t care that I have told that same story six times in the book! It’s important to the story! Leave it!) But in my experience publishers are inclined to defer to the author if the author has one or two odd strong preferences–just not in areas where the publisher believes the author’s choice will be offensive to readers, such as use of profanity in a Christian book, or theology strongly at odds with that of the publisher.

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  33. … and I have been so busy fighting a splitting headache AND trying to work that I let Roscuro beat me to posting a Johnny Cash song appropriate for the discussion. I am so disappointed in myself. 😉

    Liked by 3 people

  36. Nice gesture, but when you consider some of the things he said about her during the campaign (he was much tougher and cruder than any of the other candidates) … Does it ring kind of hollow?

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  42. Kare, capitalizing or not capitalizing “gospel” depends on the publisher, and it can get tricky. I think the CWMS has it lowercased unless it’s referring to the books (“the Gospels and Acts”). It’s one of those things where an author who has a preference is definitely going to get his way. (I prefer it capped, myself.)

    Liked by 1 person

  43. This Talk of capitalized or not capitalized Words makes me like a Language like German which uses upper Case for all Nouns. Then there is spanish which only uses it for names of people and places or the first word of a book title.

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  45. Cheryl, 3:46, that’s interesting to me. It seems cumbersome, though, to express a year in words instead of digits when it’s at the beginning of the sentence. I would probably try to start the sentence with something other than, say, 1952, then.

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  48. I made it through the day….business was slow and I was glad for it…coughing and sneezing at work is not fun…my neighbor/boss has the same thing…we were quite the pair I tell you! And for some reason a photo of my family taken about 10 years ago ended up on Janice’s FB page!!! Sorry Janice….I don’t know how that happened….I posted a different photo on my Mom’s FB page wishing her a Happy Anniversary…it would have been my parents 67th wedding anniversary today….I will admit I took an actifed…but I know I did not tag you on that photo! 😛
    I’m calling it a day….have to go to work tomorrow morning…I’m tired! Oh, and yay for a new President of the USA!!!

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  49. 6 Arrows, yep, if an author begins a sentence with a year (and, naturally, generally not spelling it out) I rewrite the sentence. Usually it’s quite easy to do.

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  52. January 20, 2017 is the day I learned that you aren’t supposed to begin a sentence with a date. (But Cheryl sais, “A year” I don’t even know how to do that.)

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