Message to My Downstairs Neighbor

Posted on May 3, 2013 by Foxworld

After many years of living in a three-story apartment, I have come to recognize the considerable advantages of residing on the topmost floor versus a lower floor. Yesterday I taped the following message to the door of my downstairs neighbor in apartment 201. He works in construction and is more often out of state than home. I guess he’s gone right now, so he’ll read my note whenever he reads it. He’s a quiet, decent sort of guy and a good neighbor when he’s around, a sentiment which, living directly below me, he may not reciprocate. I’ll find out when he gets around to calling me and will hope that he feels inclined to see the humor in the situation rather than punch me in the snoot.

Meanwhile, I suppose I’d better get another roll of quarters so Lisa and I can do our laundry.

—————————-

Dear Steve,

Greetings! This is from Bob, your neighbor in #301 directly above you.

If you go out on your balcony, you will notice a roll of quarters—or what once was a whole roll of quarters—distributed about the deck, courtesy of me.

I got the quarters as laundry change when I went shopping at the D&W earlier today. This afternoon, as I was heading toward my car to run errands and then go to my evening gig, I realized that I still had the roll in my pocket. Thinking that Lisa might want to do her laundry and not wishing to trudge back up the stairs, I called her to the balcony with the intention of throwing the roll up to her.

Lisa told me not to—she didn’t want to catch it. Fine, I said, step aside and I’ll just throw the roll through the open door into our living room. It seemed like a good idea.

No need to mention that I have a terrible throwing arm, as I’m sure you have figured that out. My roll of quarters landed one floor too low, hitting your door and blowing apart on impact, scattering quarters like shrapnel. You now have all the laundry money your heart could ask for strewn about your balcony. But I would really like to reclaim at least some of it if I can.

While I’m at it, I’ll also mention the small blotch of grease on the rail of your balcony. That too comes from me. With the arrival of warm weather, the suet that I had put out for the woodpeckers this winter began to melt. By the time I grabbed it this morning to throw it away, it had turned into a nasty, icky pile of goo, and I noticed that some of it had dripped down onto your rail. It’s not a lot, but it’s my mess and you shouldn’t have to deal with it. Since I had already planned to knock on your door and offer to clean it up, I’ll do so here.

You must love living below us. It certainly packs a lot of entertainment value. I hope your new drywall is looking snappy and serving you well after that little incident with our leaky kitchen pipe a few months ago.

But back to the quarters: In trying to save myself a few seconds, I screwed up in a way that has eaten up a good 45 minutes. Have I learned my lesson? Probably not, but no matter. Grab a few quarters for your troubles, Steve. But if I can reclaim some of them, Lisa and I would both like to do our laundry. Call me at (xxx) xxx-xxxx and let me know when you’re around, or just give a knock on the door. I’ll clean up the grease while we’re at it.

Thanks,

Your wonderful neighbor in #301,

Bob

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The Squirrel Catapult

Posted on February 20, 2013 by Foxworld

Squirrel CatapultI used to think squirrels were cute. But when a bushy-tailed rodent scares the birds away from my feeder, rips the bottom out of my finch seed sack, and all but flips me the finger when I knock on the window to scare it away, said rodent is no longer cute. It is intolerable. And it is just asking for it.

So after seeing some clips of squirrel catapults on YouTube, I thought I’d make one of my own. It’s a modest affair, as is necessary given the limited space on my third-floor balcony. But while it hasn’t produced the graceful, long-distance trajectory of some of the larger models–getting it to do so will require experimentation–I’m satisfied that it works fine. So far one squirrel that came here for sunflower seed has left in a way calculated to thoroughly astonish, and its ratty little mind is no doubt still trying to comprehend the experience. It was supremely gratifying to pull the  cord and watch the little monster go flipping butt-over-beady-eyeballs toward the snow.

I have yet to acquaint more of the local squirrels with my contraption. The bushytail supply isn’t likely to run short, and what’s particularly nice about a squirrel catapult is that, coaxed by a handful of sunflower seeds in the basket, the ordnance loads itself.

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Life with My Lapse

Posted on February 19, 2013 by Foxworld

A few minutes ago, Lisa walked into the living room holding a loaf of my favorite bread, Brownberry Oat Nut, and asked me if I had intentionally put it in the cupboard instead of the refrigerator.

Now, bread could conceivably go in the cupboard, but around here, it goes in the refrigerator. That’s just how it is, and the presence of bread in less breadish habitats–the silverware drawer, for instance, or the dishwasher–attracts notice much as my spleen would if it were dangling from my shirt pocket.

