“The American continent was the last to be settled. It had to wait for the invention of technologies which allowed us to navigate through the cold lands created by successive Ice Ages.” — Jared Diamond’s terrific book, Guns, Germs and Steel talks about this diaspora in fascinating detail.
Question: How do we know which adjectives take the suffix -ible and which take -able?
Answer: It’s a matter of convention. -ible is the older suffix, which has by and large been replaced by the suffix -able on most words. However, words like accessible, compatible, defensible, terrible, and possible have remained unchanged.
As with many of the English language’s oddities, there is no rule for -ible or -able. And for some words, -ible and -able forms offer different meanings, e.g. “impassible” means the inability to experience pain, whereas “impassable” indicates something that cannot be traversed.
Consulting a dictionary is your best bet; usage guru Bryan Garner suggests that -able is the preferred suffix for a word that has yet to receive an -able suffix.
Just be careful of empty words like “doable,” which tend to be corporate-speak for better words like “possible.”
Are there any rules for students using things like bold, italics, or underlining in their papers? What is acceptable?
I don’t know of any rules for using bold fonts. In terms of underlining and italics, they amount to exactly the same thing. I tell my students to use italics when they are working at a computer and to underline when they are handwriting something.
The tougher rule is when to underline/italicize and when to use quotation marks. The best rule of thumb I have is short works are put in quotes and longer works are underlined/italicized. For example, a poem like “Fire and Ice” is short, and should be put in quotes. A poem like The Odyssey is long and so it should be underlined/italicized. Another way to look at it is if a piece of something bigger (like a tv episode title is just one piece of a tv series—-“Whacking Day” is an episode of The Simpsons), then it is “short” and should be put in quotes.
Whether or not you put the report name in quotes or italics depends upon whether the report was published (and this includes on the Web) as a free-standing document or as part of another document. That is, does the report appear in a book or on a Web site along with other reports? If so, put it in quotation marks. If the report is intended to be a stand-alone document (either in print or electronic form), put the name in italics.
These general rules may also be helpful. The name of a book is placed in italics, but a chapter in that book is placed in quotation marks. The name of a magazine or journal gets italicized, but an article in the magazine or journal is placed in quotation marks. The title of a brochure goes in italics, but a subsection heading is placed in quotation marks.
Quotation marks around a word are generally used only for three purposes. The first purpose is to indicate that the word (or phrase) is a direct quotation from a source.
For example: Mr. and Mrs. Allen stated that they “refuse to use that pesticide” because of possible water pollution.
The second purpose is to indicate that the word or phrase is a line of dialogue.
For example: “Hello,” Ron said, sliding into the seat next to Hermione.
The third purpose is to indicate that the word or phrase is being ironically, with reservations, or in some unusual way. This type of use of quotation marks is usually called scare quotes. The quotation marks around the word or phrase indicate that it is being used in a way that is different from the normal definition of the word.
For example: The great march of “progress” has left millions impoverished and hungry.
While the use of scare quotes does emphasize the use of a particular word in a sentence, scare quotes should only be used when a writer wants to call attention to the fact that the word is being used in an ironic or unusual manner. Scare quotes should not be used for placing general emphasis on words or for just drawing attention to words. If your son wants to emphasize or draw attention to a particular word in a sentence, he should put the word in italic or bold font. (See our question of the wek answers for more about the use of italics and bolding.)
For more information about the use of quotation marks, visit our page on Quotation Marks.
According to Bryan A. Garner’s Oxford Dictionary of American Usage and Style, there are three basic rules for that versus which: