Friday, April 14, 2023

A dictionary and a prison

The guy who made violent threats against Merriam-Webster last year over its definitions of female and girl has been sentenced to a year in prison.

Related reading
All OCA dictionary posts (Pinboard)

Thursday, April 13, 2023

“All-In”

A look at the conditions of teaching and striking at a regional university in Illinois: “All-In.” It’s a point of view, of course, but it’s one that grounded in fact.

Our household is supporting the strike by picketing and by contributing to a fund to help strikers in need. And I’m now able to add the noise of my Metropolitan Police Whistle to the picket-line din. (It took me three days to find it.)

5:48 p.m.: The strike has been suspended.

[When I began keeping a blog in 2004, I made a decision never to mention my university by name. I wanted to keep this work separate. And now I’m retired, and I still do.]

MSNBC, sheesh

Chris Jansing, earlier this afternoon: “The Washington Post reports that Jack Smith is honing in on Trump’s post-election fundraising,” &c.

Garner’s Modern English Usage (2022) notes that home in is “the traditional and still preferred phrase”:

In modern print sources — both AmE and BrE — the collocation homing in on the ~ predominates over *honing in on the ~ by a 2-to-1 margin.
Garner puts hone in at stage 4 of GMEU’s language-change index:
The form becomes virtually universal but is opposed on cogent grounds by a few linguistic stalwarts (the traditionalists that David Foster Wallace dubbed “snoots”: syntax nudniks of our time).
So how can I not say “Sheesh”? But I’m still willing to acknowledge that usage seems to be honeward bound.

Related reading
All OCA sheesh posts (Pinboard)

Cloud-stuff

One more passage, from a visit to Atlantis.

Steven Millhauser, From the Realm of Morpheus (1986).

Related reading
All OCA Steven Millhauser posts (Pinboard)

Recently updated

Vekkia book light Now with a link to an apropos poem.

E.g. , i.e. , etc.

The Chicago Manual of Style explains their use.

Wednesday, April 12, 2023

Thimbles

Carl Hausman recounts a visit with Morpheus to a land of giants.

Steven Millhauser, From the Realm of Morpheus (1986).

Related reading
All OCA Steven Millhauser posts (Pinboard)

Vekkia book light

Curtains open in the morning? The sun is glaring. Curtains closed? Too dark. Enter the Vekkia book light. Small, sturdy, just right.

*

April 13: I should have added a link to this post: “Some Enchanted Evening.” More light!

Tuesday, April 11, 2023

A triple double

In today’s Mutts, Mooch announces that he is tired of being a cat. So, Earl asks, what does he want to be?

[Mutts, April 11, 2023.]

I think Mooch must have gone to my elementary school, where I once overheard an extraordinary triple double-negative: “I ain’t got none. I don’t want none. I don’t need none.” Which, obviously, I have never forgotten.

See also Stan Carey, who cautions, “Don’t never tell nobody not to use no double negatives.”

Make Something Wonderful

From Apple, Make Something Wonderful : Steve Jobs in his own words, in speeches, interviews, and correspondence. To read online or download (free).