Judging from Lisa’s grin, I could tell she thought I had experienced a momentary lapse. Of course I set her straight. There is nothing momentary about my lapse. I’ve had fifty-six years to cultivate it, and it has settled in about as permanently and comfortably as a lapse possibly can. Sometimes I resent the ease with which it has done so. It strikes me as arrogant.

“You’re pretty damn presumptuous for a lapse,” I say to it.

My lapse, being intangible, makes no reply. But I know what it’s thinking: What would you do without me?

What indeed? For all its inconveniences, my lapse nevertheless provides me with cheap entertainment, and in endless varieties too.

Example: I knock on the door to Lisa’s room, walk in, and smile at her.  She looks at me quizzically. “Yes?”

Good question. “Yes?” in this case means, “Is there something you want?” and in fact there is. I just have forgotten what. Why did I come in here? My brain sets out in futile pursuit of an answer while the rest of me strives to look like something other than a poster child for early Alzheimer’s.

“How’s your day going?” I ask.

Lis looks at me curiously for a second, then goes back to working on her website. Silence is the better part of discretion, and Lis is a discrete woman. I slink out of the room.

Example: On my drive home from church, the thought crosses my mind: Eggs. I need to get eggs.

The D & W is located conveniently along the way. I pull into the parking lot and head inside toward the dairy department.

Whoa, there’s the beer section. Gotta have beer. I snag a six-pack of Mad Hatter IPA off the shelf. Okay now, back on task. What was I after? Oh yeah, eggs. And now that I think of it, bread. I’m almost out of Oat Nut. I’ll just snatch a loaf. And while I’m at it, peanut butter. And there’s summer sausage–that would be droolish. And a Coke Zero for Lisa. She loves Coke Zero. Hmmm, maybe I’d better grab a cart.

I return home with three bags of groceries, feeling good. The mighty hunter has brought home the kill. I have beer. I have bread. I have ground beef, ham, split peas, chili beans, peanut butter, summer sausage, a big block of extra-sharp cheddar cheese (on sale for just six bucks), potatoes, onions, Coke Zero, assorted frozen vegetables, yogurt, popcorn, kimchee, mustard, milk, and two kinds of olives, black for Lisa and green for me.

The next morning, Lis calls to me from the kitchen. “We’re out of eggs,” she says.

Example: It has been a long day and I am really looking forward to spending some time with my saxophone. Have I mentioned that I like to practice my sax in my car out by the railroad tracks, where I can watch the trains go by? No? Well, now you know.

So I head out the door of my apartment, music in hand, and halfway down the stairs, I realize that I forgot my cell phone. That will never do. I go back upstairs and grab it, then head back down.

I’m nearly to my car when I remember: Nuts, I left that check I was going to deposit at the ATM on my desk.  Back up the three flights of stairs I tromp. Inside the apartment, Lis hears my key in the lock but says nothing, merely snickers. She knows this ritual from frequent repetition.

Check in hand, I do a quick inventory to make sure I haven’t forgotten anything else. Driver’s license? Got it. Credit card? Yep. Brain? Seems to be in place.

Down the stairs I go once again, and to the car, and now I am finally on the road. I pull up to the ATM, deposit my check, then drive the ten miles to my favorite spot by the tracks and park my car. Time at last for some serious sax practice. I am so looking forward to this. I reach into the back seat for . . .

My horn. Where is my horn?

Congratulations, lapse, you’ve scored again. This time has got to be worth at least twenty points.

This, my friends, is life after fifty. For me, it has also been life after forty, and thirty, and twenty, and birth, but I’ll just concern myself with fifty. My hair is graying and my splendid physique shows signs of wear, but my lapse is growing increasingly robust. That is good. We have had a long association, my lapse and I, and I am glad to see that at least one of us is thriving. I just wish it were me.

Okay, enough of this nonsense. Time for me to get the rest of my day cracking. I have things to do. Now if I can just remember what they are. . . .

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More Than Over and Above: Dispelling the Myth

Posted on January 13, 2013 by Foxworld

Over means the same thing as more than.

So does above.

Saying that a symphony ticket cost you more than $100, above $100, or over $100 are all equally acceptable ways of saying that you must really love Mozart.

“Uh, huh,” you say. “So what’s the big deal?”

The big deal is, not everyone knows this. It may be common sense but it’s not common knowledge. One house style guide I consult regularly stipulates that “over” should never be used instead of “more than.” But there’s nothing wrong with doing so. The usage is not incorrect; the style guide is.

