First off, out of nowhere good old Ashleigh Chamberlain shows up in New York city Sunday night and we took a long, healthy walk with her brother (I completely forgot his name, my bad, dude)and paid a visit to the girls with the accents at Mary's Dairy. Ashleigh is going to go play lady's basketball in Europe. Whoah. To think I knew her back when she was just a nice kid with troublesome cousins.
Next, that movie Anchorman? Turns out it's great. And there was a Mexican restaraunt in it called "We Spit in Your Food." Finally, this second language I speak serves for something.
Thirdly, do you realize that the B and D make no stops between 4th and 34th Street? How hot is that?
Fourth, I'm about to close the deal on my very own Manhattan dream apartment. This is what counts as a dream these days: No roommates. A seperate kitchen (I use the word "seperate" loosely, but it's mostly true). Two big closets. A real bathroom. Proximity to the L train. Capable doormen. Heritage and history. That the building is called the "John Adams."
My Mac is fixed!! It's a miracle! I can load up my iPod again! I can get rid of this crap PC that's the curse of my life! Get lost, crap PC!(Muchas gracias to Jeff R., of course.)
I think I've invented a new phrase/expression that could do the world some good, "Forilla Gorilla." It takes "for real" to the next level. Here's an example of it in use: "Hey, did you know I got a new set of rims?" "Forilla gorilla?" "Forilla gorilla, bro." I think this is my best contribution to the Enlgish language since my safe swear, "futch", back in 2000.
Can anyone remind me where my commas are supposed to go in relation to my quotation marks? I know the American rules are the opposite of British rules . . . but that doesn't help if you don't know what rule to follow in the first place.
Okay, you got me. This was just a post for me to toss up a few things before going to bed.
2 comments:
From alt-usage-english.org:
According to William F. Phillips (wfp@world.std.com), in the days when printing used raised bits of metal, "." and "," were the most delicate, and were in danger of damage (the face of the piece of type might break off from the body, or be bent or dented from above) if they had a '"' on one side and a blank space on the other. Hence the convention arose of always using '."' and ',"' rather than '".' and '",', regardless of logic.
Fowler was a strong advocate of logical placement of punctuation marks, i.e. only placing them inside the quotation marks if they were part of the quoted matter. This scheme has gained ground, and is especially popular among computer users, and others who wish to make clear exactly what is and what is not being quoted. Logical placement is accepted by many more publishers outside than inside the U.S.
Some people insist that '."' and ',"' LOOK better, but Fowler calls them "really mere conservatives, masquerading only as aesthetes".I have no idea who Fowler is.
-Mike
Fowler is H. W. Fowler, author of the Dictionary of Modern English Usage.
D. F. Wallace wrote an illuminating book review of Brian Garner's Dictionary of Modern American Usage in Harper's a few years back that, in the 20+ pages it spanned, gave a comprehensive (enough, as in 'comprehensive enough', as in for a non-professionally or -academically interested entity) overview of the general tendencies of Fowler and Garner w/r/t to usage, summing it up that Fowler was of the stodgy, British, ‘prescriptive’ sort (i.e. that language is a certain way because it should be a certain way) and that Garner is a ‘descriptive’ usage grammarian type, allowing the use of language, if not grossly outline with basic rules (think "impactful"), to determine its usage.
On a not entirely separate note, I'll note that I find Garner's dictionary entertaining at times and think it's the sort of thing that's fun to keep in your bag for a week and read on the train and that I find Fowler's kind of blah - or at least think it reads about as well as most dictionaries - but I like having them both around when I check on things to see where they disagree.
And I don’t think either of them would appreciate the grammar used throughout this post.
PFM
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