Strunk and White and wit

Commenting on a previous post, a reader suggested that a sentence in The Elements of Style that some read as an obvious joke is in fact "a dunder-headed Strunken mistake." "You can't just declare that it's a joke," wrote this reader.

The Elements of Style has many touches of wit. Here, for example, is the passage that follows the precept "Do not overstate":

When you overstate, readers will be instantly on guard, and everything that has preceded your overstatement as well as everything that follows it will be suspect in their minds because they have lost confidence in your judgment or your poise. Overstatement is one of the common faults. A single overstatement, wherever or however it occurs, diminishes the whole, and a single carefree superlative has the power to destroy, for readers, the object of your enthusiasm.

Look at the language: instantly, everything, everything, single, wherever or however, single, destroy. Note too the conspiciously missing superlative: "one of the [most] common faults." I hereby declare that E.B. White (the passage is his) is joking.

And here is the passage that follows "Avoid the use of qualifiers":

Rather, very, little, pretty — these are the leeches that infest the pond of prose, sucking the blood of words. The constant use of the adjective little (except to indicate size) is particularly debilitating; we should all try to do a little better, we should all be very watchful of this rule, for it is a rather important one, and we are pretty sure to violate it now and then.

One could take such passages as evidence of supreme cluelessness or as evidence of wit. Wit is the better choice, one that respects the intelligence of Strunk and White and their readers.

Related posts
Pullum on Strunk and White
Hardly (adverb) convincing (adjective)
More on Pullum, Strunk, White
The Elements of Style, one more time

Word of the day

From Anu Garg's A.Word.A.Day: maritorious, "Excessively fond of one's husband." The word is derived from the Latin maritus (married, husband).

Those who are excessively fond of their wives are uxorious. As A.Word.A.Day observes,

The word maritorious is rare, while uxorious is fairly well known. What does that say about the relative fondness of husbands and wives to each other?

A blue ribbon for free speech

I'm joining my blogging friend T. in placing a blue ribbon on my blog in support of journalist Roxana Saberi, now being held in Tehran's Evin Prison, and in support of all writers and students imprisoned for expressing their ideas. Today is Roxana Saberi's thirty-second birthday.

If you have an online presence, please join this rally in support of free expression by displaying a blue ribbon.

John Ashbery at 81

From a brief interview with John Ashbery:

Q. You are still writing poetry and last fall you had an exhibit of your collages at a Manhattan gallery. Could you please share some lessons of a long life?

A. I go back to Harvard and see all the same buildings and streets and rivers. It seems as though this was only a few months ago that I was there. I don't know that I have really accumulated any wisdom in my fourscore years. I feel as unprepared now as I was when I was a student. I guess I'm just an 80-year-old adolescent. Or 81.

John Ashbery's words to live by (Boston Globe)

Ashbery returns to Harvard later this week to receive the university's Arts Medal. He graduated from Harvard College in 1949.

A related post
John Ashbery's collages

Happy Anniversary

As my dad said on the phone, "Some people don't stay married fifty-five weeks."

Happy Anniversary, Mom and Dad.

(Yes, fifty-five years.)

T for texting, T for Tennessee

At the University of Tennessee, Chattanooga:

Apparently, private text messages — not university-sponsored alerts — invited students to a party at the library, which turned into a riot, according to local news sources. About 1000 students congregated and tried to force their way into the building and jump off of it. Police arrived, and members of the crowd began throwing objects at the officers. Police responded by spraying mace in the air above the crowd, and several people were arrested and charged with disorderly conduct. . . .

A university official said that some of the students believed this was “harmless fun” but forcing entry to a building or disturbing the peace, particularly when students inside were trying to study, was far from harmless.

Read all about it:

Text Messaging Gone Wild at U. of Tennessee at Chattanooga (Chronicle of Higher Education)

[Post title with apologies to the Singing Brakeman.]

Apostrophe

[Homework assignment by me. In my intro poetry class, we just read three poems from Kenneth Koch's New Addresses (2000), whose poems are instances of apostrophe, addressing non-human audiences. Apostrophe is typically found in the loftiest sort of poem — Keats speaking to the urn, Shelley speaking to the West Wind. But apostrophe can be put to other purposes, as above.]

Music memory

From the New York Times column "The New Old Age":

Familiar songs can help people with dementia relate to others, move more easily and experience joy. . . .

Music memory is preserved better than verbal memory, according to [music therapist Alicia] Clair, because music, unlike language, is not seated in a specific area of the brain but processed across many parts. "You can’t rub out music unless the brain is completely gone."

Elaine and I (and sometimes our children) play music several times a year at a local nursing home, and we are always struck by the attentiveness with which our listeners — most of whom would appear to be out of it — respond. We love playing standards, and those are well received, but the songs that go over best are older and simpler: "Home on the Range," "The Sidewalks of New York." Christmas music too, both sacred and secular, taps deep emotion. When all else is gone, it seems, there's music.

Plagiarism in the academy

Fairweather concluded that faculty and administration must deal with the enormous emphasis placed on research and the rewards tied to it before achieving a re-emphasis on teaching.

Fairweather concluded that faculty and administrators must deal with the enormous emphasis placed on research and rewards tied to it before achieving a reemphasis on teaching.

The Associated Press reports that another college president has been accused of plagiarism in a dissertation. William Meehan, president of Alabama's Jacksonville State University, earlier ran into difficulties when newspaper columns published under his name turned out to have been plagiarized by the ghostwriter who assembled the columns.

Neither Jacksonville State University nor the University of Alabama (which granted Meehan his Ed.D.) is preparing to look into the dissertation. Or at least not yet.

The quoted passages above, from dissertations by Carl Boening and Meehan, appear in the AP article. Both dissertations were submitted to the University of Alabama, three years apart.

"[A]chieving a re-emphasis": it's remarkable that anyone would plagiarize that ungainly phrase.

Update: JSU Public Relations Director Patty Hobbs has issued a press release that includes this passage:

These claims have been investigated not only by the university, but by third parties and the university is completely satisfied that there is no substance to the allegations. President Meehan has been clear from the beginning that he used Mr. Boening’s dissertation as a spring board for his own, and Meehan’s dissertation duly credits his predecessor’s work.

This explanation is less than persuasive. The AP article cited above notes that Jonathan Bailey of Plagiarism Today examined the dissertations and "concluded that 'extensive portions' of Meehan's dissertation were plagiarism of Boening's work." In other words, the third-party investigation supports, not discredits, the allegation of plagiarism.

"Spring board" is an interesting metaphor. But one can acknowledge a source while plagiarizing from it. If I say that I'm indebted to your work while borrowing its words and ideas without attribution, I've plagiarized your work.

Related posts
"Local Norms" and "'organic' attribution"
"Plagiarism free"

Today's Hi and Lois

Elaine put it best: "This Hi and Lois is on drugs."

A context clue (i.e., the strip's second panel) suggests that the large white shape in the first panel is neither a chest freezer nor a radiator nor a rogue wall but a faucetless sink, with a mirror and partly-tiled wall behind it and a shower curtain and tub to the right. Got that?

It's almost enough to make one overlook that the bathoom is missing a door.

Related reading
All Hi and Lois posts