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fandom_grammarWhat's the difference between "canon" and cannon"?
with examples from Stargate: SG-1
Well, both are nouns. Both begin with a C. And both sound alike. That's where the similarities end.
According to www.dictionary.com, cannon is described as:
1. a mounted gun for firing heavy projectiles; a gun, howitzer, or mortar.
2. British Machinery. quill (def. 10).
3. Armor. a cylindrical or semicylindrical piece of plate armor for the upper arm or forearm; a vambrace or rerebrace.
4. the part of a bit that is in the horse's mouth.
5. (on a bell) the metal loop by which a bell is hung.
Nine times out of ten, a writer is referring to definition one, that thing out of which cannonballs are shot on a pirate ship. Boom! Two Os in the middle of boom, two Ns in the middle of cannon, if that helps anyone remember it more easily. And that's it for cannon. Seriously. It's a big metal gun-like apparatus of varying sizes, most often mounted on wheels, that launches projectiles of a round shape into the air in the hopes of destroying an enemy ship/wall/town/castle/ego.
Canon, on the other hand, is a bit more complex, and is defined thusly:
1. an ecclesiastical rule or law enacted by a council or other competent authority and, in the Roman Catholic Church, approved by the pope.
2. the body of rules, principles, or standards accepted as axiomatic and universally binding in a field of study or art: the neoclassical canon.
3. a fundamental principle or general rule: the canons of good behavior.
4. a standard; criterion: the canons of taste.
5. any officially recognized set of sacred books.
6. any comprehensive list of books within a field.
7. the works of an author that have been accepted as authentic: There are 37 plays in the Shakespeare canon. Compare apocrypha (def. 3).
8. Music. consistent, note-for-note imitation of one melodic line by another, in which the second line starts after the first.
Definitions 4, 6 and 7 are usually the ones to which people refer to as "canon" when discussing what is the agreed-upon collection of works (be it Shakespeare's plays, Stargate SG-1 episodes and movies, or Ernest Hemingways's pithy prose) to which everyone can refer as a baseline of "fact" for that show/author/movie, etc. It is canon that Jack has called Daniel "space monkey" ("The Serpent's Lair") and "plant boy" ("One False Step"), as those epithets have been used in the show and anyone can reference those names (if they know the episode in which they are contained).
It is not canon, however, when Jack has called Daniel "camel boy" or "desert baby," as those monikers have been created by fanfiction writers and are not part of the official canon. This is, instead, called "fanon," when something a fan has written becomes so popular amongst readers that it becomes confused with canon. Always stick to canon, unless you're writing in that fanfic writer's universe. Then it's their canon of fanon!
So no matter how many times you shoot a cannon, you cannot destroy canon, unless you suddenly discover a heretofore unpublished work of Shakespeare, or ten episodes of SG-1 that were canned, unseen, wherein Jack calls Daniel "lascivious linguist lips" and they get with the nasty in a VIP room. Then, your metaphorical cannon may blast a hole in the canon and start a new line of thinking.
Just remember .. a cannon hurts when it smashes your toes; a canon can only help ground and bolster your creative endeavors with its foundation of facts of universally agreed-upon references.
with examples from Stargate: SG-1
Well, both are nouns. Both begin with a C. And both sound alike. That's where the similarities end.
According to www.dictionary.com, cannon is described as:
1. a mounted gun for firing heavy projectiles; a gun, howitzer, or mortar.
2. British Machinery. quill (def. 10).
3. Armor. a cylindrical or semicylindrical piece of plate armor for the upper arm or forearm; a vambrace or rerebrace.
4. the part of a bit that is in the horse's mouth.
5. (on a bell) the metal loop by which a bell is hung.
Nine times out of ten, a writer is referring to definition one, that thing out of which cannonballs are shot on a pirate ship. Boom! Two Os in the middle of boom, two Ns in the middle of cannon, if that helps anyone remember it more easily. And that's it for cannon. Seriously. It's a big metal gun-like apparatus of varying sizes, most often mounted on wheels, that launches projectiles of a round shape into the air in the hopes of destroying an enemy ship/wall/town/castle/ego.
Canon, on the other hand, is a bit more complex, and is defined thusly:
1. an ecclesiastical rule or law enacted by a council or other competent authority and, in the Roman Catholic Church, approved by the pope.
2. the body of rules, principles, or standards accepted as axiomatic and universally binding in a field of study or art: the neoclassical canon.
3. a fundamental principle or general rule: the canons of good behavior.
4. a standard; criterion: the canons of taste.
5. any officially recognized set of sacred books.
6. any comprehensive list of books within a field.
7. the works of an author that have been accepted as authentic: There are 37 plays in the Shakespeare canon. Compare apocrypha (def. 3).
8. Music. consistent, note-for-note imitation of one melodic line by another, in which the second line starts after the first.
Definitions 4, 6 and 7 are usually the ones to which people refer to as "canon" when discussing what is the agreed-upon collection of works (be it Shakespeare's plays, Stargate SG-1 episodes and movies, or Ernest Hemingways's pithy prose) to which everyone can refer as a baseline of "fact" for that show/author/movie, etc. It is canon that Jack has called Daniel "space monkey" ("The Serpent's Lair") and "plant boy" ("One False Step"), as those epithets have been used in the show and anyone can reference those names (if they know the episode in which they are contained).
It is not canon, however, when Jack has called Daniel "camel boy" or "desert baby," as those monikers have been created by fanfiction writers and are not part of the official canon. This is, instead, called "fanon," when something a fan has written becomes so popular amongst readers that it becomes confused with canon. Always stick to canon, unless you're writing in that fanfic writer's universe. Then it's their canon of fanon!
So no matter how many times you shoot a cannon, you cannot destroy canon, unless you suddenly discover a heretofore unpublished work of Shakespeare, or ten episodes of SG-1 that were canned, unseen, wherein Jack calls Daniel "lascivious linguist lips" and they get with the nasty in a VIP room. Then, your metaphorical cannon may blast a hole in the canon and start a new line of thinking.
Just remember .. a cannon hurts when it smashes your toes; a canon can only help ground and bolster your creative endeavors with its foundation of facts of universally agreed-upon references.
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no subject
16/1/08 19:16 (UTC)All other horse-related references to the word "cannon" that I could locate refer to the cannon bone, including the definitions in Dictionary of Equine Terms and Summerhays' Encyclopedia for Horsemen, both of which are full of obscure terminology.
So I've learned something new, although I'm fairly certain I can't manage to apply it to Stargate fanfiction no matter how hard I try. To refer specifically to half of the mouthpiece of a bit would require more than working a horse into the story. We'd have to find the goa'uld slave who manufactures bits, or something. That's a challenge even I'm not prepared to take.