October 23, 2006
View Comments | Post CommentLinks Like White Elephants
- Grammar instruction is back in schools! Praise Allah! I can't distinguish an infinitive from an appositive, at least not in formal terms. Nevertheless, I do care very much about writing and speaking grammatically, and I think I am usually successful, or at least significantly more so than most of the population. Despite that, I lament my woeful lack of formal grammar instruction. Every year, from 1st grade until my Bachelor's degree (and one of my majors was English), every English teacher would say something like, "Every other teacher drills you on grammar, so I'm not going to." And so I never learned formal grammar. But that doesn't mean I can't be an idiosyncratic snob about it.
I constantly read writing that is otherwise reasonable but the prose of which is horribly grating on me, to the point that it makes me stop reading, affects my choices as a consumer, and causes me subconsciously to cut off communication with friends. There is at least one popular blog whose content I like, but whose prose is so poorly written that I can't take anything in it seriously--and its author is an aspiring writer, an enduring irony that makes me shake my head with incredulity on a semi-weekly basis. But at the same time, I recognize that many people seem to have no trouble reading all of those misspellings, split infinitives, sentence-ending prepositions, subject-verb disagreement, purple prose, histrionic diction, internal inconsistency, random capitalization, missing and superfluous commas, improper use of ellipses, em dashes, en dashes, and apostrophes, inability to distinguish between the plural and the possessive, and general lack of logic, flow, and taste--as I said, it's just an idiosyncrasy of mine.
An Oklahoma political candidate has graciously given us one of the most applicable metaphors for America that I've ever seen: a bunch of rednecks in the backyard firing guns at textbooks. Hilarious.- In one of the most fucked up stories I have ever read, the NYPost scoops allegations that Warner Brothers promised prosthetic limbs to a bunch of African amputee children in exchange for filming them for their upcoming movie Blood Diamond, and then never got them their limbs. When the children contacted Warner Brothers to inquire about their promised prostheses, they were told, "You will have to wait for December, when the movie comes out, so we can get some publicity out of it."
- China is moving to a system where registering a blog requires giving one's real name. One can still blog under a pseudonym, but the registration is non-anonymous. Presumably the goal is that subversives can be disappeared without all that tedious investigation. So all you supposedly anonymous bloggers out there, beware, lest this happen here, too. Good thing America isn't anything like China. Oh, wait.
- Bush says he uses "the Google." He also misuses the word "remind," when he means to say "reminds." Perhaps he would benefit from the aforementioned grammar instruction.
- Researchers have finally discovered what causes the trains of tiny bubbles that form in champagne flutes. They have long known why bubbles formed, but until now, it's been puzzling why they continually rise in a line from a particular spot. It turns out that the bubble trains are caused by "tiny gas pockets and fibers stuck on the inside of a glass." My roommates will be sure to examine the phenomenon at our Halloween Party on Saturday night.
Posted at October 23, 2006 7:28 PM | Comments (9)
Comments
Post a new comment
A lot of bloggers don't copy-edit their own writing (me (myself?) included). As a result, what appears on a blog is not representative of the kind of writing the author would send to (say) a publisher.
Posted by: Jeff at October 24, 2006 10:20 AM
Sure, sure. But I'm not talking about mere typos. I have typos in my blog often enough, and my grammar isn't perfect. Jeff, your blog is orders of grammar magnitude above the one(s) I'm talking about.
Posted by: David Barzelay at October 24, 2006 10:24 AM
I couldn't disagree more that being strict about grammar is an idiosyncratic thing. If people don't know how to write in goddamn English, that's THEIR fault, not yours for noticing it.
The only thing I hate more than people who can't use proper grammar is people who think that proper grammar isn't that important.
Posted by: Zhubin at October 24, 2006 10:42 AM
"and causes me subconsciously to cut off communication with friends"....// NO WONDERS I DONT HEAR FROM YOU IN AWHILE: DAVID.
Posted by: jcoops at October 24, 2006 3:37 PM
I don't get the connection to the short story "Hills Like White Elephants" by Hemingway. Are you alluding to that?
Posted by: Chris Santoro at October 24, 2006 9:03 PM
Yes, I'm alluding to that story, but there isn't any direct connection. Any time I write a post that is just a collection of links, I try to title the post creatively, and use something different each time.
I did have an idea that the things I was linking to this time all had in common that the masses wouldn't care about them, making them "like white elephants." But there was no direct connection the Heminway story.
Posted by: David Barzelay at October 25, 2006 12:54 AM
Glass Houses: Edits are in CAPS, bold and strikethrough.
Yes, I'm alluding REFERRING [To allude to something is to speak of it without specifically mentioning it. Since you mentioned it, use refer.] to that story, but there isn't any A direct connection. Any time I write a post that is just a collection of links, I try to title the post creatively, and use something different [vague- "something different"] each time.
I did have an idea that the things TO WHICH I was linking to this time all had in common that the masses wouldn't care about them [this sentence is unncessarily cumbersome], making them "like white elephants." But there was IS no direct connection TO the HeminGway story.
SHOULD I EDIT MORE BARZELAY TEXT?
Posted by: Anonymous at October 26, 2006 11:02 AM
SHOULD I EDIT MORE BARZELAY TEXT?
Sure. As I said, I'm imperfect, but I do want to know where I go wrong.
However, I disagree about substituting "referring" for "alluding;" I didn't use the full title of the Hemingway story, so it was an indirect reference, and therefore, an allusion. But your edits are mostly correct.
I definitely take less care when commenting than when writing posts, and that's a habit I should curb. That said, I'm sure you could find numerous errors in every post I've made.
Posted by: David Barzelay at October 26, 2006 12:26 PM
Ok, you can keep alluding. Sorry for the double comment post. I thought strikethrough would appear in the comments. Editing more text: too tiring. Everyone makes mistakes; there are typos in the Bible. You seem like a nice enough guy so why not email the blogger to whom you refer or allude and offer a few suggestions for improving his or her writing? If you enjoy the content on the blog, improved writing should be of benefit to both you and the blogger. It's possible that the blogger is affecting a certain style he or she thinks is fun or catchy. Whatever the case, everyone benefits from honest feedback. I apologize if I was too much of an ass in my previous comment.
Posted by: anonymous at October 26, 2006 12:43 PM
