Monthly Archives: January 2010

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Letters to a Young Poet


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“If your everyday life seems poor, don’t blame it; blame yourself; admit to yourself that you are not enough of a poet to call forth its riches; because for the creator there is no poverty and no indifferent place.”

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— Rainer Maria Rilke

Letters to Young Poet, 1934

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Dog’s Bollocks


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Citing usage from 1949, the OED calls this mark the dog’s bollocks, which it defines as, “typogr. a colon followed by a dash, regarded as forming a shape resembling the male sexual organs.” This is why I love scrounging around the linguistic scrap heap that is the OED. I always come across a little gold. And by “gold,” I mean, “vulgar, 60-year-old emoticons.”

via The Secret History of Typography in the Oxford English Dictionary | The Bygone Bureau

 

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Birthday Twins


Wishes a Happy Birthday to the others who share this day with me (but don’t have my amazing friends): Julia Ormond, Beth Gibbons (of Portishead), Andy Borowitz, Bernard Sumner (Joy Division/New Order), Ann Magnuson, Doris Kearns Goodwin, Michael Stipe, Matthew Frewer (aka Max Headroom), Dyan Cannon…

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Jerk


A Southerner stopped a stranger on the Harvard campus and asked, “Could you please tell me where the library is at?” The stranger responded, “Educated people never end their sentences with a preposition.” The overly polite Southerner then apologetically repeated himself: “Could you please tell me where the library is at, you jerk?”

Is Ending a Sentence with a Preposition Ever Acceptable?