Tuesday, February 02, 2010

Errata

I was going to use Erratum but I figured that by the time I was done with this post I would find more errors regarding my previous Wyatt Earp post which, surprisingly enough, has not attracted any notice in the historical community. But potential historical inaccuracies aside, it is my writing that I am most concerned about. You would think that the son of an English teacher and father of a soon to be Literature professor would be able to construct sentences that bordered on the comprehensible but, it is not so nor likely is it to be. I started my Earp post with "And not a guy you would want to mess with." My first inclination was, of course, "not a guy you would want to fuck with".  But a blog that links to me, Savannah Red, tends to the conservative side (well, more than tends), and, as the link prints out the first couple of phrases of my current post, I don't want to piss him off and lose a potential source of advertising. Either with fuck or mess the sentence ends up a fucking mess. Mom told me never to end a sentence with a proposition. What am I supposed to say - He is not a guy with whom you would want to fuck or Fucking with this guy is not something you would want to do? Sorry, but I don't see any way out of this. Ending with a prepostion? Sometimes I just have to.

3 comments:

  1. Anonymous8:16 PM

    That is the sort of thing up with which I will not put!

    ascribed to Winston Churchill

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  2. That's all right... my dad used to be Pennsylvania amateur chess champion, and he spent many mutually frustrating hours trying to get me to understand the finer points of the game.

    Sometimes, when the acorn falls off the tree, it gets picked up by a huge wind and carried far away.

    Hope you're well!

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  3. I am well. Hope you are too. There's a lot of great science going under-reported. It would be nice to see you back in the saddle again.

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