re: sHARPENED

[Tom Watson]

Brilliant!

Regards, Tom.

Thomas J.Watson - Cabinetmaker (ret.) tjwatson1ATcomcastDOTnet (real email)

[Charlie Self]

Dave Balderstone responds:

My second writer's job was for a guy who had graduated from J-School...but not as a grad student. Just a BS. Still, my 3/4 of a degree in English lit put me way ahead of him at various times. He did know how to dig to get factual material, but he often couldn't assemble it so it made sense.

Of course, that was nearly 40 years ago, I finally completed the degree and Tim went on to bigger and better things working in PR for Aetna Insurance.

Charlie Self "Men stumble over the truth from time to time, but most pick themselves up and hurry off as if nothing happened." Sir Winston Churchill

[Dave Balderstone]

That's why editors were invented, n'est ce pas?

[Mark & Juanita]

Seems to be true across the board. Even professional magazines, for example, Aviation Week, in addition to injecting editorial commentary into some news stories, is also declining in terms of grammatical quality.

[Larry Jaques]

On Sat, 11 Sep 2004 13:31:12 +0100, Andy Dingley calmly ranted:

Yabbut, what would THEY know?

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[Robert Bonomi]

In article , patriarch Tom Watson wrote in

Grammar: an 'infinitive' is the verb form 'to {something}', as in 'to be'.

To 'split' an infinitive is to insert a modifier _between_ the words that make up the verb. Sometimes one finds it necessary to brazenly split an infinitive, to convey the precise shade of meaning desired, although the process was strongly frowned-upon by strict grammarians.

One of the better known examples: "Boldly to go..." "To go boldly..." "To boldly go ... where no man has gone before."

In the general case, splitting the infinitive is considered to really be bad usage. (That sentence is a deliberate illustration of _why_ it is justly so considered. :) In comparatively rare cases, on the other hand, it does serve to convey a shade of meaning not available in the more 'formally correct' forms; see the usage of 'brazenly', above.

[Tom Watson]

To be fair, Bob, I think he wanted to know about the "Spit" infinitive.

(watson - who baldly goes and spits out infinitives with abandon.)

Regards, Tom.

Thomas J.Watson - Cabinetmaker (ret.) tjwatson1ATcomcastDOTnet (real email)

[Larry Jaques]

On 12 Sep 2004 00:16:33 GMT, [e-mail] (Charlie Self) calmly ranted:

Um, who was your first writer and what was his job, Charlie? ("...second writing job", perhaps?)

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