Don’t believe me? Okay, then, believe Merriam-Webster Collegiate Dictionary Eleventh Edition. Among its definitions for over and above used as prepositions are these, complete with examples:

Above–3: exceeding in number, quantity, or size: more than <men above 50 years old>.

Over–3a: more than <cost over $5>.

Why Is This Important?

Maybe it’s not if you’re not a copywriter. But if you do write copy, then you regularly encounter situations where having just one way to express inexact figures would drive you nuts. For instance:

In a survey of more than 600 men more than 35 years old who purchased a used car more than five years old, more than 75 percent spent more than $10,000.

Ecch! See how much more naturally the following version reads:

In a survey of more than 600 men over age 35 who purchased a used car more than five years old, over 75 percent spent above $10,000.

Now, I will grant you that the sentence can use further refining, but it illustrates my point.

Presumably, the converse also holds true for less than (or fewer than) and under, though don’t quote me on that, because I haven’t looked it up and don’t intend to do so here.

I also will leave the nuancing of above, over, and more than for you to figure out. Just reshuffling their order in the above example suggests to me that there are subtle differences, primarily with above. But going strictly by their definitions, all three are as interchangeable as different brands of table salt.

English grammar has enough complexities; let’s not confuse them with inanities. You know what Winston Churchill said about never ending a sentence with a preposition.* The same spirit applies here. Next time you want you say over or above instead of more than, go ahead and do so, that’s what I say. Seize the adventure, you intrepid soul.

ADDENDUM: The pushback I’ve gotten on this post reminds me that I’m not the only person in this world who cares a great deal about words. Having processed input from other writers who haven’t agreed with me on this topic, I think the tone of my post was exuberant to the point of flippancy, and I wish I had taken a more mature, balanced approach. I haven’t changed my stance, but I think I could have done a better job of communicating it–an embarrassing thing for me to admit as a writer.

I now consider the above post to be just the first part of the discussion. Please check out the comments for part 2. It consists of one person’s thoughtful, well-reasoned input and my response.

—————

* He said, “This is the sort of bloody nonsense up with which I will not put.” At least, so the story goes, though what his exact words were, nobody knows. That’s a whole ’nother issue which once again I won’t get into. You can read more about it here if you’re interested.

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Self-Editing: The Hallmark of a Good Writer

Posted on December 28, 2012 by Foxworld

In his classic book, On Writing Well, William Zinsser opens with a personal story about his participation in a panel discussion about writing at a school in Connecticut. The panel consisted of just Zinsser and one other writer. As they responded to questions from students, two drastically contrasting viewpoints emerged.

The other writer said that writing was easy and fun. Zinsser said it was hard and lonely. The other writer said that rewriting was unimportant. Zinsser said it was essential.

What about days when the writing doesn’t flow? Don’t write, said the other author; set the writing aside until you feel inspired. Write anyway, said Zinsser; writing is an act of craftsmanship and discipline, to be practiced whether the inspiration is there or not.

“So the morning went, and it was a revelation to us all,” Zinsser wrote. “As for the students, anyone might think we left them bewildered. But in fact we gave them a broader glimpse of the writing process than if only one of us had talked. For there isn’t any ‘right’ way to do such personal work. There are all kinds of writers and all kinds of methods, and any method that helps you to say what you want to say is the right method for you.”

No doubt that’s true, but I think Zinsser gave the more realistic picture of what good writing involves for most serious writers. Certainly he speaks for me, and I relate particularly to his stance on rewriting.

Writing for me is largely about self-editing. I don’t know how not to rewrite. I’m addicted to tweaking, and I do it in flight, adjusting material I’ve already written even as I’m slapping down new stuff. You know how some experts say you should just throw it all out there as is and not worry about editing it, just keep that flow going till you’re done, and only then should you go back and rewrite? I can’t do that. For many writers and quite possibly for you, it’s the best approach, but I’m not made that way. My inner writer and inner editor are too intimately connected; their partnership is too strong. So I edit when I’m writing a piece. I continue to edit once I’ve got all its elements roughed in. And I keep fine-tuning until what I’ve written is the best I know how to make it. Rewriting is how I write.

And how I live. I’m liable to change something I’ve written–add a comma, massage a phrase, swap out a word–months and even years after I’ve published a post here or in my other blog, Stormhorn.com. Weird, huh? Obsessive, even. But then, I consider obsessiveness a virtue, at least when it comes to editing my own writing.

