Clue on “Jeopardy!” highlights correct name of the Church

[Scott Lloyd]

8 hours ago, Navidad said:

It doesn't. I was simply piggy-backing on the discussion Scott and SeekingUnderstanding were having which clearly surrounded data - how many stakes and missions, etc - how many LDS per thousand Mexicans. The variance in the numbers are interesting. I have often discussed this with a religions-centered demographer I know up in Michigan. He always maintained (he has passed away) that 33% or so of every major church group are the core of the groups. They are the faithful ones whose identity is first and foremost with their religious group. He also said they were the core who worked, gave, and generally supported the particular religion. I think he was right and that might explain the difference between the two sets of numbers - 330,000 and 1,400,000. 

Prior to my post about an hour ago to Hamba, my references to the size of the Church in Mexico have been in terms of the number of Church units in the country, i.e. missions, stakes and temples. You can quibble over disparity with census figures, but I think we can trust the Church to compile and provide reliable information on easily verified figures such as the number of stakes, missions and temples, especially with a centrally administered organization such as the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. If anyone claims the Church is lying or mistaken about, say, the number of stakes it has in the country, I submit that the burden of proof is on the accuser. 

[Navidad]

3 hours ago, Scott Lloyd said:

Prior to my post about an hour ago to Hamba, my references to the size of the Church in Mexico have been in terms of the number of Church units in the country, i.e. missions, stakes and temples. You can quibble over disparity with census figures, but I think we can trust the Church to compile and provide reliable information on easily verified figures such as the number of stakes, missions and temples, especially with a centrally administered organization such as the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. If anyone claims the Church is lying or mistaken about, say, the number of stakes it has in the country, I submit that the burden of proof is on the accuser. 

Scott - Take a deep breath. I am neither "quibbling" or "accusing," nor am I making any "claims" other than a personal observation from which I have drawn a personal conclusion. I have also cited disparities between church data and census data. I have also noted that I have not reviewed the latest census data. I am not degrading, criticizing, or casting any aspersion on the church in what I am saying, so you can safely come down from the rampart of defending what no one is attacking. Sheesh!

I, for one am careful to use the correct name of the Church in all my presentations and lectures. I also use the word Mormon as a noun for individual members and as an adjective - Mexican Mormon colonies for example. The church history department does the same by the way.

I don't know why there is such a discrepancy between census and church data. I find it interesting. I have had numerous discussions about this with Dr. James Dow, one who was probably the foremost US scholar on religious data. In a previous post I summarized very briefly his comments to me. I found his rationale reasonable and when noting the disparity, I quote him in both my talks and writings. Here is a link to his brief resume. His death was a great loss to the study of religious data.

https://oakland.edu/socan/faculty/james-w-dow/

 

 

[cacheman]

14 hours ago, Hamba Tuhan said:

.......The article also notes, by the way, that 'according to data from' the National Institute of Statistics and Geography (INEGI), 1.2 million Mexicans are Latter-day Saints, meaning one out of every 108 Mexicans. This figure certainly doesn't match the latest census data, so I would be interested to know where it is coming from.

The article doesn't actually say that the 1.2 million number comes from the INEGI census data which reports ~338k members.  The reference to the census data only applies to the article's claim that 95% of Mexicans follow some religion.  The mention of 1.2 million members is in the following paragraph.

[MiserereNobis]

My students are currently filling out a survey from our school district asking about post-secondary plans. It's supposed to connect them with colleges and programs that match their interests and qualifications. I just noticed a question asking about interest in attending a denominational/church-related college. The option for y'all is: L.D.S./Mormon

I imagine the full name of your church would have been too long to fit on the survey, since there are 5 columns of answers for this question.

I also have a question. Is there a reason why the d is lower-case in Latter-day Saint? The standard is to capitalize both words in a hyphenated situation, unless the first word is a prefix (like pro- or anti-).

@Scott Lloyd, does the grammarian in you ever doubt the veracity of that lower-case d?  

