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Benjamin Dreyer

19 Dec, 4 tweets, 1 min read

Noting that The Haunting of Hill House is fully 50 percent over, almost to the page, before SJ finally comes after you hammer and tongs.

Good Lord, I just realized who (with all respect to Robert Wise and the watchful ghost of Val Lewton) should have filmed The Haunting of Hill House:

Henri-Georges Clouzot

Either he films it in English, or Claire and Julie learn their roles in French (which I imagine they could have managed), or: THEY'RE STANDING RIGHT IN FRONT OF YOU.

I would be totally on board with one more remake so long as it was filmed in color (I dare you) and contained not one iota of CGI.

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Benjamin Dreyer

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Why Do Some People Type Entire Tweets in Title Case? Isn’t It Twice as Laborious? Plus, It Thwarts Spellcheck.

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Benjamin Dreyer

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I had somehow never noticed before that Shirley Jackson uses semicolons in dialogue; she gets away with it.

[I still don't recommend their use in dialogue.]

When I was (carefully) copyediting the volume of SJ's work we published as Let Me Tell You, I recall encountering two extremely lengthy multiclause sentences held together by a single semicolon, and to be honest my response was:

Madam, this is why we have periods.

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It most certainly is.

*She fell in love with a defendant whose case she not only covered but of whose arrest she also broke the news, of.

*Not only did she fall in love with a defendant whose case she was covering, but when they got around to arresting him, there she was, breaking the news therof.

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