I’m in good company, too. In a 1958 interview in the Paris Review, Ernest Hemingway had this to say:

Interviewer: How much rewriting do you do?
Hemingway: It depends. I rewrote the ending of Farewell to Arms, the last page of it, thirty-nine times before I was satisfied.
Interviewer: Was there some technical problem there? What was it that had stumped you?
Hemingway: Getting the words right.*

I’ll say it plainly: rewriting is normal.

No, it’s more than normal: it is, as William Zinsser has said, essential.

Editing your content, and reediting it, and re-re-re-reediting it, doesn’t mean you’re a lousy writer. It means that you are a writer, and a conscientious one, possibly even a damn good one. You genuinely care about your writing. You understand instinctively that excellent writing involves more than simply keying words into an electronic document, just as great art entails more than merely daubing paint onto a canvas. There’s a refining process involved. And something within you won’t rest until you’ve done the job right.

Now, if you’re one of those rare persons with a gift for cranking out fabulous content with nary a rewrite, bully for you. Really. I know you’re out there and I envy you. A friend of mine once showed me a collection of short, humorous reflections she had written about her experiences as a new mother. Each piece was a perfect jewel, and I laughed myself silly reading them. How long did it usually take her to write one, I asked. Oh, about half an hour, she said.

Uh, huh. Well, then, how much time did she spend rewriting her stuff? None, she said. She just plonked it out there and let it set.

And it was great. It really was.

However, that conversation happened quite a few years ago, and in retrospect, I think I was favorably predisposed. Had my friend’s material been accepted at the publishing house where I worked, it would have been assigned to an editor, and that editor would still have found plenty of adjustments to make in order to bring a superb start to perfection.

So you and I might as well make every effort to perfect our writing by being our own toughest editor. Let’s dispel the myth that good writing is anything other than hard work. It may sometimes be fun; it may occasionally be inspired; but it is always demanding and time-consuming, and it involves lots of travelling back and forth down the same road, filling in the potholes as we refine our material.

The post you’re reading right now wasn’t written just once. I’ve probably written it five or six times, and I’m sure I’ll tweak it a few more times once it is published. Right now, though, it’s time I ended it. I’ve made my point. I hope it will help you to make your own content a little better, whether you rewrite it once, or nine times, or thirty-nine times on the journey to “getting the words right.”

_______________

* Thanks to editor Katya Covrett for bringing this excerpt to my attention in her December 27, 2012, Facebook post.

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Writing Quick-Tip: Weed Out Empty Verbiage

Posted on December 9, 2012 by Foxworld

Ten miles from where I live lies Shaw Lake fen, a rare and beautiful wetland where wild orchids and carnivorous plants grow and tamarack trees ring the tiny lake like an emerald necklace. When I first began visiting the place many years ago, a trail led over a rise and directly into the fen. Access was easy.

But today the trail is overgrown, and poison sumac guards what had once been my entry point. I no longer take that old footpath. Too much stuff gets in the way.

Empty information is like that for your readers. It clutters up a sentence and hampers access to what they’re after. What do I mean by “empty information”? Here are a few examples.

Case one

I remember a time when I was a boy and I climbed a big tree near my house.

Of course you remember. When you tell about something that happened to you, you’re remembering. Readers understand that; you need not tell them. Just say, When I was a boy, I once climbed a big tree near my house. See? No underbrush to clutter things up.

Case two

From these examples, it’s easy to see that shoulder harnesses and seat belts save lives.

Let the reader decide how easy something is to see. Go straight to the core: These examples demonstrate that shoulder harnesses and seat belts save lives. Or maybe just, Shoulder harnesses and seat belts save lives.

Case three

As has already been stated, unforgiveness hurts the person who refuses to forgive at least as much as it does the person who caused the hurt.

Readers will recognize when you’re restating a concept, and if they don’t, then from their perspective, what you’re about to say hasn’t already been stated. Either way, the opening phrase adds nothing useful. Omit it and begin with unforgiveness.

The above three examples all contain material that is peripheral to the topic. It’s non-news that requires no explaining, often arising out of an impulse to pad one’s writing with filler cliches.

Now, here’s the balance: don’t interpret any of the above dogmatically

The point of this post isn’t to set inflexible rules but to help you think about why you write what you write so you can weed out redundancies. Context suggests what is relevant and what is not, and you’re the one who must make that judgment. Just remember, your readers are savvy enough to figure out the obvious and the implicit. Trust their intelligence. Doing so will help you keep the path to what really interests them tangle-free.

