"Using a grammatical imperfection is invariably better than remaining tongue-tied." Hate Mail

Oh, I went to land grant universities back in the day when you were expected to have a liberal education, no matter what your major was.  Even the majors in the hard sciences were still expected to know something else.  That included mandatory courses, beginning with a rigorous Frosh Rhetoric course, math courses, science courses, history, etc. all requiring you to, you know, do research and write papers.  And those being public universities we weren't just retained because Pater and Mater were grad or had given an endowment or something, if you didn't maintain a sufficient grade record you'd flunk out and be told to go home.  We weren't told our first day to look left and right of us because by the end of the first year one of them would have flunked out but we'd heard that rule of thumb before we went.   We'd also heard that the Ivy class schools just hated to do something so vulgar as to expel someone for not working.  I can't say it made us smug but I can tell you it didn't make the Ivy class guys humble.

I can't say it made me a finished writer, at least not when I write something in two days instead of having weeks to write it.  I can do that, still.  I suppose.   And I have to admit that the habit of using standard grammar has slipped a bit - trying to get back to uniformly using the subjunctive instead of the vernacular past tense is taking a bit of effort.   Maybe I'll go to posting once a week sometime.  Try to come up with more finished pieces. That would be an interesting experiment to try.   Till then, it's quick and dirty, edited after publication and on the fly.  That's the real difference between a writer and someone who isn't a writer, having the luxury of an editor.   I go with Mario Pei's advice to those trying to learn a new language, "Using a grammatical imperfection is invariably better than remaining tongue-tied.:

Maybe I will get round to hauling out the ol' Warriner's English Grammar and Composition sometime and working through it.  But I'm not going to dumb it down to short sentences with no words of more than three syllables.  Things went to hell when that nonsense started.

The eyes were a lot better back then, my glasses are reaching the weight they're going to need a kind of reverse tumpline sort of arrangement to stay on.    Can't see a damned thing without them.

Maybe you should ask "Dad" why he doesn't write more than two sentences at a time unless it's to ask for money.   If I wrote two sentence posts I'll bet I could make them piss elegant, saying nothing as I did it.

Update:  I'm accused of using "outdated, stilted language".  I think the coprophagous eschatonian  meant I write on an adult level.   I suspect the bint didn't have to take Frosh Rhetoric.

Duncan, you proud of your "Brain Trust" these days?   Or didn't you have to take Frosh Rhetoric either?

Update 2:  "One of the things that probably makes me worth reading is that I stay the hell away from Washington, D.C. It's a city where everybody says exactly what everybody else says. And I don't have to spend more than ten minutes in Washington before I find myself saying exactly the same thing too."  Molly Ivins

That's why I stay away from Eschaton.   Maybe some day I'll get past the years I wasted there.  Once I started saying things everyone else there wasn't saying, my days there were numbered.   I only wish I'd gotten out when people like NTodd did, or, better, Tena.    DWD, take notice.