Before I abandon either this benighted website or this mortal coil, whichever comes first, I'm going to make sure that you all learn when the question mark goes inside the closing quote mark and when it goes outside. You were all well taught that a question (and question mark) in dialogue are set like this:

Adelaide lamented, "How many times can I be expected to get off at Saratoga?"

Right?

Right.

Of course there’s no feminine for “cuckold.” Why would anyone have thought that a woman’s being cheated on was worthy of a special derogatory term?

https://twitter.com/bcdreyer/status/1670154874770583552

What’s the feminine of “cuckold”?

I dunno, “wife”?

I can't right now think of another once-strict rule of English that's gone so utterly forgotten/ignored than the differentiation between "will" and "shall." "This is how you use 'will' and 'shall' in the first person, but in the third person you use them in precisely the opposite fashion...."

That's not a rule. That's a trap.

I still think of the time a leading American academic who posts here frequently and has a massive following plagiarized another twitterer's very clever joke down to the comma. The "remove this follower" button is such a treat.

Goodbye to the incomparable Glenda Jackson. I saw Glenda Jackson onstage five times, starting with Rose back in 1981 and then her Lady Macbeth (with her and Christopher Plummer in two completely different plays), Lear in London, Three Tall Women, and Lear in NYC.

It was always an event.

OK, that made me want to vomit.

#HocusPotus Dude's name still isn't spelled Jeryd, for pete's sake, but otherwise that was brilliant if by brilliant you mean it was like getting my hand caught in a garbage disposal for an hour.

Yeah, that's an editing error all right.

https://twitter.com/stephenfarrow/status/1657827681398845443

I must confess that I have zero idea how that error could get written into an article in the first place and zero idea how it could not get edited out.

I find ice cream trucks that play The Entertainer absolutely traumatizing.

And I don’t mean the Olivier movie. There's a lot—quite a lot—of Scott Joplin music I love, including the wonderful Treemonisha, but the merest hint of "The Entertainer" makes me want to tear off my own ears.

From 1973 through at least 1975, it was INESCAPABLE.

If it's Mother's Day, then it must be time for Mother Dreyer's Small Potatoes.

I hope that the day is happy, or at least peaceful, for you.

https://twitter.com/BCDreyer/status/1366212447036669952

She was, not to put too fine a point on it, a pistol, that one.

I can read a thousand times the explanation of why Peggy is a nickname for Margaret and never ever EVER understand it. Though eventually you wend your way to the Great Vowel Shift, which is always fun.

Wait, wait, on top of everything else Richard Dreyfuss claims that the last white actor to play Othello was Laurence Olivier in 1965?

Um, no.

Also, he's a freaking loon. Now we know where his son gets it from. Also, Sir Larry's Othello is pretty rank, the makeup entirely aside, so maybe that's not the exemplar you want to be touting under the heading of Tragically Lost Opportunities for White Men.

Happy Kate the Great's birthday, and I apologize for ever underestimating her as an actual acting actress (as opposed to merely a supernaturally magnetic comedienne and movie star). Sure, why not, let's once again watch the greatest clip of all time (and be sure to do the hand thing sometime today, in tribute).

NOVENA is a word, and I am now officially over the 🐝. [I'm actually serious. I find no amusement in playing a word puzzle that self-delightedly rejects perfectly ordinary words.]

Wordle 662 5/6

🟩⬜⬜🟩⬜
🟩⬜⬜🟩⬜
🟩🟨🟨🟩⬜
🟩🟩⬜🟩🟨
🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩

Just playing words to see if they’ll go through. good lord, is it to be another day of "i don't know this word so it's not one"?

So I guess that SNAFU now ties with the notorious PARER for most anger-inducing Wordle. Of course there was the person who complained that NAIVE is not a word in English, but let's move quietly past that.

Today is Frances Perkins's birthday, and I am unable to see her name without barking "Perkins!"

IYK, as they say, YK. Raymond Thorne's delivery of "Solo for the president!" is right up there with Barbara Cook's "Don't get faster, dear" and Barbara Barrie's "That can't be blocked" as absolutely impossible to improve upon.

An acronym is an abbreviation that is pronounceable as a word.

Some acronyms are and remain proper nouns, e.g., UNICEF, NASA, and AIDS.

Some acronyms become generic words, e.g., scuba, radar, gif, captcha, and..........

.............snafu.

*dusts off hands* Such abbreviations as ATM and IBM are preferably and more clearly referred to as initialisms, but YMMV.

someone: I guess we’ll have to agree to disagree.

me: I’m glad you think so. I do recall the first time I participated in this exchange (in the role of "me"). It was with a correspondent who insisted that he knew how many pages were in a book we published and I didn't.

Goodbye to the extraordinary Irene Papas.

nytimes.com/2022/09/14/mov… One of those instances in which the film isn't nearly as good as the cast but, basically, who cares.

Happy Kay Medford's birthday! And here's some bonus Kay, greeting Eileen Heckart backstage at A Family Affair, and with Bob Fosse in the 1963 revival of Pal Joey.

In the history of the misapprehension that the Salem witches were burned, here's Eugene O'Neill weighing in in Mourning Becomes Electra, 1931:

"At the rear of the fireplace, on the right, is one of a grim-visaged minister of the witch-burning era." (There's a line of dialogue about it in the film, which I'm watching for the first time, and oh, Pru-NELL-a, it's a lot of acting.)