Quick Fire Questions (A Place to Ask and Answer)

[Vertigo]

Hint - she doesn't blame herself

Well of course not; she's a woman!

*I'll just run for cover now*

 

[David Evil Overlord]

When you fail to leap a tall building in a single bound, it is quite natural to blame others.

She's a hero. It's not her fault that building jumped out in front of her!

 

[David Evil Overlord]

I wonder if super heroes can get insurance cover for damage they do to tall buildings they fail to leap in a single bound...

 

[Ursa major]

Insurance companies shouldn't be allowed to insure bounders (even complete bounders). It only encourages them.

 

[David Evil Overlord]

But she's an incomplete bounder, since she didn't completely leap the building in a single bound.

 

[Ursa major]

She's still a bounder.

 

[TheDustyZebra]

I would assume yes because people are forever using Kleenex rather than handkerchiefs.

Some companies, however, and I believe Kleenex is one of those, take rather a dim view of people using their trademark as a generic term. Xerox is probably the most famous one for that, and I believe they were fond of court cases to prove their point.

It depends on whether Hoover is touchy about their trademark or not, and whether anyone from the company is likely to ever see your book and feel like doing something about it. I'd say (meaning no offense to your possible future sales figures) the odds are in your favor. Now, if your book J.K. Rowlings (is she a trademark, and does she make a good verb?), then you might find yourself in court someday and have some of your hard-earned cash hoovered out of your pockets.

 

[David Evil Overlord]

If your book J.K. Rowlings, you might have the money to buy a better legal team than those hoping to Hoover your money from your pockets.

 

[David Evil Overlord]

If a human body is flying through the air at 3 g's, how fast is it going in terms of kilometres per hour?

Or am I talking utter c**p? Again.

 

[Abernovo]

David, this is more a question of inertia, I believe. Inertia is 'the resistance of any physical object to a change in its state of motion or rest', to use wiki's definition.

If you take off in a rocket, you suddenly have an immense thrust pushing you from standstill. Fast jet crews experience sudden G-forces in turns. Both these are changes in their state of motion - from rest to high speed and from flight in one direction banking at speed in a different heading.

So, if your superhero (I'm presuming the question relates to her) were to take off or turn at high (really high) speed, she would experience G-forces upon her. The same if she were to suddenly come to a halt or reduce speed significantly. As to the exact speeds necessary, I'm not sure.

I think it's F=ma in this case, but I could be wrong. F(force) = m (mass) multiplied by a (acceleration)

 

[Venusian Broon]

DEO - what abernova said - but taking your question literally: A 3g accelaration would be approximately 30 ms-2, and if this is applied to an object at rest you can easily calculate what speed you'd be at various times going forward, so at t=1s, v=30 ms-1, t=5s 150 ms-1, t=10s 300 ms-1 etc...

Of course with those sorts of accelerations if applied constantly to your superhero and say you are flying through the earth's thick atmosphere, she should at some point (quite soon) in her flight cause so much friction with the air that she'd look like a fireball blazing through the sky

Given your discussion re: her costume getting cut up by glass, then perhaps such a action would completely incinerate her costume off her

 

[David Evil Overlord]

Well, I'm not planning on embarrassing her quite that much...not today, anyway. But I will keep that in mind for future reference. Bwahahahahahahaha!!!

 

[Ursa major]

Re the Hoover brand name and being sued.

The hoover brand is owned by two companies: in the US (and, I assume, everywhere except Europe), by Techtronic Industries; in Europe, by Candy.

 

[Jo Zebedee]

I'm sooo sure this line should be punctuated better, but I can't quite get there.. The emphasis is the not trust, but comfort. He's a manipulator, but quite a nice one...

He looked younger than his seventeen years, but she knew this was partly deliberate, to lull people into a sense of- not trust - but comfort.

I'm thinking, maybe, -

a sense of - not trust, but comfort.

might be smoother.

 

[Ursa major]

The usual phrase when lulling of this sort is being performed is "lulled into a false sense of security".

In this context, security could be thought to be occupying the gap between trust and comfort: not as personalised as trust; not as internalised as comfort.

So to return to your specific need,

He looked younger than his seventeen years, but she knew this was partly deliberate, to lull people into a sense of- not trust - but comfort.

could be reworded to:

He looked younger than his seventeen years, but she knew this was in part deliberate, an attempt to lull people into what might be a false sense of security.

(although I'm sure you could do better than my version).

 

[Warren_Paul]

I'm not sure I'd use en-dashes there Springs. Or if you did, then just one after trust, not before it. Or is it the other way around...? Confusing myself here.

EDIT: I'm with Ursa on this, perhaps consider writing the sentence a bit differently? instead of just playing with the punctuation?


On another note of similar likeness, should en-dashes be open or closed when interrupting a sentence? I thought closed, but I've read about them in two different writing guides and one says closed, while the other says open. Confused a bit here.

 

[Ursa major]

I prefer my n-dashes to be both paired and placed within sentences. Lots of other people - published ones at that - share neither of these preferences.

 

[Venusian Broon]

I'm with Ursa that lull and false security go together. (and also that dashes should always be paired, like brackets)

But if you don't mind Springs, I'd go out on a limb and reorganise the sentence to:

"His demenour and boyish looks illicited a great deal of sympathy and maternal* feelings of protection, but she knew that the seventeen year old was skilled at carefully and deliberately manipulating all that talked to him."

*Or paternal, but I can't see the context. Then again if you have a mix of men and women that he interacts with, I unfortunately can't think what word should be....


I suppose the main issue that flares up in my head with the original sentence:

He looked younger than his seventeen years, but she knew this was partly deliberate, to lull people into a sense of- not trust - but comfort.

So....how can he deliberately look younger to be more comforting as the sentence implies? If you have him physically altering his appearance so that he looks like a much younger boy before this sentence, please ignore everything I've written so far! But if he really just a scrawny underdeveloped 17 year old then I'd guess that it's not his looks that are deliberate, but his behaviour.

 

[Warren_Paul]

I'm with Ursa that lull and false security go together. (and also that dashes should always be paired, like brackets)

If the digression ends the sentence you only use one though, so it's not always paired, only when interrupting the sentence.

 

[Jo Zebedee]

I was always of the opinion, too, that dashes should be paired, but have been noticing that this isn't always the case in some of the stuff I've been reading, and I quite like the effect, it seems a little less harsh, less jarring.

VB; I kind of see what you're saying about manipulating his appearance, it's more in the sense of someone batting their eyelids. He uses his looks to get away with a lot, so he plays up to it, keeps his hair a little longer than it needs to be, uses mannerisms that make him seem cute, I suppose.