Re: Capital !

Malcolm Lawrence (malcolm@wolfenet.com)
Thu, 22 Jan 1998 23:55:35 -0800 

Scottie Bowman wrote:

>         Ah yes, Jessica baby.  That's SO much better.  You yourself
>         must sense the way the text acquires shape & colour making
>         it a delight to the eye & an easement to the mind.
>
>         One small point.  We get the word `hypocrite' from the Greek
>         *hypokrites* - an actor.   I haven't myself come across 'hippocrite'
>         before.  The Greek root *hippos* - a horse, of course, usually gives
>         us an equine connection.  Perhaps a `hippo-crit' is a follower of
>         horse races ?  As in 'film-crit' ?  Right ?   I assure you, nothing
>         you've written so far has suggested you were an addict of the
>         geegees.
>
>         Scottie B.

Funny stuff.

Well, since everyone seems to be ganging up on poor old Scottie, I guess I'll
side with him.

(I'm like that, you know. Call me old fashioned, call me sentimental. Always
sticking up for the most picked upon. Always striving for balance whenever
possible.)

Come on, you can't all be so list-member intolerant, spiritually knee-jerk and
linguistically lazy. Doesn't anyone else besides me take pride in
capitalization, punctuation, grammar, syntax, spelling and all the other things
that make literature such a joy? Those who don't may I suggest Finnegans Wake to
you, as well as the Finnegans Wake mailing list. You'll come running back to
this list faster than you can say Gogarty.

Besides, I came in second in the seventh grade spelling bee and have always been
proud of my ability to spell correctly. (Though I will confess, my browser
(Netscape Communicator 4.04) has spellcheck which I always run before sending a
post. Basically because I always imagine someone on the list reading my posts
and thinking to themselves "How can I follow his train of thought and take him
seriously when I'm paying attention to all of his mistakes?" For you youngsters
on the list may I point out that the older you get, the more you'll start to
realize that other people do think like that. So if you fully believe that you
have something worth saying and you wish to communicate as well as you can, you
may as well take care of the necessities first before you just make a fool out
of yourself.

Can any of you professors on the list gimme an "Amen"?

Malcolm