[Scott Lloyd]

On 2/2/2022 at 3:59 AM, Navidad said:

Scott - Take a deep breath. I am neither "quibbling" or "accusing," nor am I making any "claims" other than a personal observation from which I have drawn a personal conclusion. I have also cited disparities between church data and census data. I have also noted that I have not reviewed the latest census data. I am not degrading, criticizing, or casting any aspersion on the church in what I am saying, so you can safely come down from the rampart of defending what no one is attacking. Sheesh!

I, for one am careful to use the correct name of the Church in all my presentations and lectures. I also use the word Mormon as a noun for individual members and as an adjective - Mexican Mormon colonies for example. The church history department does the same by the way.

I don't know why there is such a discrepancy between census and church data. I find it interesting. I have had numerous discussions about this with Dr. James Dow, one who was probably the foremost US scholar on religious data. In a previous post I summarized very briefly his comments to me. I found his rationale reasonable and when noting the disparity, I quote him in both my talks and writings. Here is a link to his brief resume. His death was a great loss to the study of religious data.

https://oakland.edu/socan/faculty/james-w-dow/

 

 

Navidad, it strikes me as unscholarly to assume that disagreement — even earnest disagreement — equates to rancor. I’ve not said you are “degrading, criticizing or casting … aspersion” on the Church. 
 

What I have done is to call into question the tenuous basis for your “personal conclusion” (and I’ll just note here for the record that you’ve moved the goalpost for that conclusion, even as you double down on it, having started out saying the correct name of the Church is “virtually completely unknown” in Mexico and now changing that to say it is “not widely known”). 
 

Regarding the unnamed historians, anthropologists etc. who you say have spoken at conferences you’ve attended, I’m going to give them the benefit of the doubt and assume they were not so incompetent as to presume to lecture about the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints without knowing its proper and preferred name. A more tenable assumption is that they knew it but for whatever reason chose not to include it in their talks. 
 

Regarding the Church History Department, it’s hardly surprising that it would behave as one would expect a history department to behave. One would not expect a professional historian to, say, censor the word “negro” from historical records, documents and discourse, even though that word has fallen out of favor and might even be considered a slur if used today. That said, I’m fairly confident that the department still styles itself as the History Department of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, not the Mormon history department.

Finally, the view you attribute to Dr. James Dow is interesting and worth considering. I would reiterate, however, that 222 stakes in a single country is considerable, and I would venture to say that those who have been involved with stake creation and division can attest that the Church will not form a stake where there are not enough of what you call the “core” membership to sustain it. 

Edited February 7, 2022 by Scott Lloyd

[Scott Lloyd]

44 minutes ago, MiserereNobis said:

My students are currently filling out a survey from our school district asking about post-secondary plans. It's supposed to connect them with colleges and programs that match their interests and qualifications. I just noticed a question asking about interest in attending a denominational/church-related college. The option for y'all is: L.D.S./Mormon

I imagine the full name of your church would have been too long to fit on the survey, since there are 5 columns of answers for this question.

I also have a question. Is there a reason why the d is lower-case in Latter-day Saint? The standard is to capitalize both words in a hyphenated situation, unless the first word is a prefix (like pro- or anti-).

@Scott Lloyd, does the grammarian in you ever doubt the veracity of that lower-case d?  

Miserere Nobis, I’m sure I’m not teaching you anything new when I say that literary or textual style is in large measure subjective and that what might not conform to style in one instance is not necessarily wrong in a broad sense (the Oxford comma is a clear example of this). 
 

But if I remember my Associated Press Stylebook correctly, the Church’s convention in “Latter-day Saints” is consistent with AP Style for hyphenated modifiers in proper names.* 
 

So no, it does not give me pause. In fact I’m apt to be a tiny bit distracted when I see it written as “Latter Day Saints.”

*I’ve not checked to see what the Chicago Manual of Style or the New York Times style guide have on this. I’d be curious to see what they say. 

[Amulek]

42 minutes ago, Scott Lloyd said:

What I have done is to call into question the tenuous basis for your “personal conclusion” (and I’ll just note here for the record that you’ve moved the goalpost for that conclusion, even as you double down on it, having started out saying the correct name of the Church is “virtually completely unknown” in Mexico and now changing that to say it is “not widely known”). 

Based on my own experience, I would say that the correct name of the Church is "virtually completely unknown" here in the United States - speaking of the states collectively and not individually.

