ratiocinations out of thin air and elsewhere
STRUNKANDWHITEN IT! is named after William Strunk Jr and E.B. White, the authors of The Elements Of Style, arguably the single most important guide and reference book a writer in the English language can own.
Here are essays and articles on the use, misuse, and abuse of our lovely if baffling language in advertising, in newspapers, and on the internet. There are also pieces on spelling and grammar, and on constructing sentences and paragraphs.
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SEVERAL WORDS ARE MISUSED with great consistently—and often great dexterity—on the internet. “Moot” is one of them. Given that it can be used as a noun, a verb, and an adjective, it’s not surprising that users get things mixed up and become misusers and even abusers. While its use as an adjective is what I want to address here, I might as well give you the whole shebang. [Continue reading]
IF YOU ARE GOING TO WRITE FOR PUBLICATION, you need access to at least one English language grammar and usage stylebook. No matter how good a writer you may be, no matter how much experience you may have, you will use that book frequently. (Unless you have a photographic memory). [Continue reading]
I JUST PUT the finishing touches on a rewrite and update of an old article of mine on ’60s teen model Colleen Corby. While rereading the text and checking to see if the images were linked to their source, the opening sentence caught my attention. It read, “The term ‘supermodel’ didn’t exist when Colleen Corby was in her glory days during the 1960s.” [Continue reading]
THE BIG BANG THEORY is an endlessly rewatchable show: aside from the fabulous characters and the intertwining of their personal lives, the dialog is chock-a-block full of humor of all sorts, from the zany to the kind that requires the viewer either have a reasonable IQ or access to the Internet to look things up. [Continue reading]
THE HEADLINE caught my attention, as it was supposed to: “Advanced OOP For WordPress.” As should be obvious to most people familiar with newspaper, magazines, and now online articles, the headline is usually the first thing that most readers see in any article. [Continue reading]
THE ELEMENTS OF STYLE has been around for almost one-hundred years, but it didn’t start its march to universal acclaim until 1959. That year saw the first edition of William Strunk’s little book expanded from 43 pages to 78 pages by “co-author” E.B. White. Forty years earlier, Professor Strunk had published the book as a guide for his students at Cornell University. [Continue reading]
WE HEAR IT and we say it incorrectly! We usually hear “fortay” when people say “forte,” an almost universally mispronounced word! I can’t say it’s a part of everyone’s daily vocabulary, but if you read enough you’ll come across it regularly. I’m writing this because it was used in a couple of movies that we watched recently. [Continue reading]
WILLIAM STRUNK JR was Professor of English at Cornell University. In 1918, he self-published a guide for his students on English usage and writing called The Elements Of Style. The slim book consisted primarily of eight “elementary rules of usage” and ten “elementary principles of composition” accompanied by a “few matters of form.’ [Continue reading]
ASIDE FROM MY OWN WORK, I have edited several books and many articles for others. I have no formal training in, merely study about editing. I never used the field’s accepted nomenclature or proof-reading symbols. I just used my Strunk & White and everything worked out hunky-dory for those writers! [Continue reading]
LAST NIGHT’S SLUGFEST consisted of ninety minutes of Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton calling each other names (“liar” popped up more than once) and declaring each other untrustworthy and unfit for office. Policy differences and other matters that should concern these two candidates were set aside so that each could impugn the basic character of the other! [Continue reading]
THE LAST WORD ANYONE would use to describe me is “conservative”—at least not regarding most issues related to politics. But there’s more to life than politics: I remain old-fashioned on the issue of prescriptive versus descriptive dictionaries (strongly believing in the former) and the misuse of the designated hitter in major league baseball (not at all what you think). [Continue reading]
EVERY READER has seen those three dots in the midst of a sentence that tells them something is happening. These dots are called an ‘ellipsis’ and are associated with missing text, often quoted from another source. The word is from the Greek ‘elleipsis’ and means falling short—or for writers and grammarians—it means omission. [Continue reading]