Thank you for this! I enjoy your thoughts and opinions even when I don't agree with them...but I admit that I get an extra amount of pleasure when I do agree. This Wednesday potpourri post is just that: yes and yes and yes and yes.
My Wordle strategy is to use as many different letters in my early guesses as possible. I wouldn't be surprised to learn that is the dominant strategy among all players. I haven't, however, developed a good strategy for words that use a letter twice (I'm glaring at you, HITCH).
I almost always start with a word with two vowels and of course no repeated letters. (And it’s a different word every day.) Depending upon how that plays out, I’ll either build on it or switch, on line 2 or 3, to an entirely new letter-eating word. (I don’t believe in so-called hard mode.) I blew a 195-word streak on HITCH, and, looking back at how and what I played, I don’t think that I could have played any better than I did. I just didn’t have the right luck.
I think that that's one of the stupidest things I've read in a long time. Both the content and his tone. If I ever sound like that (do I?), I hope that someone will smack me right upside the head.
Perhaps it might amuse you—and, please, please be amused, don't be in any way regretful, if you're prone to that sort of thing—that I've been unable to drive that horrid little essay out of my mind. The idea of elevating some weird, and as far as I can tell unique, tic/preference into a Universal Rule About Writing is absolutely appalling to me.
Over the years, I've heard slush readers at lit mags share all manner of pet peeves that they've promoted into reasons for instant rejection. If a gravel road or the word "dappled" appears on the first page, then nix, etc. There is too much to read, and we all need ways to justify deciding not to read something. (Often, I'm grateful to encounter a smart negative book review of a feted new book for just this reason.) Anyway, I do think this is the dark side of our fascination with grammar and usage: even a gauche comma can seem to relieve us of the responsibility to keep reading.
I can be quickly worn out by a book in which there's such a pileup of pronouns that I can't tell who is who, or in which every fifth sentence is a dangler, or (speaking of commas) in which neither the writer nor the copy editor seems to understand that "his fourth wife Anne of Cleves" *must be* "his fourth wife, Anne of Cleves," but that's (a) cumulative, and (b) I dunno, sane.
Oh! Not a thing I think I've ever thought about, so I'd have to do some research to even form an inchoate opinion. Is there a particular point you're turning on, as it were?
Ah, I get it. I don't know that I'm going to have much more to say than "Writers should pay attention to what they're saying and strive for accuracy and le mot juste," but if I have something to add, I'll add it.
When I read Matt Bell's /Refuse to be Done/, I took his advice to search for weasel words. One of which was 'that.' When I did a search for 'that,' I was amazed (appalled?) at how many times I used the word. I have found that rewriting a sentence that contains 'that' often makes it much stronger. But sometimes, 'that' is not only essential, it's sometimes desirable.
All of this: yes. Including that Matt's book is wonderful. I find "that" to be, generally, an invisible word, excellent to hold a sentence in place, part of the foundation.
I got HITCH in 6. I'm a weirdo who uses a handful of specific words that delight me, in the hopes I'll solve the puzzle with one guess someday: GUSTO, VIXEN, and CHASM are a few. That helped me get DINGO without even thinking of the word I believe you're alluding to, which I haven't seen in print in years, when reading one of Hammett's lesser imitators; it's at least as dated as HUNKY.
I was re-watching the Sondheim 90th birthday tribute today -- as one does -- as this one does on a regular basis -- and, for whatever reason, the Katrina Lenk version of "Johanna," coming a few hours after reading this newsletter made me marvel at the perfection of "yellow hair." A tangent, please indulge me.
Thank you for this! I enjoy your thoughts and opinions even when I don't agree with them...but I admit that I get an extra amount of pleasure when I do agree. This Wednesday potpourri post is just that: yes and yes and yes and yes.
My Wordle strategy is to use as many different letters in my early guesses as possible. I wouldn't be surprised to learn that is the dominant strategy among all players. I haven't, however, developed a good strategy for words that use a letter twice (I'm glaring at you, HITCH).