It's certainly not unknowable, nor is it completely unheard of either, but it's clear to me that the correct name of the church is pretty much unknown (as the clip at the beginning of this thread so aptly demonstrates).

Let's put it like this: If you took a hundred people from the US, at random, lined them all up, held a gun to their heads, and asked them (on pain of death) to give you the official / complete / correct name of the church to which Mormons belong, I'm willing to bet dollars to donuts that - at the end of the day - you're going to end up with around 95-100 dead bodies. And I think 95 is being generous.

And I'm very skeptical that the correct name of the church is any more well known in Mexico (or in most other locals for that matter).

[california boy]

On 2/1/2022 at 6:55 AM, Scott Lloyd said:

I appreciate that, but I still say that even the absence of the proper name of the Church in the nation’s top five newspapers would not be enough to negate the fact that the Church has a considerable presence* in Mexico and the members there, if no one else, would certainly be aware of the proper name. 
 

*199 is a lot of stakes in a single country. In the country where I served my mission, Sweden, there are only three, and there weren’t any there when I began my mission. 
 

When Navidad said the proper name of the Church is “virtually completely [sic] unknown” in Mexico, I think he got carried away in hyperbole to the point that he lost sight of word meanings, somewhat like folks who use the word “literally” in statements that cannot possibly be taken literally, as in “I literally died from boredom.”

 

On 2/1/2022 at 5:33 AM, Scott Lloyd said:

 

And I don’t believe your assertion that the proper name of the Church is “completely unknown” in Mexico. Surely the members of the Church (who comprise a not inconsiderable portion of the population, given the dozen temples, 20 missions and 199 stakes in that land) would know it, as would many of their close acquaintances. 

Of course the memebrers know the proper name of the Church.  But just like in Mexico, having a lot of stakes does not mean that the vast majority of the people know the proper name of the the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints .   There are 153 stakes (down from 161 in 1995)  in California.  Like on Jeopardy, most people in California don't know the full name of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints .  It is an unwieldy name and difficult to remember and write.  It is why most people know the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints  as the Mormon Church.  The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints many not be completely unknown, but the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints  is certainly not well known.  

Edited February 2, 2022 by california boy

[MiserereNobis]

2 hours ago, Scott Lloyd said:

Miserere Nobis, I’m sure I’m not teaching you anything new when I say that literary or textual style is in large measure subjective and that what might not conform to style in one instance is not necessarily wrong in a broad sense (the Oxford comma is a clear example of this). 
 

But if I remember my Associated Press Stylebook correctly, the Church’s convention in “Latter-day Saints” is consistent with AP Style for hyphenated modifiers in proper names.* 
 

So no, it does not give me pause. In fact I’m apt to be a tiny bit distracted when I see it written as “Latter Day Saints.”

*I’ve not checked to see what the Chicago Manual of Style or the New York Times style guide have on this. I’d be curious to see what they say. 

As evidenced by the ban on the Oxford comma, the AP stylebook is a hotbed of heresy that needs immediate burning.

APA and MLA require the word after the hyphen to be capitalized as well.

If I remember correctly, the full name of your church comes from the D&C. Have the recorded revelations received any grammatical updates since then, since early 19th century grammar was still quite fluid? 

[Scott Lloyd]

2 hours ago, Amulek said:

Based on my own experience, I would say that the correct name of the Church is "virtually completely unknown" here in the United States - speaking of the states collectively and not individually.

Then I have to wonder about your understanding of the definition of unknown, virtually, completely, virtually completely and virtually completely unknown. 
 

If I’m acquainted with a long title, it cannot accurately be said that the title is unknown to me, even if I have not yet learned it well enough to rattle it off on the spot. 
 

For example, I would venture to say that a good many Americans these days are well acquainted with the CDC abbreviation and are aware that it is short for Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and they would recognize the name when they saw it, even if they had not yet committed the wording of the long title to memory. It would defy reason to insist that the title is “unknown” to them, be it virtually or completely. 

Edited February 2, 2022 by Scott Lloyd

[Scott Lloyd]

20 minutes ago, MiserereNobis said:

As evidenced by the ban on the Oxford comma, the AP stylebook is a hotbed of heresy that needs immediate burning.

