This amuses the Grammar Goddess in me. It's funnier if you were subjected to the cultural musings and prose stylings of Camille Paglia in a Women's Studies class circa early nineties, but proper language snobbery is its own reward.
On a similar note, my coworker photocopied me this so that I could feel superior in my ability to avoid a cliche. But it's a shallow triumph against undergrads.
2 comments:
Personally, I think that guy should cut his students some slack (oops. did I just use a phrase someone else has already used before? Please tie me to the wagon wheel for ten lashes at dawn). The whole world writes in cliches. If you use the cliche incorrectly or for no good purpose, then you should be punished, but getting all huffy because every student you have can't come up with a new turn of phrase in the midst of an essay test seems a bit ludicrous. If you're getting paid to write, then shame on you for using lame cliches, but if you're a college student just trying to get the exam done with so you can get to your flight to Cancun for spring break, who really can blame him.
Yeah, I'm with you. And it can be argued that in academic publishing contexts, for example, the whole point is to write in cliches, or at least in standard phrases and constructions everybody understands. Personally, I've stomped individual expression out of many a manuscript in the name of APA or CMS.
And that guy's writing wasn't exactly setting the world on fire. But it was Newsweek.
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