Domestic comedy

[Watching Hallmark.]

“Aw, he is Santa Claus. Fuck!”

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From a dream

“Of course I can honk and listen to you at the same time. I’m a capable multitasker.”

[Sounds to me like the caption for a New Yorker cartoon. No idea who was speaking: someone driving, a goose, &c.]

Word of the day: preceptor

The Oxford English Dictionary Word of the Day is preceptor. For me, it’s a madeleine: as a grad student, I taught incoming first-year college students in a summer program whose administrator referred to instructors as preceptors. The OED definitions that could have fit: “probably: an expert in the art of writing or the composition of prose.” That one is marked obsolete. And: “a person who gives instruction; a teacher, a tutor.”

Preceptor comes to English from the classical Latin praeceptor, meaning “teacher, instructor.” Praeceptor comes from praecept, the past participle of praecipere, “to take beforehand, to anticipate, to presuppose, to give instruction, to advise, to order, command.”

As a preceptor, I was precepting all the time. But I never thought of my work in that way, and I don’t think that I ever thought about my title. I probably suspected that someone pulled the word from a thesaurus to avoid the plain teacher. But preceptor does have a history in American higher education.

Preceptor or not, you may subscribe to the OED Word of the Day.

[“I was precepting all the time”: precept really is both a noun and a verb.]

Little Everywhere and Stitcher, sheesh

From episode four of the podcast The Dream: “Robert and him struck up a friendship.” And twelve seconds later: “Him and Robert also had the idea.” And as a bonus, just thirty seconds away, a left dislocation: ”So William Penn Patrick, he ran for governor.”

When Elaine and I heard “Robert and him” this morning, on a walk, each of us on a device, her and me cried out in dismay.

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Today’s Saturday Stumper

Today’s Newsday Saturday Stumper, by Brad Wilber, is rated G, as in Goldilocks: not too easy, not too difficult, just right, with some beautifully clever clues. The four I liked best: 22-Across, three letters, “Beat back.” 40-Across, five letters, “Inferior cut, to many.” 3-Down, eight letters, “Boxing venue.” And 12-Down, six letters, “Fahrenheit or Celsius.” I especially like the likes of 22-Across, with so much trickiness going toward a three-letter answer.

No spoilers: the answers are in the comments.

Block that metaphor

From Harold Evans’s Do I Make Myself Clear? A Practical Guide to Writing Well in the Modern Age (2017):

The tsunami of new words has not so far relieved us of the encroaching corruptions of political vocabulary skewered by Orwell seventy years ago.

Seventy years skewered but still encroaching. And the tsunami can’t help. Help.

Countless books on writing offer less egomania, greater clarity, greater concision, better organization, and fewer mixed metaphors. In other words, better writing. I have only 233 pages of Sir Harold’s book to go.

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How to improve writing (no. 78)

[How did this book pass the page-ninety test? Good question. Page ninety offers a succinct statement — “The passive voice is preferable if not inescapable in four categories” — followed by examples. The page is atypical.]

Dunham’s

“My customer, the little old lady, is being forgotten”: Dunham’s is a family-owned department store in Wellsboro, Pennsylvania.

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“Undercover whispers”

The last two pages of Toni Morrison’s Jazz (1992) are two of my favorite pages of fiction. From the next-to-last page:



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“Hi” vs. “hello” : “Why not ghosts”

Grammar Table

All over Manhattan, Ellen Jovin engages the public at her Grammar Table: “No choking your brother at the Grammar Table!” “Oh, and ‘choking’ is a gerund.”

[Notice Garner’s Modern English Usage on the Table.]

Thanksgiving 1918

[“Asks for Holiday Liberty: Prisoner Pleads with Magistrate for a Chance to Reform.” The New York Times, November 29, 1918.]

“Yesterday” in this story is Thanksgiving Day. I can find nothing more of the story in the Times, but I hope James McDonald got his chance and took it. His Marion Street address (where a school now stands) is a four-minute walk from 328 Chauncey Street (still standing), Jackie Gleason’s childhood home and the fictional address of Ralph and Alice Kramden.

Happy Thanksgiving to all.