 

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Of Giraffe Tests and Swan Meat

Posted on December 7, 2012 by Foxworld

Besides Fox’s World, since 2007 I have also maintained a blog called Stormhorn.com dedicated to storm chasing and jazz saxophone. Ironically, two of that blog’s perennially favorite posts have nothing at all to do with either storms or jazz. Both are quirky, off-topic, humorous pieces. One is titled The Giraffe Test: You Only Fail If You Pass It, and the other, The Smart Shopper’s Guide to Swan Meat.

Because readers enjoy them, and because I’m too lazy to write anything original right now, I’m using this post to direct you to those posts. I hope you have as much fun reading them as I did writing them.

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Chain Letter Madness

Posted on November 17, 2012 by Foxworld

Remember chain letters? You’d receive one in the mail, unsolicited, and it would request that you make ten copies of it and mail them to people you knew. There were incentives for doing so, some positive and some negative. If you complied, a truck would arrive one day in your driveway and deposit an immense pile of gold, silver, and precious stones. If you blew off the request, then the pile would consist of something else. Chain letters used manipulation in order to propagate themselves.

Chain letters still live today. They just rarely come by snail mail anymore. Instead, they’re a common phenomenon on Facebook. Someone posts a message in his Facebook status which ends by requesting that his friends likewise copy and paste the message in their Facebook statuses, thereby getting more Facebook friends to copy and paste, and so it goes. The message concludes with something like, “I wonder which of you will take the time to show you care,” or, “I’ll know from this which of you actually read my messages,” or something along that line. No arm-twisting there, eh?

I don’t mind requests to copy and paste. But I hate the baggage that usually accompanies them, which translates as follows: If you don’t do what I ask, then (choose one)

(a) you’re not really my friend

(b) you have no heart

(c) you don’t really love Jesus

(d) you’ll be revealed at last as the miserable, self-centered person you really are

(e) all of the above, you bottom-feeding, booger-eating wad of human scum

I don’t believe most people who post such stuff really feel that way. They’re just blithely cutting and pasting something that someone else wrote without bothering to edit out the stink. But the stink still stinks, and I’m not about to involve others in anything that makes me hold my nose.

But let’s say that, not wanting to hurt a friend’s feelings, I do copy and paste his copy-and-pasted Facebook message. Now other of my friends, not wishing to hurt my feelings, do the same. Pretty soon, the message I’ve copied and pasted resurfaces in another friend’s post. Not wishing to hurt that person’s feelings–wanting her to know that, yes, I’m really her friend, and I stand with her in her intense concern for endangered freshwater barnacles because I care, really care, deeply–I once again copy and paste the same message.

In short order, it surfaces again from several other Facebook friends, and I repeat the procedure accordingly. Meanwhile, the message continues to spread in ever-expanding ripples through Facebook circles, and countless other people are responding in similar fashion. After a while, we’re all so busy copying and pasting out of loyalty to our friends that we barely have time to attend our codependency support groups. Dark, raccoon-like semicircles deepen beneath our eyes. Days go by between showers.

Then, finally, someone short circuits and sends out another message that says, “STOOOOPPPPP THE INSANITY!!!” Everyone copies and pastes that message too, even though this time there’s no request to do so, and eventually we’re all let off the hook, and, breathing a sigh of relief, we reach for a beer.

That is why, if you include me in a Facebook chain letter, you can count on me not to forward it. The follow-through is exhausting and therapy is expensive.

If you agree–and it goes without saying that anyone who doesn’t lacks the intelligence, patriotism, and basic decency of slime mold–then take a moment to forward this post to everyone you know, and request that they do the same. I’ll be curious to see whether you truly care. I have ways of finding out, and the truck driver knows your address.

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Writing Tip: Do You Overuse Parentheses?

Posted on November 16, 2012 by Foxworld

You know parentheses? (Those little crescent-shaped thingies?) Well, sometimes they drive me crazy (overuse, lack of clarity, fuzzy writing).

I have nothing against parentheses in themselves. I’m just not so fond of them that I crave a steady supply. Used heedlessly, they irritate me, much like someone whispering in my ear (“We’re out of milk”) while I’m talking on the phone. I mean, was that really necessary?

