In message , Bill Wright writes
Telling a story skilfully means that I choose my words with great care. At no time, in all my posts going back over quarter of century of posting to the Usenet, have I ever suggested that I am an expert.
If you're so bleedin' careful why do you continue to refer to Usenet as "the Usenet" and why do you claim to have been posting to it for
25 years when you haven't?Or is "the Usenet" a unique Follettism that means "Usenet plus other unrelated chat systems or bulletin boards"?
It's not a regional thing, is it? I've spent a fair amount of time in "the Surrey" (more specifically, "the Farnham") and I don't recall a tendency to stick the definite article in front of things that don't take it.
The RAF don't like it?
Got it one, old bean! No putting anything past you!
Nah. Just that frightful cad and bounder, Follett, putting on the style just to annoy the hobgoblins of style banditry. That's the second time you've latched onto that little foible of mine. It's of little consequence so try to ignore it.
For a non-factious reply to comment, it's a fairly well-established convention in English that places are not dignified with the definite article whereas things are. God knows why. I don't try to ponder the English language logic. I leave agonising over inconsequential issues to others.
Writing as a native of Guildford and former 15 year resident of Farnham: I find that "the f*ck" recalls a tendency to stick the definite article into the front of things that DO take it.
It is a 'regional' thing though. Regions are always qualified by 'the', for example the South, the Auvergne, the Severn estuary.
Good point. If I were writing dialogue, I'd certainly have a character say of a visit to, say, London. "I'm going down to the smoke" rather than "I'm going down to smoke."
It's all a matter of one's 'feeling' for language and style.
I'm gonna talk about something that really matters: cats. They definitely have a feeling for language and style.
Cats don't need language, apart from being able to give instructions to their staff.
No they don't. They just have a feline for it.
Your post was written from the standpoint of an expert in opthalmology.
Bill
Oh my goodness.
Bill
Trouble with this is that anybody unfamiliar with your peculiar definition of "the Usenet" will take it to mean Usenet, and will form the impression that you are claiming to have been posting to Usenet since the UUCP days. Which is of course not true.
Why not just say "Usenet etc."?
And "Usenet", for whatever reason, is not.
Ooerrr. Favourite pub?
That would be the Buckingham Snooker Club in Bear Lane. I lived on Folly Hill in the early '80s, in Lower Bourne after that and then in Churt until I eventually escaped to Winchester in '95.
I can't imagine why you allow these hobglins of the inconsequential to torment you. JF
I'd be interested to know how you are so sure. There's surely not enough information to be sure that he hasn't been posting for many years.
I've been posting to Usenet for over 25 years, but you'd need a bit of detective work to find the earliest posts. Google has one for April 1984, but I was actually posting earlier than that!
In message , Bill Wright writes
Was it really? I had no idea! I don't think I can be held responsible for the assumptions of others. As a consequence of suffering from crap eyesight for most of my life I've probably been informed by more eye specialists than most people. How many people can claim that Harold Ridley was their eye doctor in the 1950s? It seems that I've outlived them all.
Mind you, I have sold the bible for a screen play based on his life complete with budgetary breakdown. But that's more about a writer practising the useful art of pulling off a confidence tricks.
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