I almost always start with a word with two vowels and of course no repeated letters. (And it’s a different word every day.) Depending upon how that plays out, I’ll either build on it or switch, on line 2 or 3, to an entirely new letter-eating word. (I don’t believe in so-called hard mode.) I blew a 195-word streak on HITCH, and, looking back at how and what I played, I don’t think that I could have played any better than I did. I just didn’t have the right luck.
And, now and then, an extra word adds a nice little rhythm to a sentence that is clear but nevertheless lacking.
Bingo.
What are your feelings on comma-then? This piece of usage dogma has haunted me a long time: https://fsgworkinprogress.com/2012/04/13/jonathan-franzen-comma-then/
I think that that's one of the stupidest things I've read in a long time. Both the content and his tone. If I ever sound like that (do I?), I hope that someone will smack me right upside the head.
I'm perversely grateful for this new reason to dislike Franzen.
I'm free!!
(You don't!)
Perhaps it might amuse you—and, please, please be amused, don't be in any way regretful, if you're prone to that sort of thing—that I've been unable to drive that horrid little essay out of my mind. The idea of elevating some weird, and as far as I can tell unique, tic/preference into a Universal Rule About Writing is absolutely appalling to me.
Over the years, I've heard slush readers at lit mags share all manner of pet peeves that they've promoted into reasons for instant rejection. If a gravel road or the word "dappled" appears on the first page, then nix, etc. There is too much to read, and we all need ways to justify deciding not to read something. (Often, I'm grateful to encounter a smart negative book review of a feted new book for just this reason.) Anyway, I do think this is the dark side of our fascination with grammar and usage: even a gauche comma can seem to relieve us of the responsibility to keep reading.
I can be quickly worn out by a book in which there's such a pileup of pronouns that I can't tell who is who, or in which every fifth sentence is a dangler, or (speaking of commas) in which neither the writer nor the copy editor seems to understand that "his fourth wife Anne of Cleves" *must be* "his fourth wife, Anne of Cleves," but that's (a) cumulative, and (b) I dunno, sane.
This is why we like you.
I may have missed it but how about a Dreyerian discourse on the entanglement of “tradition” and “history” in all their forms?
Oh! Not a thing I think I've ever thought about, so I'd have to do some research to even form an inchoate opinion. Is there a particular point you're turning on, as it were?
I often see “tradition” and variants
applied to phenomena that seem more accurately explained as historical; that is, arising from repetition rather than folkway.
Ah, I get it. I don't know that I'm going to have much more to say than "Writers should pay attention to what they're saying and strive for accuracy and le mot juste," but if I have something to add, I'll add it.
When I read Matt Bell's /Refuse to be Done/, I took his advice to search for weasel words. One of which was 'that.' When I did a search for 'that,' I was amazed (appalled?) at how many times I used the word. I have found that rewriting a sentence that contains 'that' often makes it much stronger. But sometimes, 'that' is not only essential, it's sometimes desirable.
All of this: yes. Including that Matt's book is wonderful. I find "that" to be, generally, an invisible word, excellent to hold a sentence in place, part of the foundation.
I got HITCH in 6. I'm a weirdo who uses a handful of specific words that delight me, in the hopes I'll solve the puzzle with one guess someday: GUSTO, VIXEN, and CHASM are a few. That helped me get DINGO without even thinking of the word I believe you're alluding to, which I haven't seen in print in years, when reading one of Hammett's lesser imitators; it's at least as dated as HUNKY.
I was re-watching the Sondheim 90th birthday tribute today -- as one does -- as this one does on a regular basis -- and, for whatever reason, the Katrina Lenk version of "Johanna," coming a few hours after reading this newsletter made me marvel at the perfection of "yellow hair." A tangent, please indulge me.
Sometimes it's surprising how juste the justest mot juste can be, and which mot it turns out to be.