“Comma Splice: Improper use of a comma, above all between clauses requiring either a conjunction or a full stop (semicolon, colon, or period). Also COMMA BLUNDER, COMMA FAULT.
‘Mr. Mudrick is rude, contentious, incorrigible comma spliced, headlong, raunchy, scornful and know-it-all.’ John Leonard, The New York Times.”
Excerpted from: Grambs, David. The Random House Dictionary for Writers and Readers. New York: Random House, 1990.
“Deliver. ‘He delivered an oration,’ or ‘delivered a lecture.’ Say, He made an oration or gave a lecture.”
Excerpted from: Bierce, Ambrose. Write it Right: A Little Blacklist of Literary Faults. Mineola, NY: Dover, 2010.
“There is no passion like that of a functionary for his function.”
Excerpted from: Winokur, Jon, ed. The Big Curmudgeon. New York: Black Dog & Leventhal, 2007.
“Intoxication, n. A spiritual condition that goeth before the next morning.”
Excerpted from: Bierce, Ambrose. David E. Schultz and S.J. Joshi, eds. The Unabridged Devil’s Dictionary. Athens: The University of Georgia Press, 2000.
“If you are going to sin, sin against God, not the bureaucracy. God will forgive you, but the bureaucracy won’t.”
Excerpted from: Winokur, Jon, ed. The Big Curmudgeon. New York: Black Dog & Leventhal, 2007.
“We are not hypocrites in our sleep.”
Excerpted from: Winokur, Jon, ed. The Big Curmudgeon. New York: Black Dog & Leventhal, 2007.
“The novellas represent no change in Mr. O’Hara’s method. He normally puts everything into a novel, including the kitchen sink complete with stopped drain, plumber, and plumber’s mate, and does this not once, but four or five times per book. The novella form has merely limited the author in a statistical way; one kitchen sink is all he can fit into his predetermined space…
Atlantic Monthly
When O’Hara is good he is very, very good; when he is bad he is writing for Hollywood…an exercise in tedium.”
New York Herald Tribune
“One might suggest…that the inhabitants of hell be condemned to an eternity reading stories behind the headlines in American tabloids….John O’Hara’s new collection of short stories brings the whole realm uncomfortably close. It is a punishment to read….”
Excerpted from: Barnard, Andre, and Bill Henderson, eds. Pushcart’s Complete Rotten Reviews and Rejections. Wainscott, NY: Pushcart Press, 1998.
Posted in English Language Arts, Quotes, Reference
Tagged fiction/literature, humor, literary oddities, professional development
“Propaganda: The means by which the thousands of organizations in a corporatist society communicate with each other and with the general public.
From its origins in the Vatican Congregation for the Propagation of the Faith (Congregati de propaganda fide), a body devoted to spreading the Christian doctrine in foreign lands, the idea of substituting propagation for explanation was seized upon by the heroic national leaders of the late eighteenth, nineteenth, and early twentieth centuries. Propaganda married romanticism with facts, which seemed to replace any need for understanding. With the invention of marketing tools such as the press release, advertisements, sound bites, PR firms and press officers, this rather exclusive way of influencing people was quickly available to anyone with a budget.
Where once a government minister had a press officer, now every section in a ministry has one. Private corporations have whole communications departments. The American army alone has a corps of some 5,000 press officers.
The purpose of these several hundred thousand communications experts is to prevent communication or any generalized grasp of reality. Their job is to propagate the faith.”
Excerpted from: Saul, John Ralston. The Doubter’s Companion. New York: The Free Press, 1994.
“Adulthood is the ever-shrinking period between childhood and old age. It is the apparent aim of modern industrial societies to reduce this period to a minimum.”
Excerpted from: Winokur, Jon, ed. The Big Curmudgeon. New York: Black Dog & Leventhal, 2007.
Posted in Quotes, Social Sciences
Tagged humor, professional development, social-emotional learning
“A conference is a gathering of important people who singly can do nothing, but together can decide that nothing can be done.”
Excerpted from: Winokur, Jon, ed. The Big Curmudgeon. New York: Black Dog & Leventhal, 2007.
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