User:Julian Grybowski

Language skills enThis user is a native speaker of the English language. 1級 This user holds a Japanese Language Proficiency Test Level 1 certificate. ja-4この利用者は母語に近いレベルで日本語を使いこなせます。 ja- ksb-3この利用者は関西弁使うの結構ええ線いってますねん。 fr-3Cet utilisateur peut contribuer avec un niveau avancé de français. es-2Este usuario puede contribuir con un nivel intermedio de español. du-0This person does not understand dumbass (or understands it with considerable difficulties, or does not want to speak dumbass). AIM-AbleThis user understands AIM talk perfectly well, but does not seriously use it. Ever. Views on English usage they…This user considers singular they standard, modern, informal English usage, so avoids it on Wikipedia. to¦goThis user chooses to sometimes use split infinitives. …in.Ending a sentence with a preposition is something that this user is okay with. person, humanityThis editor writes carefully to avoid gender neutrality issues completely. who(m)This user uses either who or whom in the object case. you oneThis user knows that one should not use "you" in encyclopedia articles or other formal works. which & that This user joins with Dickens, Melville, and other great writers[1] in rejecting the canard that which may not be used for restrictive relative clauses. Subj This user prefers that the subjunctive mood be used. Were this user you, he would use it. Latin Plurals: "Data is are..." This user uses "data", "media", "memoranda", "criteria", and "agenda" as the plurals of "datum", "medium", "memorandum", "criterion", and "agendum". “,;:’This user is a punctuation stickler. . TheThis user does not put two spaces after a full stop. ,This user fixes comma-splices; they are annoying. A, B, and A and BThis user uses the serial comma unless its inclusion is confusing. its it'sIt's really not that hard to use each word in its proper manner. their there they'reThis user thinks that there are too many people who don’t know that they're worse than their own children at spelling! your you'reThis user thinks that if your grammar is incorrect, then you're in need of help. “…”This user favors curly quotation marks over straight style. “...”! US vs. UKThis user uses logical quotation marks. Internal punctuation leads to factual errors. It's not a style issue! MixThis user has been influenced by too many dialects of English to use one orthography, vocabulary and grammar consistently. Misc. - This user is a translator and proofreader from Japanese to English on Wikipedia:Translation. This user is a participant in WikiProject Japan. 大阪This user lives in Osaka Prefecture. This user has visited 22 of the 47 prefectures.22 HTML-2This user is an intermediate HTML user. libThis user is a liberal. This user contributes using Safari. HThis user is a current or former student of Hamilton College. BAThis user has a Bachelor of Arts degree in Cultural Anthropology.

Julian Grybowski is the name of a contributor to Wikipedia. Namely, er, me, the writer of this article.

I am a 32-year-old grad student studying international relations; as an undergrad, I majored in cultural anthropology with a minor in Japanese. I also devote a fair bit of time and energy to the fields (some more academic than others) of typography, science fiction, British comedy, Japanese history, and Japanese comics and animation. I currently reside in the United States while I attend school, though I previously spent eight years in Japan, and my wife and three children currently reside in Osaka. I intend to move back over there one I finish my master's degree.

My initial contributions to Wikipedia were to articles relating to the manga and anime series One Piece and Dragon Ball, though my interests gradually fanned out into such disparate areas as evolutionary biology, men's formalwear, typography, and Japanese rail transportation (though I make no claim at being an expert into these last three). My most extensive contributions to Wikipedia include:

• the Tozai Line of the Kyoto Municipal Subway (much of the page I translated personally from the Japanese version at the time, with only a few confusing or seemingly-opinionated bits left out). I had a personal investment in the article, since I rode the line every day for about 3 and a half months in 2006. I hope to do more Japanese translations in the future, if only to clean up the bizarre syntax on some articles whose editors appear to have resorted to Babelfish for the sake of having something for an English version.
• the Kansai dialect of Japanese, spoken in the area where I currently live. Non-standard dialects in general are one of the things that fascinate me about languages everywhere.
• the JR Nara Line, which I also rode every day for three and a half months when I studied in Kyoto. I translated the Japanese article into English, because the English version at the time was lacking. It sounds like they'll finally be duplicating most of the line, which is good news in my book (not that it'll help me get to class on time over a decade ago).

While I tend to let a lot of minor edits slide, I jump into action when I see serious factual errors or vandalism in articles I am knowledgeable about. I try and keep people honest with themselves about their own biases, though I admit there are times where I'm tempted to let certain things stand if I don't disagree.

Mainly, though, I'd really just like to get through to certain people that established facts are non-negotiable unless you're willing to put in the time and effort to disprove (well, disconfirm) them through repeatable experiment. My study of anthropology has taught me that humans will be humans, which is quite admirable in its way. But I am also highly conscious of the fact that nature doesn't care what humans think, and those who wish to impose their own belief systems on reality are going to be worse off in the long run. So I try to keep an open mind about things.