As soon as I decided to write about language for this Browsings column, my sentences started to grow clumsy and fall all over one another. Nothing sounded right, and I questioned the grammar and syntax of virtually every clause. Isn’t there an old joke about how a bird couldn’t fly or a creepy-crawlie couldn’t skitter along once either started to contemplate how the flying or skittering was done?
Like most writers, I confess to a number of linguistic tics and crotchets. While ambiguity seems to me a plus in poetry—I didn’t write my honors thesis on William Empson for nothing—it is something I tend to avoid in prose. I try to practice … But wait. Look again at that sentence with the dashes: Shouldn’t there be a comma after the word “poetry”? The dashes make that impossible, but in such a case do they render a comma superfluous? Will anyone care besides me? ~ Language Matters
The whole article is pretty funny...if you are into writing. Regardless, by the end of the year you are going to be stressing out over little details like this in order to get a 4.
No comments:
Post a Comment