Category: language
The Good Old Days
In choir, we are rehearsing The Night Before Christmas:
He sprang to his sleigh, to his team gave a whistle…
After practicing the above, the guy next to me turned to the guy next to him and said, “Those were the good old days, when people actually knew how to use the simple past!”
“What, instead of ‘He [...]
Exercising the franchise
Just a couple of random items from my voting experience:
Paper or plastic?
I have been paying very little attention to the controversy over electronic voting. In Virginia, you went into a curtained booth and toggled little switches on a board till you were happy with your choices, then you pulled a big lever; the machine went [...]
Alas, poor English
English is going to hell in a handbasket, hastened to its destination by military and quasi-military law enforcement-speak.
An actual quote from FBI Assistant Director Mark J. Mershon, courtesy of today’s news (I am not making this up):
They were about to go to a phase where they would attempt to surveil targets, establish a regimen of [...]
The writing badness that is Dan Brown
My children gave me Dan Brown’s Angels and Demons for Mother’s Day, by way of a gag gift. They also gave me a red pen to mark it up with.
I couldn’t possibly do any better than Language Log, though:
The Dan Brown Code
Dan Brown Still Moving Very Briskly About
Renowned author Dan Brown staggered through his formulaic [...]
Is there an English teacher in house?
Via Fazia, What corporate America can’t build: A sentence.
I guess I should be grateful for my liberal arts education (not usually perceived as an asset in aerospace).
Language Abuse
Heard at a business meeting last week: “Desirement”
In a software change request: “Pair down the size of [item]”
In a list of document revisions: “Second Revision | Third Revision | Forth Revision”
In email, to indicate agreement with the previous writer: “DIDO!” (and Aeneas?)
These people have to be caught, and educated.
Apostrophes
WordPress apparently goes around converting perfectly good low-bit ASCII characters like the single quote into high-bit characters like the apostrophe. This is tremendously irritating - if I wanted text littered with high-bit ASCII, I’d use Microsoft Word.
Hunting for the solution to this problem, I found The apostrophe is the modern day Shibboleth, which in turn [...]
Stress and the English Language
Stress makes Multiple Sclerosis worse more evidence
I would have titled it “More Evidence that Stress Makes Multiple Sclerosis Worse”, or maybe “Stress Makes Multiple Sclerosis Worse: More Evidence”, but what do I know?
Bertolt Brecht
In the dark times / will there also be singing?
Yes, there will also be singing / about the dark times.
I’m very intrigued by this Bertolt Brecht quote - I need to go to the library and see if I can find the source/context.
How many is one?
Article in the local paper this morning about the increase in non-English speaking population of our town. The police chief was quoted as saying “We don’t need the census to tell us that the monolingual population is increasing.” Well, honey, while you are undoubtedly right, I don’t think that’s what you meant. Any population increase [...]
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