Parentheses serve a purpose. It’s just not nearly so ubiquitous a purpose as many people think, judging by their writing. Some folks are as liberal in their use of parentheses as a sower with a bagful of seed, blithely scattering handfuls of little grammar-curls across the meadows. That approach may make for easy writing, but not for easy reading. The result is often confusing or irrelevant and almost always annoying. With a little thought, a writer usually can find a much better solution–and should.

Sometimes it seems like my main function as an editor is weed-whacking parentheses that crop up in a writer’s paragraphs like quack grass on his literary lawn. Removing them–or in some cases, clarifying their content–almost always improves the lucidity and forcefulness of a sentence. That’s because parentheses too often are the product not of judicious usage, but of inexperienced or just plain slapdash writing. And such writing can’t be improved simply by wrapping extra information inside a couple of curlicues and dropping it into a sentence. The solution isn’t parentheses: it’s taking the time and thought necessary to state one’s thoughts logically, fully, concisely, and readably.

But don’t take just my word for it. Mark Twain, a man not prone to velvet-coating his opinions, wrote, “A parenthesis is evidence that the man who uses it does not know how to write English or is too indolent to take the trouble to do it.”*

I’m not as brutal as Twain. I believe that parentheses, rightly employed, are useful and even necessary. I don’t advocate their eradication, just their careful use, which in many cases will result in their much-reduced use. Often, commas will serve better.

Frequent use of parentheses usually indicates other problems in a person’s writing. Next time you find yourself resorting to a parenthesis, stop and consider why. Have you adopted the passive voice as your default? Blurred the link between a pronoun and its antecedent? Tried to cram too much information into a single sentence? Moreover, is your parenthetical content clear or opaque? Essential or redundant?

Examine your motive for using a parenthesis. Are you doing so because it truly is your best solution, appropriate for the context–or are you merely seeking a shortcut because, for whatever reason, you don’t want to take the time and thought to express yourself in the clearest way possible? If the latter is true, then, trust me, a parenthesis is no magic bullet. You’ll only shoot yourself through the foot with it, and some editor like me will have to remove the slug later on and bandage you up.

So take the time to say it well from the start. That doesn’t mean you should utterly avoid using parentheses. Just use them sparingly, know why you’re using them, and make sure your reason is a good one. Your readers may never recognize and appreciate your parenthetical maturity, but I will (if I ever edit your writing).

_______________

* Thanks for cluing me in on the Twain quote, Lis! Samuel Clemens had much to say about literary matters, all of it valuable and wise.

 

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Grrrls Don’t Need No Stinkin’ Vowels: A Curmudgeonly Rant about Modern Words

Posted on August 4, 2012 by Foxworld

In his August 1, 2012, post in mental_floss, Lucas Reilly lists “35 Modern Words Recently Added to the Dictionary.” The dictionary in question is the British Oxford English Dictionary Online, and after looking over Reilly’s sampler of its newer members, I feel my rant powers stirring.

The Oxford word mavens appear caught in a tug-of-war between common sense and inadequate medication. Some of the words they have legitimized seem reasonable enough. Bling. Illiterati. Muffin top. Muggle. Good, I’ll buy those and a number of others. They are functional and colorful contributions to the language. I’ll even make room for droolworthy.

On the other hand, obvs (meaning obviously), totes (totally), and whatevs (whatever) are totally lowbrow. I mean, come on, we are talking about adverbs here, not plural nouns. Not to mention that obvs suffers from vowel-deprivation. I can’t even say it without feeling like something is wrong with my lips.

And what the hell’s with the apostrophe in d’oh? Is Bart Simpson secretly French? Why not just doh? Then I could embrace the word as a cousin of duh and a useful addition to the English lexicon. But not with the apostrophe. Good grief. B’ooger. F’art. C’rap. You can’t make the inelegant elegant by Frankifying it.

As for grrrl, is there some secret campaign afoot to do away with vowels? I won’t say that this word is the worst of the lot. I’ll just say that I loathe it to the point of foaming at the mouth. I don’t care how cleverly it blends grrr with girl, it is a far cry from a noble and deathless expression. It is a fad word, and not a very good one, either. It is an abomination, a juvenility, a gum-popping brat that needs to grow up into a word whose inner woman possesses brains to go with her brass bra. Other than those objections, I suppose it passes muster.

There. Did you enjoy my little rant? I just hope the wizards at Merriam-Webster are more discriminating than their British counterparts. I haven’t looked, and I don’t know if I can bear to find out. Though again, a lot of the words on Reilly’s list are decent and well-behaved. I just needed to let my inner curmudgeon stretch, that’s all. Given the topic, he had both reason to do so and plenty of room.

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