RX: "It had Gary Coleman, back when he was cute. Before he became a dead guy."Practice good syntax, kids! It can keep the crazy zombies away!
Me: "A crazy dead guy."
RX: "How can you be crazy when you're dead?"
Me: "Well, he was crazy first, so a 'dead crazy guy', then."
Wednesday, November 21, 2012
Overheard in the Office...
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Overheard...,
t'hee
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4 comments:
There's always a tax on sin...
gfa
LOL, good wordsmithing... :-)
Just double-checking Aunt Stabby's grammar lesson: you start from the noun and work backwards, right? So "crazy zombies" means they were zombies first, who then went crazy?
If they were crazy before they became zombies, that would make them "zombie crazies", correct?
I like "zombified crazies" better. :)
Paraphrasing Winston Churchill, Bad syntax is something up with which I will not put.
It's at times like these I'm reminded not only of Orwell's Rules for writers, but particularly his last (highlighted):
1) Never use a metaphor, simile or other figure of speech which you are used to seeing in print.
2) Never use a long word where a short one will do.
3) If it is possible to cut a word out, always cut it out.
4) Never use the passive where you can use the active.
5) Never use a foreign phrase, a scientific word or a jargon word if you can think of an everyday English equivalent.
6) Break any of these rules sooner than say anything outright barbarous.
gvi
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