Re: health warning

From: Jim Rovira <jrovira@drew.edu>
Date: Thu Sep 05 2002 - 12:57:28 EDT

I read this story about Oscar Wilde once -- he was asked when he knew when
he'd finished something he'd written. He said he once spent half a day
taking a comma out of one of his plays, and the other half of the day putting
it back in.

He decided at that point that he was finished :).

I may be screwing up the details a bit, but I think it was a pretty good
point...

Jim

Matt Kozusko wrote:

> On Wed, 4 Sep 2002, Matthew S. Mahoney wrote:
>
> : load of mahoney?
>
> Yes. Like "baloney."
>
> Anybody serious about writing should take grammar and its attendant
> conventions equally seriously. Don't trivialize the issue by reducing it
> to a matter of oppressed students and stifled creativity. Or by reducing
> it to "subtle placement of commas, etc." Or by continuing to peddle this
> nonsense about grammar and content being independent matters. Before
> long, you'll be declaiming righteously about how ideas and inspirations
> exist separately from language.
>
> Matt
>
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Received on Thu Sep 5 12:57:31 2002

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