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I'm trying to write a scene where a group of marines in pressurized boarding suits (including helmets and rebreathers) have to exit their raiding ship into the vacuum of an exposed hangar bay they landed in. They depressurize the raider before stepping out of the raider. Eventually, as they move deeper into the ship, there will eventually be fully pressurized locations with breathable air, but they don't remove their helmets so they can't be gassed. My reason for the vacuum in the hangar bay is that the crew of the ship are trying to make it as difficult as possible to be boarded.

I assume there has to be an airlock between the vacuum-filled areas of the ship and the pressurized locations. If you're in a vacuum like those who are boarding and open a sealed hatch containing air, what will happen to the boarding team? Do they get blown off their feet as the air escapes into the vacuum, or is the effect not as severe? Also, is there anything here that I'm not accounting for?

Thanks
Dirk

Hmm. I've found more instances. Unless someone has a better idea, I'm just going to refer to the pilot as he. I'm imagining this in real life and I'm pretty sure that's what they do. Being gender neutral in a dogfight probably isn't a priority.

Silly question (aren't they all?): How do I write the following sentence assuming I don't know the sex of the pilot?

Not sure about the US, but I bought a nice refurbished laptop with DVD drive at Staples for $250.

After a lot of time wasted endlessly tweaking Apollo's latest chapter, I have officially completed 1/3 of chapter 36. Somewhere in there, I have to squeeze in the impossible resurrection of Apollo in what is supposed to be Joseph's chapter. No way I can do all that in less than two weeks.

Holding Out For A Hero

Chicken breast with ketchup (yum!).

One paragraph for all three combined definitely doesn't read right. Two is good if I want to stress the action-reaction. Three is good if I want to stress God's response in causing the jolt. I'm leaning toward two, since the head jolting doesn't show God as the actor, even though he's the one causing the action.

I'll wait for a few more responses here before I decide.

Thank you, both.

Glad you got it. I'm still running Office 2007. My pension doesn't cover upgrades.

What features in 2010+ have you found useful?

Yikes! Thanks for the research/detail, K. I love Grammar Girl. Funny how your two linked articles disagree about job titles placed after the name. :-)

What about the original sentence that triggered my latest migraine:

    "The emperor is dead, Governor. From now on, I'm the Holy Roman Emperor." (emperor is lowercase, Holy Roman Emperor is capitalized, even though both refer to the same individual)

Under the rule of one, emperor would be caps until there are two of them (Apollo and Caligula), at which point it's lowercase. Yes? According to my own demented style guide, emperor is lowercase because it's not a formal title (emperor vs Emperor of the Imperium Romanum). However, there is only one Holy Roman Emperor in the future, so it gets caps. Under my style guide, it gets caps because it's the formal title, with no informal equivalent. It just sucks to have both in the same sentence.

I think the planets have aligned, albeit for different reasons. Let me know if you disagree.

Once again, chaper 35 is up on the site, without the last scene that gave away all of the suspense at the end. I have now written three different endings before finally getting it right. Not sure how to incorporate the deleted info into later chapters. Should be fun.