Who gives a fuck about an Oxford comma?
Punctuation Man, that’s who.
(I climbed to Dharamsala, too.)
Cindy, on the Lam?
When I read that “two self-styled vigilantes against typos” had been repairing public signs, I had to give Cindy a hard look. Especially in view of the fact that they had “used a marker to cover an erroneous apostrophe, put the apostrophe in its proper place with white-out and added a comma.”
See the whole story here.
;
From the ridiculously named article, Sex and the semicolon:
Ben McIntyre, writing in the Times of London a couple of months later, added to the collection of semicolon snubbers: Kurt Vonnegut called the marks “transvestite hermaphrodites representing absolutely nothing.” Hemingway and Chandler and Stephen King, said McIntyre, “wouldn’t be seen dead in a ditch with a semi-colon (though Truman Capote might). Real men, goes the unwritten rule of American punctuation, don’t use semi-colons.”
The new “is the new”
The phrase blank is the new blank as in “chocolate is the new vanilla” or “ugly is the new pretty” has gotten a little tired lately. What is the new is the new?
Ideas: Candelabras oust chandeliers, Beanless burritos usurp the mantle of burritos with beans.
What are your suggestions?
Schoolboys and farting
I was perusing my favourite dictionary this morning while doing 300 crunches to make my abs look awesome, and came across this gem:
randle (răn’dəl) - n. a nonsensical poem recited by Irish schoolboys as an apology for farting at a friend.
What a cool freaking word! So I immediately postponed my crunches and consulted my OED to find out more… but nothing. Nothing more on the internet either—just amateur dictionaries that have the same definition word for word.
RATS! I want to know if the nonsense poem has specific words or any nonsensical uttering will do. Am I allowed to rip one into the face of my good pal and then recite Jabberwocky and everything will be hunky-dory again? Also, why would this randle placate the poor feller who has just been farted upon? It would have to be a pretty awesome poem to keep me from wailing on my assailant.
Word
The rut (thanks, Erin!)
it’s only — a year — a-way!
Y’all. We’re a year away from clusterflockstock.
At least it’s not Basque
[I]n my early thirties, I went with my parents to the Basque country. . . .
This trip went down as the most colossal linguistic failure in Harris family history. Never mind the fact that Basque has twelve grammatical cases (versus Latin’s cushy five); it’s linguistically unrelated to any other tongue. This means—as I learned when I cracked open the textbook Dad [a famous linguist] and I had each bought—that trying to learn it is like trying to stick Velcro to particle board. I’d do the exercises, biting my lip, and get them all wrong. The moment I’d finish, I’d forget everything. You don’t know how close I came to hurling the damn book off the subway. Me? Unable to learn a language? This was a soul-challenging, humbling, deeply frustrating first.
“Bet Dad can do this,” I thought. I emailed to find out. “How’s the Basque going?” His reply: “Fucking language from hell. This is a waste of my time.”
—“Tongue Tied” by Lynn Harris, at Nextbook, my place of employment
I’m currently attempting to cram a bit of French for a trip, and this article makes me feel a lot better—about French, not my inability to learn it. I could be trying to learn Basque! Or Hebrew!
So, dear Clusterflock, what languages are you competent in, and which ones would you like to learn?
your ‘welcome’
Jeff Deck and Benjamin Herson are traveling across the country, fixing grammatical errors on signs.
“It’s easy to overlook and dismiss the misuse of apostrophes,” he said. “But there came a point when I couldn’t hold it anymore. I decided to make this a national campaign, although I was kind of looking for an excuse to travel around the country anyway.”
Spelling PSA to the World
- sneak peek
- a furtive or stealthy glimpse
- sneak peak
- a furtive or stealthy mountaintop
Please make a note of it. Thank you.
Grammatical Inconsistencies
I say The Dallas Cowboys are and U2 is.
Semicolon Appreciation Society
I blogged this on my own turf, but as it has been my painful discovery on previous occasions that some people don’t read my website, I am cross-posting here.
To wit: The utterly smashing Erin McKean, dictionary evangelist and dressmaker, has created the Semicolon Appreciation Society, as well as a selection of SAS-related wares.
The products on offer include not only T-shirts and infant wrappers, but also stickers so that guerrilla punctuatistas “can edit signs to add semicolons where they ought to be.” ⇐ Cindy please note.
That is all.
Is amount ok?
There is something that has really been bothering me lately. Almost everywhere I check out and use my debit card, the little keypad/signature entry thing almost always asks “Is amount ok?”. This bothers me because it makes me want to yell “No, the amount isn’t ok, I’d rather it be free!”.
Really, that question should be “Is amount correct?”. What do you guys think?
