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+--- Thread: RIP , photojournalist James Foley (/showthread.php?tid=170294)
Re: RIP , photojournalist James Foley - neophyte - 08-26-2014
eustacetilley wrote:
... reasoned discourse, facts, bad puns, etymology, the "Classical Orders", actually understanding what the words being used actually mean- none of these have any business being on this side.
My apologies.
Eustace
Eustace Tilley is a lout, he wears his socks inside out.
Prolix prose, far too silly- pay no mind to Eustace Tilley
Eustace, I hereby nominate you to chair the MR Department of Linguistics and Semantics, Forum Division. Duties of the Chair shall include hosting a weekly Forum Topic devoted to a linguistic and/or semantic issue du jour. Topics may be suggested by MRF members but the Chair shall make the initial post.
All in favor?
Re: RIP , photojournalist James Foley - eustacetilley - 08-26-2014
neophyte wrote:
[quote=eustacetilley]
... reasoned discourse, facts, bad puns, etymology, the "Classical Orders", actually understanding what the words being used actually mean- none of these have any business being on this side.
My apologies.
Eustace
Eustace Tilley is a lout, he wears his socks inside out.
Prolix prose, far too silly- pay no mind to Eustace Tilley
Eustace, I hereby nominate you to chair the MR Department of Linguistics and Semantics, Forum Division. Duties of the Chair shall include hosting a weekly Forum Topic devoted to a linguistic and/or semantic issue du jour. Topics may be suggested by MRF members but the Chair shall make the initial post.
All in favor?
Actually, that's not such a bad idea, although I would like the Chair to rotate, preferably to music.
(This was once seriously discussed by PM, but the subject was weekly Literature instead of Wordplay.)
For three decades, William Safire wrote a weekly column solely devoted to words that interested him, and these days those columns are better regarded than his political pieces. At least among those who count.
If you really want to launch this, (After all, it's your idea.), you would have to be the First Chair: pick a word, research it, and present your findings to polite applause and the occasional ripe tomato. Then nominate the next Chair. (Extra points if a bewildered participant scratches their head, and asks themselves: "Have I just been insulted?")
We already have/had a Weekly Fit Club, Weekly discussions of what happened on "Breaking Bad", and Weekly Free Monday, (Which has taken an ominous turn...)
As I used to read Safire on Sunday mornings, well... you have Six Days.
Thanks for all the Fission.
Eustace
(Don't forget the Easter Eggs!)
Re: RIP , photojournalist James Foley - neophyte - 08-26-2014
eustacetilley wrote:
For three decades, William Safire wrote a weekly column solely devoted to words that interested him, and these days those columns are better regarded than his political pieces. At least among those who count.
I am not familiar with Safire's columns, but I fondly remember those of James Kilpatrick (“The Writer’s Art”). He lived in my neck of the woods in the 1990s. I miss those columns.
As to the chair, I'll think on it.
Edit: Six Days? Oy gevalt, maybe He could do wonders in that amount of time, but I am just a neophyte.
Re: RIP , photojournalist James Foley - mrlynn - 08-26-2014
Eustace wrote:
(Extra points if a bewildered participant scratches their head, and asks themselves: "Have I just been insulted?")
Can we expand word usage to include grammatical faux pas?
'Their' is the plural possessive, and 'themselves' is plural. The referent must therefore be plural. 'A bewildered participant' is not. The neutral possessive pronoun in English is 'his'.
Some languages have a neutral pronoun (we do too, namely 'it', but it's gauche to use that of people). Perhaps we need one, to stem the misuse of plurals.
/Mr Lynn
Re: RIP , photojournalist James Foley - neophyte - 08-26-2014
mrlynn wrote:
[quote=Eustace]
(Extra points if a bewildered participant scratches their head, and asks themselves: "Have I just been insulted?")
Can we expand word usage to include grammatical faux pas?
'Their' is the plural possessive, and 'themselves' is plural. The referent must therefore be plural. 'A bewildered participant' is not. The neutral possessive pronoun in English is 'his'.
Some languages have a neutral pronoun (we do too, namely 'it', but it's gauche to use that of people). Perhaps we need one, to stem the misuse of plurals.
/Mr Lynn
That does it. You're now on the List as a future Chair.
Re: RIP , photojournalist James Foley - eustacetilley - 08-26-2014
mrlynn wrote:
[quote=Eustace]
(Extra points if a bewildered participant scratches their head, and asks themselves: "Have I just been insulted?")
Can we expand word usage to include grammatical faux pas?
'Their' is the plural possessive, and 'themselves' is plural. The referent must therefore be plural. 'A bewildered participant' is not. The neutral possessive pronoun in English is 'his'.
Some languages have a neutral pronoun (we do too, namely 'it', but it's gauche to use that of people). Perhaps we need one, to stem the misuse of plurals.
/Mr Lynn
"Themselves" is an acceptable recent gender-neutral substitute for "His" or "Hers", singular or plural.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Singular_they
I've actually been deliberately introducing the term into my writing; Fowler would be appalled.
(In this specific case, "his" wouldn't have been of "he" origin. (I have yet to get an answer back on that "Classical Order" question.))
Good catch nonetheless, but I prefer to keep the concept word-centered for now.
This may appear arrogant.
Some may even accuse me of being a wordist, and not paying nearly enough attention to my colons, or indeed even going as far as trying to deliberately split infinitives, no matter the hurt feelings.
I tend to shrug such issues off; people will believe what they want to believe, yet...
Of course I'm a wordist. Maybe not enough for some, and yet for others: the closet wordists, those for whom "Wordism" is the word that must not be named, it would be best if I just kept my damn mouth, um, keyboard, shut.
Word.
Eustace
( Easter Egg- "wordism" has some conflicting definitions, because Somebody of Authority has yet to render judgement. One common definition is the insistence on having the last word.)
Re: RIP , photojournalist James Foley - Black - 08-26-2014
At the rate things are going around here. I give it another week befure Eustace is engaged in a bitter flamewar with August, Steve G and billb concurrently.
Re: RIP , photojournalist James Foley - DeusxMac - 08-26-2014
Along Eustace's line of thinking, I'll propose that using an incorrect word more frequently impedes clear communication than does an error in punctuation.
Re: RIP , photojournalist James Foley - eustacetilley - 08-26-2014
DeusxMac wrote:
Along Eustace's line of thinking, I'll propose that using an incorrect word more frequently impedes clear communication than does an error in punctuation.
You are right, unless it turns out very funny. The Classic is:
"I helped my Uncle Jack, off a horse." vs "I helped my Uncle Jack off a horse."
The usage of "jack" in the second example is very recent; certainly no earlier than WWII.
But that one little comma does seem to make a difference in meaning.
I tend to overuse commas, at least by Fowler's standards, but he primarily dealt with written English. Gower did have more of an interest in Spoken English, primarily because he loathed Speeches.
In written English, the rules for commas are pretty strict, but in Spoken English written down, they have another crucial purpose- they indicate a spoken pause, possibly to catch a breath. There is no accepted written punctuation for this purpose these days; sticking {pause} into text, {pause} tends to be distracting.
Ellipses or slashes may also be used, and dashes were once common for coupling, especially when it came to Iambic Tetrameter;
"The-Boy/stood-on/the-bur/ning-desk"
Unless I'm writing something very technical, I write it all out at once. Then I edit for coherence. And then I edit it for a third time, just in case Mrs. Johnstone asks me to stand up and recite, just so I don't sound like such a utter mumbler, like Henry Watson Fowler was.
Eustace
Re: RIP , photojournalist James Foley - Lux Interior - 08-26-2014
Inforcing grammer & spelling on a internet forum is just rediculous.