😂 

[Scott Lloyd]

43 minutes ago, MiserereNobis said:

If I remember correctly, the full name of your church comes from the D&C. Have the recorded revelations received any grammatical updates since then, since early 19th century grammar was still quite fluid? 

There have been such tweaks to the canonical record over the years. I’m not certain whether the capitalization and punctuation on Latter-day Saints was standardized from the outset. I’d have to check into history to see. 

[Nofear]

42 minutes ago, Scott Lloyd said:

😂

As an ardent supporter of the Oxford comma, the AP wishy-washy stance is … disappointing.

https://mobile.twitter.com/apstylebook/status/907673471865507841?lang=en

[Calm]

6 minutes ago, Nofear said:

As an ardent supporter of the Oxford comma, the AP wishy-washy stance is … disappointing.

https://mobile.twitter.com/apstylebook/status/907673471865507841?lang=en

What is the resistance to an Oxford comma anyway?  If willing to do it some of the time, why not all just to be consistent?  There are plenty of inconsistencies in English, why have an unnecessary one?

 

[JLHPROF]

28 minutes ago, Nofear said:

As an ardent supporter of the Oxford comma, the AP wishy-washy stance is … disappointing.

https://mobile.twitter.com/apstylebook/status/907673471865507841?lang=en

 

16 minutes ago, Calm said:

What is the resistance to an Oxford comma anyway?  If willing to do it some of the time, why not all just to be consistent?  There are plenty of inconsistencies in English, why have an unnecessary one?

 

I don't know why its use is constantly questioned.  It's necessary.

 

 

[James 1 5]

2 minutes ago, JLHPROF said:

 

I don't know why its use is constantly questioned.  It's necessary.

 

 

I use it when I would like the reader to pause after I use it, thinking that if the reader pauses the reader might think some more about what was before the comma.

Like in your example how you said you had eggs, (comma for the pause, eggs, yum, yes, I like eggs), toast, (comma for the pause, toast, yum, yes, I like toast) and orange juice.  (Now I'm thinking orange juice is good too.  Good flavor to end on.)

Without the comma between the toast and orange juice I think of them both together, toast and orange juice, rather than thinking of toast all by itself and then after that thinking of the orange juice.  I'd rather the reader think about toast some more.

[Nofear]

https://www.cnn.com/2018/02/09/us/dairy-drivers-oxford-comma-case-settlement-trnd/index.html

[Scott Lloyd]

7 hours ago, Nofear said:

As an ardent supporter of the Oxford comma, the AP wishy-washy stance is … disappointing.

https://mobile.twitter.com/apstylebook/status/907673471865507841?lang=en

 

7 hours ago, Calm said:

What is the resistance to an Oxford comma anyway?  If willing to do it some of the time, why not all just to be consistent?  There are plenty of inconsistencies in English, why have an unnecessary one?

 

Shhh. Don’t tell MN this: I actually prefer the Oxford comma, but it’s too late for me to break a habit I was compelled to follow for some 40 years. 

Edited February 3, 2022 by Scott Lloyd

[Scott Lloyd]

2 hours ago, Calm said:

What is the resistance to an Oxford comma anyway?  If willing to do it some of the time, why not all just to be consistent?  There are plenty of inconsistencies in English, why have an unnecessary one?

 

As I recall, the rationale is that a comma is unneeded when there is already a conjunction to separate two items, even when the two items are the last in a series. 
 

But I’m not anti-Oxford comma. I’m just trying to explain the thinking. 

[Hamba Tuhan]

8 hours ago, cacheman said:

The article doesn't actually say that the 1.2 million number comes from the INEGI census data which reports ~338k members.  The reference to the census data only applies to the article's claim that 95% of Mexicans follow some religion.  The mention of 1.2 million members is in the following paragraph.

Here's the last sentence in the paragraph in question: 'With this, the number of believers increased by approximately 1 million over the past decade, according to data from the same Institute' (emphasis added). I do believe that this may have been misreported or misattributed, but as written, it is clearly claiming INEGI as the source of information.

