I was struck as only a blogger would be by this illustration that came from Lynne.
This, by the way, is really only an excuse for not posting yesterday nor properly this morning.
There is a lot I could write about: what now appears to be the terminal agony of the Gillard Government; the latest tax statistics and what they mean for income distribution; even the world of Babur. And yet, I am not going too.
I have a planning day today at Olympic Park, but need to get to the office first. So I leave you with this photo.
Fell free to chat among yourselves in my absence
5 comments:
Good morning Jim. Since this post exhibits all the signs of incipient disuse I thought I’d recount #1 of my reasons for loving the web:
I’ve just spent an enjoyable couple of hours unearthing further proofs of the sad state of my knowledge vis a vis the English Language. No doubt you are fully aware of this, and speak of it often, but did you know that there is an unwritten rule as to the order of appearance of adjectives?
We do not say “the round big red beautiful ball”; we say “the beautiful big round red ball”. We do this because of this unwritten rule: The order is opinion-size-age-shape-colour-origin-material-purpose.
I found this from an article in The Telegraph (UK), which led me in turn to The Economist Style Guide (a joy in itself), and to a delightful Boston blog by a newspaper editor – in which I was informed that the now correct description of a shoplifter is a “non-traditional shopper”.
Isn’t that all just too interesting?
kvd
ps not sure of the status of an ‘unwritten rule’ which has to actually written down to be appreciated…
One aspect of becoming an ESL teacher was suddenly to become aware of such unwritten rules, of which there are quite a few! Specialist sites abound: for example, http://www.mhhe.com/mayfieldpub/tsw/esl-link.htm
Of course the interesting thing about the order of adjectives is that native speakers hardly ever get it wrong even though generally they are never taught this! Amazing, eh!
order of adjectives.
Thanks for the links Neil!
And you are right - I find it quite fascinating that I have all my life been slavishly following a rule which I never knew existed!
btw do have a look at The Economist Style Guide
http://www.economist.com/styleguide/a
For example "Anticipate" - wish all tutorials were so well written, and wry.
kvd
What an interesting conversation. Loved the economist style guide, kvd. Really very good. Perhaps we should proceed in that direction!
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