First, what the hell is "baited breath"? Avoid clichés and you won't have this problem, but FYI, it's "bated breath." No one uses the verb "bate" anymore, but it's like "abate." If you have "bated breath," you're holding your breath. If you have "baited breath," maybe you've been eating fish, but it has little to do with acting like a sword hanging over everyone's head.
But a sword of Damocles can't be waiting and looking for things to strike at. The sword of Damocles hangs over the one person who's sitting under it. (So don't sit there!)
The sword has no mind and makes no decision about when to strike. It hangs by a hair and will, when the hair breaks, fall only on the person who's under it. The sword doesn't become progressively heavier, nor does it "appoint' itself.
You shouldn't be using these clichés in the first place, but using them without thinking about what they mean and what images you're creating is atrocious — especially in an article that purports to critique writing.
पोस्ट्स
३२ टिप्पण्या:
The one that irks me the most is rein in/reign in. Ignoramus journalists and editors get this wrong almost daily, writing stories and headlines about "reigning in" spending, or regulation, or what have you, when they actually mean "rein in."
You tell'em, girl!
Good catches--it seems like these Atlantic writers are biting the hand of the gift horse before leading it to water and making it drink.
Could the author have been distracted when she wrote that awful sentence? Perhaps it was a dark and stormy night.
We don’t aurally orate to each other online.
My head hurts.
Brando, everyone knows you can't make it drink. You lead the horse to water and then change in midstream.
To be fair, that sentence wasn't written by the author of the article. It was quoted, but it was quoted with favor, as if it were well put, and the author is responsible for that.
If what you're quoting isn't in good form, you should paraphrase. In fact, you should paraphrase whenever you can put something in a better form.
Avoiding blocks of quotes is something you do when you're taking the time, which is supposedly what you do when you're writing in the careful, thoughtful way that is supposed to be different from that chatty, speech-like writing found on Twitter.
First, what the hell is "baited breath"?
It's what you have after eating sushi.
Besides the power is while hanging not falling.
The sad part is that there is a good analogy to be made with the Sword of Damocles if you don't try to use two dollars words.
On problem with social media today is that you never know what will enrage the mob, and the rules change constantly. We all have a Sword of Damocles over our heads and no idea when it will plunge.
You're welcome.
To be fair, the very bad writing was quotes from someone else, not the authors own words. The whole article is fairly clumsy and over-jargonized, but makes sense. It could also be a lot shorter.
In one sentence, twitter is suffering because people have realized they can hurt themselves by writing silly things in a public place.
It was this kind of post the made me start reading your blog regularly.
A.A. in rare form this morning.
You mean they still teach about old, dead Greek males in college these days?
I remember when "The Atlantic" was a decent middle brow magazine. It was a reliably "classically liberal" periodical and I subscribed to it for 30 years.
When it came under new ownership it became a poorly written, reliably leftist lowbrow magazine. What a shame they threw away 150 years of tradition to become just another lefty periodical lost in the crowd of all the other lefty periodicals.
You always ran the risk of enraging the mob. Back in the day the mobs were small. A speaker would enrage just one or a very few at a time, in person. And there was indeed a great deal more personal violence then.
People who truly wanted to enrage more people did it with deliberation, in print, not casually, or in a public speech.
One of my favorite short stories - Mark Twains "Journalism in Tennessee".
There's a joke (which the editors at the The Atlantic wouldn't get, obviously) about a cat eating cheese, then sitting outside a mousehol with baited breath.
The "Has Justine landed yet" bullshit was the moment Twitter became a weapon of pure, evil malice. I understand what the point was (there is a mob looking to ruin lives anytime they possibly can and will do so with glee if you say anything "impolite") but it was worded terribly.
The article was bad. but the Atlantic normally is.
It's also time that politicians treat Twitter like the sad joke it is.
"You have a lot of heat on Twitter"
"So, people who barely have enough substance to fill 140 characters are mad at me? That's pretty sad"
Is it possible to write an article about Twitter that's not as banal as Twitter itself?
Or is writing about Twitter what Twitter would be without the 140 char. limit?
The real problem is when your employer's PR or HR department becomes aware of the twitter mob problem. Or the wife and kids.
That's why twitter is going nowhere.
Twitter notoriety is for the invulnerable. Those with no attachments or responsibilities.
Teachers always tell little tykes to make sentences out of new words that they have learned.
Apparently, the Atlantic writer has learned a few "new" clichés to misuse in her piece.
(Enter old man repeating story he's probably told to this audience before mode)
Gordon Baxter (writer for Flying Magazine) once received a memo from his editor stating that staff writers should no longer use cliches such as "Beautiful downtown Burbank" and the like.
Baxter responded with: "I congratulate you for having the courage of a lion to set foot in those shark-infested waters where the hand of man has never trod before."
My own pet peeves:
1. Misuse of "factoid". A factoid is a thing that looks like a fact, but probably isn't. It is not simply a trivial fact.
2. "Hone in" instead of "Home in".
3. Why can't I ever remember which is which, between "metonomy"and "synecdoche"?
sean: What is "mousehol"? Is that a mouse with an -OH group attached to one end?
"Lady, you must be psychic!"
People need not worry. Twitter is dying as is. It has no real way to make money, it's only real "benefit" (where "normal folks" can talk to celebs) is dying off due to rampant usage of block lists. Few people actually use the service at all.
Twitter was a bad idea that got no better.
At some point you have to decide whether you are going to just sit under that sword or use it to cut bait.
I hope the Atlantic editors and maybe even the author were decimated by this Althouse critique. Absolutely, literally, decimated.
I bait my mouth with cheese and wait for mice...
The Atlantic has a poorly written/edited article???? Who could have guessed?
Althouse wrote: You shouldn't be using these clichés in the first place, but using them without thinking about what they mean and what images you're creating is atrocious — especially in an article that purports to critique writing.
This assumes that you prepossess the knowledge, the culture, the education -- in short, the erudition, that you have tucked away in some comfy cubbyhole of the mind the intellectual wherewithal to correctly use these clichés and chestnuts, and that by merely thinking these hidden treasures will avail themselves to you.
The sad fact is The Atlantic and many other heretofore prestigious publications are staffed from top to bottom by arrogant imbeciles, therefore thinking won't accomplishing anything. Their minds lack the essential development. The only solution (and a forlorn one at that, given that these wretches are past the mentoring age) is a return to school, preferably in Japan where literacy is still the aim of education.
I think the three stooges got it right, " lady you must be psychic"
This is the sort of pedantry up with which I will not put.
टिप्पणी पोस्ट करा