Comments on: Taste Luxury Humor

By: Riona MacNamara

Riona MacNamara — Fri, 20 May 2005 12:47:40 +0000

Dervala, you said:
[if you want to feel superior] Yes! Or read, say, the �Customers who bought this book are also reading�� list at Amazon ;-) It�s all just way too Disgruntled of Tunbridge Wells.

Did you see this in The Onion?

http://www.theonion.com/nib/index.php?issue=4120&nib=3

By: Dervala

Dervala — Mon, 16 May 2005 09:11:07 +0000

What I dislike most about the Lynne Truss movement is not even the pedantry—it’s that her own grammar is so weird and wrong! If you’re going to be a nit-picking pain in the ass, at least get it right. She and her copy editors are just plain sloppy, and the sentences they torture are much harder to understand than “apple’s and orange’s.”

By: eoin

eoin — Sat, 14 May 2005 08:24:06 +0000

Dickens would be corrected out of existance by the comma police. I find that people who know these gramatical rules are not very interested in writing or reading, except for technical or marketing reading – where it pays to have a comma fixation.

( As an aside here I threw in the “-” in the previous paragraph as a natural break in the sentence. I am delightfully unaware of what rules I am breaking, or maintaining, or whether I would be better served with some other form of deliniation; like a semi-colon, colon, or comma. Nor do I wish to know. Nor should I probably start with nor. Or something.)

By: josh h

josh h — Fri, 13 May 2005 21:29:34 +0000

on one of those screen tickers with the words trailing across at the bottom of the evening news was a blurb that

woman who found…
finger in Wendy’s chili…
got it from husband’s associate.

before the ociate, however, were two droll seconds

By: Lillian

Lillian — Thu, 12 May 2005 21:13:38 +0000

Always a pleasure to read your posts – thoughtful commentary, shows that you’ve been thinking, and gets me thinking too. Heck, it’s as though you do a lot of homework – or is it part of your job?

Never did buy the book – who wants to pay for someone else’s rant? But in response to Dave’s comment – what’s wrong with wanting to be correct? I get ribbed at work all the time for being a grammar stickler. I don’t claim to be a super-genius, just like to use proper grammar. And yes, I do recognize the informality of some media, such as IM, where you wouldn’t expect full-on grammar, at the expense of typing efficiency.

On a tangent, you may find humourous Joy of Tech’s cartoon on email being worse for the brain than marijuana. Maybe that would explain the bad writing in otherwise “serious” email. :)

http://www.geekculture.com/joyoftech/joyarchives/681.html

By: Dervala

Dervala — Thu, 12 May 2005 13:28:43 +0000

Nope. They used to be able to show taste, luxury, and wit; now they resort to spelling it out, in bad typography. That makes Barneys as lame as the guy who claims a “great sense of humor.” They’re going to have to do without my massive clothing budget this year. :-)

By: Dave Vockell

Dave Vockell — Thu, 12 May 2005 12:55:05 +0000

So the billboard accomplished the first of its tasks — get you to notice and noodle. But will it deliver on the final dream of getting you into Barney’s to Taste that Luxury.

Punctuation, schmunctuation — “A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines.” — Ralph W.

By: Dervala

Dervala — Thu, 12 May 2005 09:48:39 +0000

Yes! Or read, say, the “Customers who bought this book are also reading…” list at Amazon ;-) It’s all just way too Disgruntled of Tunbridge Wells.

By: Riona MacNamara

Riona MacNamara — Thu, 12 May 2005 08:30:34 +0000

I’m a writer, and I’ve been an editor, but that book annoyed the crap out of me. It didn’t tell me anything anyone interested in punctuation didn’t already know – so why did it sell so well? Because it’s just a big ol’ excuse to rant on about how stupid and dumb other people are, with their silly misplaced apostrophes, and to feel all superior as a result. Feh. If I want to feel superior I’ll go read Answers in Genesis.