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Jonathon Owen
@ArrantPedantry
, 4 tweets, 1 min read Read on Twitter
"This is what to look for in a language book: authority without arrogance." @lanegreene on @BCDreyer book Dreyer's English: economist.com/books-and-arts…
Though, really, the part that struck me the most isn't even about Benjamin's book. It's this:

"Why do people buy books on English usage? The obvious answer, 'for authoritative advice', doesn’t square with what people actually buy."
He then mentions The Elements of Style and Eats, Shoots and Leaves, neither of which is comprehensive or even reliable, adding, "It seems that people prize attitude over expertise."
This isn't necessarily a new insight, but it's one that I don't think has been explored enough. I think I'm going to need to think about this some more.
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Jonathon Owen
@ArrantPedantry
What's a tactful way to tell a designer, "Actually, it isn't just the printer—the text is a rich black rather than regular black, and I know because I opened up your InDesign file and checked"? #amproofreading
That is, I pointed out that some lines of text were printing funny, with that fuzzy look like they were rich black (a mix of cyan, magenta, yellow, and black rather than just black) so I asked him to check the text color.
He said he checked them and they were fine. I wasn't sure I believed him, so I opened up his lnDesign file to check, and sure enough: random lines of text in rich black.
Read 5 tweets
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Jonathon Owen
@ArrantPedantry
Interesting use of a zero inflection for the past participle of "sweat" in this piece for @TheOnion: entertainment.theonion.com/sweating-exhau…
There are a handful of verbs ending in "-t" that have uninflected preterite and past participial forms, like "cut", "hurt", and "quit".
My kids also use "pet" this way, as in "I have pet the cat." But I don't think I've heard "sweat" used this way.
Read 3 tweets
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Jonathon Owen
@ArrantPedantry
I've never thought about this as a usage issue before. It doesn't appear to be covered in MWDEU or Garner's. But it looks like "the time is right" is a 20th-century upstart.
It feels like "the time is ripe" and "the time is right" have slightly different connotations to me, though I'm having a hard time putting my finger on the difference.
It does seem entirely possible, though, that the latter is just an eggcorn for the former.
Read 3 tweets

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Arguments like this always seem to rather credulously suppose that valuable ideas embedded in religious frameworks bubbled up from pure doctrinal logic and won’t survive long once the ladder is kicked away. But why take that internal claim at face value? economist.com/books-and-arts…
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@troublewithecon
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