How To Sound Like a Naval Historian
In this episode we’re talking about some important details to making yourself sound like you know what you’re talking about in naval history.
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I recently moved on from a museum job that included several historic sites. These sites included naval history, but also non-naval topics as well—topics in which I was better-versed due to my previous museum experience. In fact, you were kind enough to render assistance to our museum on several occasions in your role with HNSA, Mr. Szimanski, for which I was terribly grateful. My goal was always to apply the best curatorial practices (within our limited budget) to my collection and the best history and research to our exhibits and programs. In doing so, it was our endeavor to spark further interest in our content on the part of our visitors, and not make them feel like they were outsiders looking into a restricted, unwelcoming field. Perhaps this is not the same audience you’re addressing with this video. But I hope the museum audience was as patient with me as you were, and were not put off by a wayward “the.”
The interesting bit is that many of these rules apply to writing in general. Especially the last point about parenthesizing the abbreviation before you use it later.
Ahh, the good ol' Chicago Manual of Style.
Or is it part of MLA? APA..?
Wow, so confuse
Should we really call Bismark "he"? As far as i know "die" Bismarck it was just captain Lindemanns pet peve because a warship isnt supposed to be feminine? Personally i dont think it is proper to change gramatical rules just so that one Kriegsmarine officer feels better about his ship.
THE Ohio State University!
This was an excellent video to help me double-check myself. Currently, I am in the early draft stages of my Ph.D. dissertation involving naval history and can proudly say after looking back at my rough draft sections, the only big no-no I do is the usage of "The" about half the time.
One other thing I'm curious about is your take on how main guns are referred to. Is it better to say NEW JERSEY has 16" Rifles, Naval Artillery, or guns? I frequently refer to the main battery of a ship simply as gun since most non-technical readers will understand what I mean without getting overly technical.
A LOT of thr things mentioned here are appropriate for any type of report or technical document.
My indicator for competence is if the author says "battleship NY receives operating support …"
Technically speaking, it should be ex-USS New Jersey as she is no longer in commission in the USN.
I am able to spell, Drachinifel, lol.
As an academic in English, nice crash course on usage and much appreciated. The convention of giving the full acronym followed by parentheses the first time, and then using the acronym, is a good thing to give people. If people followed this, it would clear up a lot for their audiences. The pronouns, well, we know a lot more about the implications of usage now, so there can be perfectly legitimate reasons to depersonalize and de-gender a thing. There's currently a debate going on on a Sierra Nevada fan and visitor page over usage. An insight I would add from over there is that audience matters a lot in how you use things: formal versus informal, lay versus technical. It's something you allude to, but it's good to be conscious of in usage. I say the "Sierras" all the time, since we informally refer to mountain ranges as countable plurals in general (like "the Rockies"), but in academic literature, it's treated as a non-count singular, "the Sierra" in deference to the name, Sierra Nevada, being non-count. The problem is that the usage then gets weaponized, and I don't think gatekeeping is the result you want here. It sounds like more of an educational project. The place I would consider using the definite article "the" would be when talking informally about Battleship Iowa. The technical nomenclature is clear enough, but in informal usage, the article signals a single, specific noun, which would distinguish the specific usage from the general class of battleships: "the Iowa" versus "an Iowa" or even "Iowas."
What irritates me is the mis-use of the Navy's "Open Fire" and the Army's "Fire!". Also torpedoes are "shot" not "fired".
Don’t forget the big azz caribiner on your belt loop
I have noticed this too; adding "The" to things, and it's very annoying to me. Even though the internet has been around in general use since about 1990, I have noticed that around 2000 I started to see "The" popping up. I think this is due because the internet is no longer a US club, Europe and Asia are becoming more and more connected. So these users are commenting in English, but do not completely understand English grammar, so they sometimes fall back into their native language's grammar. Another example of this predates the internet. In the 1970's and 80's, almost all consumer electronics came from Japan. The owners manuals were detailed and well written by the engineers, but the marketing people were not as familer with English. And so in the US they acquired the nick-name "Jing-Enlish". Correct spelling, but mixed in with confusing (to us English readers) Japanese grammar and punctuation.
Ships are like ladies (unless otherwise specified) shall be referred to as such.
Use of the word “hours” when referring to a specific time is much more of a land service thing. Typical Naval terminology would be just 1945, not 1945 “hours.”
I though that you were supposed to pronounce the hyphen as "tack".
Michigan has 2 museum ships and 1 WWII sub. Very cool….
Even though, I still call them her/she, the Navy doesn’t call them that anymore. You have to cal them it. You can actually get into trouble by calling them her. And this was in 02, when I was in. Can’t imagine what kind of trouble you would get into in today’s navy
Are the rules of "Black Dragon" the same as "New Jersey"? Avoid prepositions and italicize?
I've never heard that about the italics use for ships names, and to me, it doesn't make a lot of sense. If the use of USS (or any other countries Naval prefix) proceeding the name of the ship doesn't indicate to someone that you are referring to a ship, how in the world will italics convey that?
Just as an FYI, you will catch hell if you call it anything other than a "head".
Some of this takes me back 50+ years on my first job in the piping design branch at the Long Beach Naval Shipyard. First week on the job I learned not to preface a ship's name with "the"; spell ships name in ALL CAPS (typewriters in use); define acronyms when first used.
I think you missed one obvious telltale sign – don't refer to all naval combatant vessels as battleships. I see this all the time in the press.
By the way, I think "uppy downy" is more commonly referred to as mixed case.
Well maybe "the" doesn't like you either.
What about nicknames?
What about naval slang?
Isn't it more useful to allow ignorant people to use improper formatting so you can save time by ignoring their comments or articles?
What if you are talking about a series of ships with the same name? How to distinguish them? How do you reference New Jersey if you want to indicate the era of its service?