Cato's Grammar Grumble

[Cato]

Truth to tell,  Mr. Justice Scalia would probably have been a better president than most of the lot actually running.

Amen!   0:)

Yesterday we heard this at church:

A reading from the Book of..Dude O'Romeny.  0:) 0:) 0:)

[Karl Henning]

Wish I had thought of that yesterday!

[Karl Henning]

Great (and arguably Twilight Zone-ish) transposition:

Rod Serling (who co-wrote the script for 1986's Planet of The Apes) was commissioned to compose a treatment for Beneath the Plant of the Apes, which was summarily (and foolishly) rejected.

RTWT here

[Cato]

Great (and arguably Twilight Zone-ish) transposition:

Quote from: Alfred Eaker

Rod Serling (who co-wrote the script for 1986's Planet of The Apes) was commissioned to compose a treatment for Beneath the Plant of the Apes, which was summarily (and foolishly) rejected.

1986?!  Somebody stepped on a butterfly!   0:)

I sat through the remake from Tim Burton, and found everything inferior to the original, especially the ending.

On topic:

I cannot verify this, but a blogger claimed that she had seen an analysis of the grammar and vocabulary of the political "debates" (they are nothing of the kind) among the candidates for president.  It used to be said that television was on the level of a 12-year old.

The grammar and vocabulary in the "side-by-side, sound-bite-bumper-sticker-slogan" contests worked out to be on a 4th to 5th Grade level, i.e. suitable for 9 and 10 year-old children.

In comparison to the Lincoln - Douglas Debates, these things today are beyond disgraceful.  But the situation was predicted over 30 years ago by technology critic Neil Postman: check his books Amusing Ourselves To Death and especially The Disappearance of Childhood.  That his predictions have turned out to be fairly precise is most dismaying.

[Karl Henning]

This prequel lacks a little in it's concept of who and what the creator of the human race should be. It does have it's good points and I think you should watch this with an open mind especially if your an 'Alien' series enthusiast.

[Karl Henning]

Technically, more or less off-topic . . . but I weep for America that there may be any who choose Option #1 . . . .

[jochanaan]

This prequel lacks a little in it's concept of who and what the creator of the human race should be. It does have it's good points and I think you should watch this with an open mind especially if your an 'Alien' series enthusiast.

And who was responsible for that ungrammatical drivel?

[Cato]

Seen along a state highway by a large farm:

FREE HAY FOR SALE   

A paradox for the ages, like Donald and Daisy!   0:)

[Karl Henning]

Seen along a state highway by a large farm:

FREE HAY FOR SALE   

A paradox for the ages, like Donald and Daisy!   0:)

I was thinking on roughly similar lines when the lesson this Sunday previous was the much-familiar you who have no money, come, buy and eat!

[Karl Henning]

Please make every effort to join your colleagues and I ....

[jochanaan]

Seen along a state highway by a large farm:

FREE HAY FOR SALE   

A paradox for the ages, like Donald and Daisy!   0:)

Maybe the farmer/rancher needs a "bale-out"!

[Cato]

Please make every effort to join your colleagues and I ....

Come with I to the Casbah!   

Could you help I, please? 

Maybe the farmer/rancher needs a "bale-out"!

Maybe, but that sounds like a "straw-man" argument!   0:)

[jochanaan]

...Maybe, but that sounds like a "straw-man" argument!   0:)

[Karl Henning]

Offhand, I think convention was meant.

RNC unveils contested contention website

[Cato]

From the May 4th, 2016 Wall Street Journal by Joseph Epstein:

...Feel no embarrassment if you don't know his name. Robert Hartwell Fiske was an unknown soldier in that most glorious and hopeless of wars, that against the ignorant and abusive use of language. He published five or six books on the subject, with such titles as "The Dictionary of Disagreeable English," "The Dimwit's Dictionary" and "Robert Hartwell Fiske's Dictionary of Unendurable English." He also ran a website called Vocabula Review, which featured essays written by various hands, on occasion my own among them, discussing the vagaries and comedy of language...

...A brief Wikipedia entry about him is almost entirely negative. He is accused by a linguist of being "far too prescriptivist in orientation for a sophisticated linguistic audience." Two reviews of the "Dictionary of Unendurable English" are cited: In one the book is said to be—no fainter praise is imaginable—"enjoyable for word snobs and copy editors"; in the other he is called "so passionate in the prescriptivist cause of smiting the lax and the uncaring that the book at times resembles a parody of itself."

The "prescriptivist cause" means the assertion of correct and clear English, the insistence on a standard. One might have thought such an objective admirable, but in their sophistication contemporary linguists are keener on demotic than on elegant English. Besides, in the spirit of our day, when the chief function of authority is to serve as an object of attack, to set up as an authority is to risk—to expect, really—an onslaught of shaving-cream pies in the face.

No one among them ever thought himself a prescriptivist, but the prescriptivist honor roll is distinguished. On it are Jonathan Swift, H.L. Mencken, George Orwell, Evelyn Waugh and Edmund Wilson. My own favorite writer in this realm is H.W. Fowler, whose "Modern English Usage" was a best-seller in America when it was published in 1926. Immensely learned yet with nothing schoolmarmish about him, Fowler was able to lay down the law without seeming the least priggish. Although he knew all the rules, his general advice was to break any rule rather than be forced into writing something that sounds barbarous.

I'm not sure when, precisely, Robert Fiske signed on to fight the pollution of empty jargon, idiotic euphemism, self-serving imprecision, comic redundancy and nonsense generally. He had earlier worked as a copy editor for the Addison-Wesley publishing company and then as a freelance editor. A passion for correct English at some point must have turned into an obsession. Robert was apparently obsessive in other realms: He was a weightlifter and a man who went on 10-mile treks carrying 50 pounds of bricks in a backpack.

Perhaps it requires an obsessive to devote himself to linguistic delinquencies in any age, but especially in ours, the age of the emoticon. In his "Dimwit's Dictionary," Robert explains his reigning idea in the first paragraph of his first chapter, when he announces that "Dimwitticisms are worn-out words and phrases; they are expressions that dull our reason and dim our insight, formulas that we rely on when we are too lazy to express what we think or even to discover how we feel. The more we use them, the more we conform—in thought and feeling—to everyone else who uses them."

In his various writings, Robert insisted on distinctions: between forcefully and forcibly, fortunately and fortuitously, tortured and tortuous, and many more. He could be death on academic locution and on the ungainly "in terms of," the overused "scenario," the misused "transpire," the merely hideous "prioritize."

Robert believed that "our knowledge of the world expands as our familiarity with words increases," and that inattentiveness to the niceties of language "blunts our understanding and quashes our creativity." I could say that he was the H.W. Fowler de nos jours, but Robert would have been pained by my unnecessary, and thereby pretentious, use of French...

...Robert Hartwell Fiske was doing the Lord's work. I only hope that, when he gets to the gates of heaven, St. Peter, in interviewing him, doesn't split an infinitive or misuse the word "precipitous," and Robert, feeling the need to correct him, blows everything.

See:

http://www.wsj.com/articles/death-of-a-word-man-1462313666#:yGo2wYdWovoqwA

[Karl Henning]

Love it! . . . the merely hideous "prioritize."

[jochanaan]

"Dimwitticisms"

[Karl Henning]

Are you avoiding avocado because of it's high fat reputation?

[Cato]

Are you avoiding avocado because of it's high fat reputation?

'Tis a high fat reputation that plagues me, Claudius,
Hence I must hie me hither to it's calories which make me fat!

[Kontrapunctus]

What about unnecessary quotation marks, such as Fresh "Fish" $3.99 a pound. Would anyone buy it?