JoannaMac

My thoughts exactly. You've gotta wonder sometimes with this kind of thinking, how an editor like that got his job. What a wanker.

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If you aint got nuffink, you can't lose it!

lin

THAT is the word I was looking for. Thanks

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Ungood

BVD stood for the original brand name of Fruit of the Loom(tm), means "Underwear", since the actual name is below worthless, I did not even look it up and this can not provide it to you.

This happened however because in America "Brand Loyalty" was (and in some cases still is) a big thing and GI's (General Infantry - Loosly used to mean foot solder for the military) would call their undergarments BVD's because the brand name was easier then saying "underwear"

This happened a lot in America, other examples are terms like "Jeep" were not limited to the Jeep Motor Company but encompassed all Sports Recreation vehicles, Commonly known today as SUV (Sports Utility Vehicles). Just like some people might say "a landrover" and not be talking about "The Landrover" but the generic type of "SUV"

Things like "Get me a Klenix" are common in America even if you are not referring to anting the specific name brand, the term Klenix is considered an acceptable substitute for a "Facial Tissue".

This is why BVD is not used in countries that do not possess the same kind of "Brand Loyalty" that America has, as such it might be out of place in a novel or written work meant for countries that would not up to speed with the lingo, or at least letting the read know you are talking about a man's under-britches.

Ungood.

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lin

My favorite it WC. It's widely used in Latin America to mean "Bathroom", but the users have not idea that it stood for "water closet", or even how to pronounce it.

Ungood, you didn't look it up, but say it is Fruit of the Loom???
Why would it be? Why would you say that?

So I DID look it up and ran into several references to a company called Bradley, Voorhees and Day.
These things often outlive their generators; who knows if the Frisbee pie company is still in business?

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Ungood

Not too long ago I got into a deep discussion with my brother and father (Both military men) about why underwear is called BVD's. It seems from their sources, both of them were in the military that BVD was used to save space on the log reports, but all of their undergarments are made by fruit of the loom.

(This is a great way to avoid the talking about your personal life at a family get together/holiday dinner - FYI).

Turned out that as the story goes BVD was the original 'brand' name for what is today Fruit of the Loom(tm) which still provides all the under-britches to our military boys (At least that is what I heard)

This started a deep discussion regarding "brand loyalty" in America.

Do Feel free to check up on this info as it was just one of those family dinner discussions but it made sense and I have not heard anyone yet provide me something different.



Cool.

I just looked into it as well, 1976, it seems that BVD was bought out by Fruit of the Loom. My Bad, I'll remember that for next time.

But the way we figured it was that the way it seemed to work was just just like Feminine hygiene napkins are refereed to as "Pads" derived from Maxi-Pads(tm).

Or a better example would be how personal lubricant is often called 'KY' (or KY jelly) even if no one knows what exactly 'KY' stands for and how it apples to personal lubricant.

It does seem that way.

No clue so I looked that up. It seems that Frisbee Pie company went out of business in 1958

Now you have me thinking, since PC means Politically Correct what do we use to mean Personal Computer?

Some days I hate Acronyms.

Ungood.

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Candrah

Damn...!? I had no idea this stuff was so complex. I just thought it was a typo - sorry Lin

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lin

Another can of worms. Studies (largely of smokers) show that while like 70% of smokers are brand loyal, only about 20% can distinguish their brand from another in a blindfold test.
I saw a similar finding on beers.

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Elipsis

The only time something like this bothers me is when I read an author who uses the thesaurus so much that the reader doesn't even know what he is reading without doing the same thing. This is what I came across when I read the book "Sideways" by Rex Pickett.

"When I walked across the street, I ripped a hole in my pants."
A kind of normal sentence right? Well this is what it would look like from our old friend Rex Pickett.
"When I sauntered transversely on the thoroughfare, I cleaved a perforation in my chinos."
This is a bit exaggerated, but you get the idea right?

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WriteStuff

Personally, I love it when authors use words I don't know. Try Neal Stephenson's Cryptonomicon for example. I found myself running to my dictionary every 50 pages of this 1100 page monster. Using larger, more sophisticated words educates the reader, and isn't that sometimes the point of literature? I try to use uncommon words in my writing because it spices things up and keeps the word choice interesting; and often those words express what I'm trying to say a lot better than other words. There is no justification for dumbing your work down. None at all.

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Cefor

I recently read 'The Reality Dysfunction' by Peter F. Hamilton... and being a science fiction book has a lot of words that he made up for a particular technology. Now these don't get explained at all in the book, but I easily figured out what they are... for example 'neural nanonics'. Now anyone with a smudge of intelligence will know that neural is to do with nerves/the brain; and 'nanonics', well any Sci-Fi buff will know that it probably means something to do with electronics, extremely small electronics.

So by using that good old chemical supercomputer, called a brain, I decided that it was an implant that acts as a computer.... and throughtout the book you find that it can handle all sorts of things, like sending data, a 'datavise', it can even be an organiser or a link to GBs worth of data in memory cells.

All in all it didn't bother me... once I figured out what it was I could easily get on with the rest of the story...

Similar to anything really. Fantasy and Sci-Fi have it the worst though, because those genres are usually the ones that have made-up words.

Just my thoughts on the matter, oh and Lin.... sorry to hear about your editor problems, hope it all works out soon!

Cefor

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Knowledge is Power

lin

What's funny is, if you use a neologism, that's okay. But if the word isn't made up, and actually exists, then it would confuse the reader.

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Candrah

Hmm... editors.

Maybe they drink too much coffee and get all tense and pent up. But guess who they take it out on...

I second cefor. Hope your editor issues get sorted soon.

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Timex

Peter F. Hamilton does that a lot, but everything he makes up is easy to figure out like you said Cefor. Now when you get to a Robert Ludlum book that is 800 pages long and has dozens and dozens of acronyms it becomes impossible to remember them by the time you reach the end of the book.

I think your editor didn't really know what he was talking about (or was too dumb to realize his own ego getting in the way). Repetition can be a good and bad thing. Not every reader sits down and reads a book in a day, some take months and may need some clues as to what an acronym is. Other times an acronym may be so immediately obvious or unimportant it isn't worth mentioning more than once.

lin

That might be exactly the thing Ludlum readers crave. You see evidence of that on the occasional military/tactics discussion on the board. The miligeeks swarm in spouting acronyms and stock phrases like machine guns. (Excuse me, like FN 7.5mm NATO SMG's)

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Wintermute

I've always written under the philosophy that my readers are geniuses (Although my material isn't exactly of the same caliber) and therefore I refuse to hold their hand throughout the story.

Editors like to assume that everyone is less intelligent than they are, especially writers.

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