Tuesday, December 09, 2008

A ready-made list

You're not going to buy me a gift, I know. But if you were I'd ask for either a pair of strange socks or a book. If you chose to go with the latter, I'd direct you to Jan Freeman's column where she has put up a nice list of books that I don't yet own. She didn't know that of course.

offered up by Wishydig at 20:14

2 comments:

  1. Casey10 December, 2008 10:11

    The book on there about mispronunciation made me think of the word forte, which I've heard is supposed to be pronounced, "fort," when it's used to indicate "strong suit" (or whatever).

    Here's an idea for you: write a post about linguistic avoidance: "forte" is a word I refuse to use because it's a lose-lose situation... if you say it "correctly" people won't have any idea what you're talking about (or if they do, they'll think you're unbearably pretentious to actually pronounce it that way) and if you say it incorrectly you'll know that you're saying it incorrectly, and always wonder if someone else in the room is thinking "He doesn't know that it's 'Fort.'"

    So I just don't use that word. Others?

    ReplyDelete
  2. WordzGuy11 December, 2008 04:13

    I can wholeheartedly recommend anything by Alexander Humez and Nicholas Humez; I have three of their previous books and am always delighted when I open the books at random and start reading. (Haven't read their latest, tho.)

    ReplyDelete

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