For Cindy
(link to “another” site I “liked”)
陪我玩啊，Toesday Tuesday & Card
小芥：貓咪想要玩耍時就是會四腳朝天扭來扭去，很可愛，不過通常這時候阿丹這樣子忽然去侵犯他的雪白嫩肚，可是會被抓抓啃啃得很用力的。如果生氣離開，他還會怪你怎麼不玩了，這種啃抓的遊戲雖然代表貓對你很看得起是自己人，不過還是兩隻貓扭打在一起比較不痛，我們家三姊妹的手都會因為這樣常遭殃，人的手皮很脆弱啊，哈哈。
Michico : when cats feel boring want you to play with, sometimes they let their feet up and twist their body over. It’s cute, but when Adan doing that and I molest his lovely white tummy (just love rubbing this tummy suddenly), my hands will be bitten and grabbed by him very hardly. If I leave he even will blame me why not continue playing. Cats let you play with them physically are showing they like you, but human’s skin is too weak, 2 cats play won’t pain so much. Anyway, Pamilla, Toshie and I often are bitten by Adan, just let him feel fun.
StupidFilter
Apparently, an actual project.
From the FAQ:
Isn’t filtering stupidity elitist?
Yes. Yes, it is. That’s sort of the whole point.
(via)
“Don’t” read this, Cindy!
It “might” send you over the drum set.
exhibit 9903.09
Sign in restaurant in Jacksboro, TN lists the vegetables of the day:Corn, fried potatoes, "peas" and green beans.
(They also list cottage cheese and macaroni and cheese as vegetables.)Clearly that list should be labeled “vegetables” of the day.
exhibit 9903.05
A local clinic advertised in the paper as follows:"Prostate Screenings"
I don’t know what they’re doing and I don’t want to know.I don’t know either but I wonder if it has something to do with all those mega-plex movie theaters that are so popular these days.
From an oldie but goodie: The Gallery Of “Misused” Quotation Marks (via cabinet magazine)
Letters of E.B. White
White may never have got in touch with all his feelings, but he dealt with the world on his own, honorable, terms. And discouraged inappropriate illusions. “I was alarmed at your idea of suggesting to a child that he model himself after me,” he wrote in an otherwise agreeable letter to a librarian. “Writing is a form of imposture; I’m not at all sure I am anything like the person I seem to a reader. And you certainly wouldn’t want to urge a child to model himself after an impostor!”
Misplaced Apostrophes Send Cindy Over the Drumset
From the Chicago Manual of Style Online. (Be sure to read the last two sentences of the answer.)
Possessives and Attributives
Q. A friend and I were looking at a poster that read “guys apartment.” I believe it should read “guys’ apartment.” She claims that it should read “guys’s apartment” and that the CMOS specifically gives the example of “guys’s” to make “guys” possessive. I looked through every section on possessives and did not find the word “guys’s” or any rule that would make this correct. Some people say “you guys’s apartment”—did I overlook the word “guys’s” as used in the attributive position? (I don’t think I did.)
Grammar Girl
Hey Grammar Girl. This is Sandy from Southeast Missouri State University in Cape Girardeau, Missouri. I normally consider myself a pretty good writer, but I cannot seem to remember the rules that tell you when to use “lie” versus “lay.” Can you help me out with that? Is there an easy way to remember that?
Hinterland Holiday Weekend with the Kids
Speaking of Strunk & White . . .
And the Official Younger Son this weekend? He hadn’t been much of a problem. That is until about 3:30 Tuesday morning when he appeared in our room and informed the EMBLOS and me that he was “not feeling good.” To emphasize the the point he immediately deposited Monday night’s pasta on the bedroom carpet.
This chain of events was disturbing, of course, because I cannot count the times have we’ve told the children, “It’s ‘I’m not feeling well.’”
A few thoughts on proper use of a / an
Americans continually screw up when to use a or an when a word starts with h.
If I had a dollar for every time I saw, heard, or read ‘an history’ I wouldn’t be writing this post.
It is a simple error, and a simple error to understand….
If the h at the beginning of a word is silent then you use an. If the h is pronounced then you use a.
In England people would write or say: a herb. In America people would write or say an herb.
Since we pronounce the h in history, it should always be a history.
Moral Grammar
His proposal of a moral grammar emerges from a collaboration with Mr. Chomsky, who had taken an interest in Dr. Hauser’s ideas about animal communication. In 2002 they wrote, with Dr. Tecumseh Fitch, an unusual article arguing that the faculty of language must have developed as an adaptation of some neural system possessed by animals, perhaps one used in navigation. From this interaction Dr. Hauser developed the idea that moral behavior, like language behavior, is acquired with the help of an innate set of rules that unfolds early in a child’s development.
A Sentence
Buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo.