Friday, November 13, 2015

Hate Mail on a Short Friday Afternoon

Uh, Duncan, not to put TOO fine a point on it, but the placement or use of commas isn't a matter of grammar, it is a matter of mechanics.   It is also not set in stone.  

They just don't teach Warriner's English Grammar and Composition anymore, do they. 

PART FIVE: MECHANICS
23. Capitalization
Rules of standard usage
24. Punctuation
End marks and commas
25. Punctuation
Other marks of punctuation (semicolon, colon, dash, parentheses, brackets, underlining (italics), quotation marks, apostrophe, hyphen)
26. Manuscript Form

Rules for preparing a final draft

But, you're right, internet writing isn't the same as formal writing, like, you know, typed on white paper in black ink and with lots of white-out on it for a teacher to mark up with a blue pencil.   And Truman C. would say that's not writing either, it's typing.  

And, troll boy, I doubt Duncan's major effort, extending to the mind boggling figure of 202 words (including elided expletive) was in reference to my little go round with his regulars yesterday.   Still, nice to see the boy getting a bit of exercise.  Those one or two sentence, not to mention one or two word posts make a fellow flaccid. A nation that uses short sentences is a nation unable to think complex ideas.  That's what you get when people use that stupid Strunk and White book instead of a real English composition text. 

Update:  How odd, Simels, I didn't recall and can't see in my archive that I've ever written about The Supremes, the girl group, not the criminals of the Supreme Court, I've written lots about them.   I don't recall writing anything about Diana Ross and the others.  I think you mean the several things I've written about Martha Reeves and the Vandellas.  I loved Martha and the Vandellas.  Was never big on the Supremes, neither the girl-group nor the old crooks in robes.  Apparently they're all the same to you.   Needless to say, as usual, you're wrong. 

8 comments:

  1. A nation that uses short sentences is a nation unable to think complex ideas.

    I believe it was Shakespeare who said, rightly, that brevity is the soul of wit. Of course, both brevity and wit are concepts you're not fully conversant with.

    Oh wait -- I forgot, you don't believe Shakespeare wrote his own stuff. My bad.

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    1. Says the man who think's Tom Stoppard's totally fictitious piece of junk was biography.

      You mean Wm Shakspr? That illiterate merchant who couldn't even spell his own name and doesn't seem to have ever owned a book? The one who Ben Jonson called "poet ape"?

      Poor Poet Ape, that would be thought our chief,
      Whose works are e’en the frippery of wit,
      From Brokage is become so bold a thief
      As we, the robbed, leave rage and pity it.
      At first he made low shifts, would pick and glean,
      Buy the reversion of old plays, now grown
      To a little wealth, and credit on the scene,
      He takes up all, makes each man’s wit his own,
      And told of this, he slights it. Tut, such crimes
      The sluggish, gaping auditor devours;
      He marks not whose ‘twas first, and aftertimes
      May judge it to be his, as well as ours.
      Fool! as if half-eyes will not know a fleece
      From locks of wool, or shreds from the whole piece.

      And that was hardly the only contemporary swipe at him, as I recall one other referred to the crook who stole plays and poems as "Shake-scene".

      What would he know about it?

      If you mean the guy who wrote the plays and poems. His brevity is like reading an expanded version of War and Peace for you.

      Delete
  2. "I don't recall writing anything about Diana Ross and the others."

    It was at Eschaton, but who gives a fuck, given that Martha and the Vandellas, estimable as they were, didn't write a note of their own music either, so the point stands.

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    1. Yeah, right. Give me the link to the comment made more than three years ago because as far as I recall, I never had anything to say about The Supremes.

      I think what you revealed, Sims, is they all look the same to you.

      Delete
  3. It was when, as you claimed (a lie, BTW) that I was mocking Motown.

    I'm not surprised you're pretending you don't remember.

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    1. I'm not surprised that the passage in question was sufficiently complex that you didn't get it.

      "What I said was about rock and roll, it wasn't about Bruce Springsteen. As I recently posted links to The Guess Who that proves I can like some rockers without necessarily liking the genre. I also have linked to The Band and Motown artists as Simels mocked,"

      You mocked as I wrote about Martha and the Vandella's hit Dancing in the Street because I pointed out that your anxious white urban myth that it was a call to riot was a load of horse shit. I will admit that I mocked you better than you mocked me but anyone who wants to check that post can see for themselves. I especially liked this passage:

      the biggest Motown and soul music fans I knew in the 60s were the biggest unrepentant out and out unambiguous racists. And anybody not a moron who was alive then will tell you the same thing.

      Well, I can't account for the racists who SIMELS KNEW but I'm kind of under the impression that lots of Motown fans were, you know, black people. It kind of makes it hard to understand how Dancing In The Street could have had the profound effect he claims "everyone knows" it did, inspiring race riots in 1964 if Motown had, mainly, a white, racist fan base. I think most of the black people I knew in the 1960s-70s, etc. would have kind of noticed if a musical genre had mostly white, racist fans.

      I'm told you're again claiming I hate Gershwin when I don't think I've ever had a bad word to say about George and only addressed Ira in terms of that dreadful movie The North Star, after George had died.

      But, then, you've never let anything like accuracy get in the way of a lie you wanted to spread. Which is probably why you repeated that old line that about Dancin' in the Streeet that I used to hear from Birchers on call in radio back in the 60s

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  4. "It kind of makes it hard to understand how Dancing In The Street could have had the profound effect he claims "everyone knows" it did, inspiring race riots in 1964 "

    Right, that's exactly what I said. You really have a problem with vernacular American English, apparently. :-)

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    1. Yeah, that's what you said. If I wanted to I could go and post the links but you'd just lie about it.

      As I've proved many times you're a liar.

      Delete