From: Sonny Heath (sonny@defuniak.com)
Date: Sun Dec 19 2004 - 14:25:55 PST
Who wrote that?
Sonny
----- Original Message -----
From: "m35products" <m35prod@optonline.net>
To: "Military Vehicles Mailing List" <mil-veh@mil-veh.org>
Sent: Sunday, December 19, 2004 10:03 AM
Subject: [MV] Dese guys say it betta den me.
> Why do we have conventions?
>
> One can think of language by analogy with other human processes: when
> driving a car, if the visible traffic signs and invisible conventions of
the
> highway code are well understood by everyone, vehicles can execute complex
> manoeuvres at high speed with minimal risk of accidents. If one person
fails
> to spot one sign or fails to observe one invisible rule, a crash can
result.
> Similarly in dance, elegance and emotional impact depend on each performer
> doing just what he or she is supposed to do at exactly the right time and
> place. Where language is concerned, bruises or bodily death is the only
> rarely the consequence of failure, but there are documented instances of
how
> language misunderstood in a courtroom has led the innocent to the
scaffold.
> More generally, the life and death of sense, and the chance of grace, are
> companions in every utterance. If the writer makes skilful use of the
agreed
> conventions, complex sense can flow rapidly and smoothly between people;
if
> not, then chaos can result. As Robert Lowell once remarked, a comma can be
> intelligent, or stupid.
>
> Scholarly writing as a genre
>
> Scholarly writing must make exact sense (even when being deliberately
> ambiguous); it is highly articulate, a matter of joints. One thought
hinges
> on another, and a good hinge lets you hang a door, kick a ball or hammer a
> nail. Articulate sentences help us make the world. No literary critic,
> historian or philosopher would question this for a moment. It follows that
> it is the task of all teachers and students to accept the challenge of
being
> as articulate as they possibly can and that even the apparently modest
comma
> has a crucial role to play in this process.
>
> Grammar and Glamour
>
> An amusement: the origin of the word 'glamour' is a Scottish variant on
the
> word 'grammar', grammar having been associated in days of yore with the
> power to cast magic spells, just the sort of thing that learned persons
were
> expected to be able to do. It follows that grammar is literally glamorous!
>
> Professionalism
>
> The recent spread of word-processing has radically altered the production
of
> writing in all social contexts. Students, scholars and businessmen used to
> write in manuscript; their typing was done by secretaries. Now everyone
uses
> keyboards and even businessmen type their own reports on laptops and send
> them direct to the boardroom. It follows that students now have to be much
> more exacting in their own use of English and their understanding of such
> matters as layout and proper punctuation. Good writing was always
essential
> but it is now canonised and commodified as a 'transferable skill'.
>
>
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