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Yet for what it’s worth, I note that in one of my prize possessions, a tattered copy of Vogue’s Book of Etiquette, copyright 1923, the pronoun of choice for a nonspecific infant or child is “it.”
In real-life conversation, how often do you say the name of the person to whom you’re speaking? Not that much? Then why do your characters do it so frequently?
MILLENNIUM, MILLENNIA, MILLENNIAL Two l’s, two n’s. In each. It’s always fun online to catch someone attempting to insult millennials yet unable to spell “millennials.”
I made my way one Saturday morning to that agora of the twenty-first century, Twitter, where an awful lot of writers who should be writing and editors who should be editing hang out.
The important thing to remember about peeves and crotchets is that your own peeves and crotchets reflect sensible preferences based on a refined appreciation of the music and meaning of the English language, and that everyone else’s are the products of diseased minds.
Hummus is a Middle Eastern dip made from mashed chickpeas. Humus is decaying organic matter in soil. You will find fifty-seven varieties of the former at your local Whole Foods. Be careful never to eat the latter.
Always verify the name of anyone who is named Allen, Allan, Alan, Ginsberg, Ginsburg (Ruth Bader, for instance), or even Ginzburg.
PATTI LUPONE Singing actress. Not “Lupone.” This is not a woman you want to mess with, so get it right.
There are, I’ve learned over the years, so many, many ways to misspell Nietzsche.
ALEXANDER SKARSGÅRD Actor. Was the vampire in True Blood. The ring diacritic in his surname is often omitted, perhaps because no one can bother to figure out where it’s hiding in their keyboard.
An increasing number of women whose parents were clearly not paying attention are named Britanny.
FINNEGANS WAKE A novel by James Joyce that you’ve either not read, not comprehended, or both, despite what you tell people.
The phrase “drinking the Kool-Aid,” meaning to willfully if heedlessly follow some dogma, must surely rankle Kraft Foods, particularly in that the cyanide beverage Jim Jones’s devotees drank in the 1978 mass suicide at Jonestown seems to have been concocted largely if not entirely from the also-ran brand Flavor Aid.
