![[Logo]](/images/101ReasonsLogo.png "101 Reasons to Stop Writing")
In 1754, English censor Thomas Bowdler was born. He was the author of Family Shakespeare, a clean, kid-friendly version of the Bard’s filthy, porn-drenched original works. This Good Parts version did more to popularise Shakespeare amongst the easily upset than Leonardo diCaprio and Mel Gibson combined. To this day, the term ‘bowdlerise’ means that someone cared enough about a work of artistic smut to make it palatable, and available in supermarkets.
In 1859, Charles Dickens’ A Tale of Two Cities was published. You will never be this good.
In 1899, style guru E. B. White was born. He was the White in Strunk & White. If you had to click on that link to find out what Strunk & White means, stop writing.
In 1930, literary critic Harold Bloom was born, and immediately published a scathing review of the obstetrician’s cold hands.
In 1955, (according to Wikipedia), the phrase In God We Trust was added to US currency, replacing the Latin motto E Pluribus Unum (“out of many, one”), which was subsequently adopted as a motto by slush readers.
In 1960, Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird was published. You will never be this good (and even Harper Lee knew it).
In 1971, Astounding Science Fiction editor John W. Campbell finally succumbed to the slushpile. Campbell was hailed as a leading proponent of the genre, and an intolerable crackpot, often by the same people.
In 1983, crime writer Ross McDonald stopped writing, the hard-boiled way.
Loading ...
LMAO at your comic and oh-so-true asides.
Listen, not all of us use American English. Some of use the Queen’s English, and have therefore never heard of your precious Strunk & White.
So there, ya wanker.
“In 1859, Charles Dickens’ A Tale of Two Cities was published. You will never be this good.”
“In 1960, Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird was published. You will never be this good (and even Harper Lee knew it).”
My favorites. I may embroider them on a cross-stitch sampler and hang them on the wall. They should not make me feel good, but they crack me up, as do you.
erin, I’m Australian, I use the Queen’s English (quite well, actually), and sometimes I use the parts of English that we used to call the King’s English. I’ve heard of Strunk & White, owned it, read it, and even hit people with it.
Since you use the Internet, you’ve no doubt encountered the drooling bastard stepchild of the Queen’s English that software programs quantly call ‘U.S. English’. You might have noticed that there is (still) quite a bit of overlap.
Strunk & White may not be the best writing guide ever produced, but it’s certainly the most easily stolen.
To steal from a very old routine from Mad magazine:
“Grunt! Grunt!”
“How many times do I have to tell you that we speak English on this expedition, not American?
(Although I’m known to mangle my native tongue from time to time, I honestly try to do so deliberately for comic effect. However, I spent three years working for a call center here in the US, and discovering that (a) the word “tooken” is an actual word according to most of my countrymen and (b) “tooken is apparently a verb, as in “Yew done tooken money out mah account”. Three years of that job, and it takes every last bit of control I have when subjected to some plecostomus that stands upright and uses credit cards NOT to suggest “Have you considered taking your grandson’s penis out of your mouth until after you finish bitching out the friendly sales clerk trying to ring you up? I promise it’ll be there after you’re done.”
Even allowing that I quite forgot about your Aussie provenance, my point stands. Mostly, anyway; the truth is I don’t actually use the Queen’s English. I use that expedient hybrid Canadian English, which is UK when it suits us and American when we feel like it.
We’re such hypocrites up here. And I love that aboot us, I really do.