 

[cacheman]

2 hours ago, Hamba Tuhan said:

Here's the last sentence in the paragraph in question: 'With this, the number of believers increased by approximately 1 million over the past decade, according to data from the same Institute' (emphasis added). I do believe that this may have been misreported or misattributed, but as written, it is clearly claiming INEGI as the source of information.

 

It looks like you're right.  Not sure how I missed that!  I agree that it was most likely misreported. Very confusing to say the least. 

[Hamba Tuhan]

42 minutes ago, cacheman said:

It looks like you're right.  Not sure how I missed that!  I agree that it was most likely misreported. Very confusing to say the least. 

My first guess was that they took Church figures and misattributed them to INEGI, but then they don't seem to match Church figures, either ...

Interestingly, a quick search this morning turned up a few interesting sources from around the world on the underrepresentation of 'fringe' religious groups in census data. It appears, for a number of known and probably some unknown reasons, to be a semi-acknowledged phenomenon. For example, where I live, the number of people who identify as Muslims on the census is about half the number of people who regularly attend mosque. (No reference provided in order to try to maintain my much-valued anonymity ...)

Edited February 3, 2022 by Hamba Tuhan

[2BizE]

An excellent article about the 2000 census for Mexico and Chile.

https://www.dialoguejournal.com/wp-content/uploads/sbi/articles/Dialogue_V38N02_65.pdf

[Scott Lloyd]

On 2/2/2022 at 11:23 AM, california boy said:

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints many not be completely unknown, but the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints  is certainly not well known.

Navidad’s initial claim was that the correct name of the Church is “virtually completely unknown” in Mexico. Even bracketing the members of the Church in that land (who are numerous enough to comprise 222 stakes) this claim is demonstrably untrue, as Hamba showed by citing two publications, including the country’s largest general circulation newspaper. 

[Scott Lloyd]

On 2/2/2022 at 9:22 AM, MiserereNobis said:

My students are currently filling out a survey from our school district asking about post-secondary plans. It's supposed to connect them with colleges and programs that match their interests and qualifications. I just noticed a question asking about interest in attending a denominational/church-related college. The option for y'all is: L.D.S./Mormon

I imagine the full name of your church would have been too long to fit on the survey, since there are 5 columns of answers for this question.

I also have a question. Is there a reason why the d is lower-case in Latter-day Saint? The standard is to capitalize both words in a hyphenated situation, unless the first word is a prefix (like pro- or anti-).

@Scott Lloyd, does the grammarian in you ever doubt the veracity of that lower-case d?  

 

On 2/2/2022 at 10:17 AM, Scott Lloyd said:

Miserere Nobis, I’m sure I’m not teaching you anything new when I say that literary or textual style is in large measure subjective and that what might not conform to style in one instance is not necessarily wrong in a broad sense (the Oxford comma is a clear example of this). 
 

But if I remember my Associated Press Stylebook correctly, the Church’s convention in “Latter-day Saints” is consistent with AP Style for hyphenated modifiers in proper names.* 
 

So no, it does not give me pause. In fact I’m apt to be a tiny bit distracted when I see it written as “Latter Day Saints.”

*I’ve not checked to see what the Chicago Manual of Style or the New York Times style guide have on this. I’d be curious to see what they say. 

Miserere Nobis, one reason I like conversation with you is that as a fellow English enthusiast, you are apt to stimulate my thinking. 
 

So I have been reflecting on the above exchange of a couple of days ago. An internet search has turned up this source on the question of whether to capitalize each element in a compound (hyphenated) modifier used in a title:

https://www.dailywritingtips.com/capitalizing-the-elements-of-a-compound-word-in-a-title/

Essentially, it sustains what I said, that it’s not a matter of correctness or incorrectness, but rather, conformity with a given style. 
 

That said, I think I can make a case for NOT doing it (Latter-day Saints as opposed to Latter-Day Saints). When two or more words are hyphenated to form a compound modifier, it makes of those words a single term, as though they were one word. 
 

Suppose, for example, that latter-day had developed not merely into a compound modifier, but rather, a compound word, as in latterday. It would seem non-standard, if not downright screwy, to write that compound word as LatterDay. It doesn’t strike me as any less reasonable to leave the second element in the compound modifier lower case than it would to leave the second element in a compound word lower case.