Consider the Lobster: And Other Essays

BONUS FULL-DISCLOSURE INFO ON THE SOURCES OF CERTAIN STUFF THAT DOES OR SHOULD APPEAR INSIDE QUOTATION MARKS IN THIS ARTICLE

p. 67 “Distinguished Usage Panel …” = Morris Bishop, “Good Usage, Bad Usage, and Usage,” an intro to the 1976 New College Edition of published by Houghton Mifflin Co.

p. 67 “Calling upon the opinions of the elite …” = John Ottenhoff, “The Perils of Prescriptivism: Usage Notes and ” v. 31 #3, 1996, p. 274.

p. 73–74 “I realized early …” = preface, pp. xiv-xv.

p. 74 “Before going any …” = p. x.

p. 74 FN 13 “the ten critical points … ” = pp. x-xi.

p. 75–76 “Once introduced, a prescriptive …” = Steven Pinker, “Grammar Puss” (excerpted from ch. 12 of Pinker’s book Morrow, 1994), which appeared in the on 31 Jan. ’94 (p. 20). Some of the subsequent Pinker quotations are from the excerpt because they tend to be more compact.

p. 76 “Who sets down …?” = p. 141 of Bryson’s (Avon, 1990).

pp. 76–77 “As you might already …” = , preface, p. xiii.

p. 76 FN 16 “The problem for professional …” = p. xi; plus the traditional-type definition of is adapted from p. 1114 of the 1976.

p. 78 “The arrant solecisms …” = Bishop, 1976 intro, p. xxiii.

p. 78 “The English language is being …” = John Simon, (Crown, 1980), p. 106.

p. 79 FN 19 “We have seen a novel …” = Wilson Follett, “Sabotage in Springfield,” the January ’62, p. 73.

p. 79 “A dictionary should have no …” = P. Gove in a letter to the replying to their howling editorial, said letter reprinted in Sledd and Ebbitt, eds., That (Scott, Foresman, 1962), p. 88.

p. 79 FN 21 Newman’s “I have no wish …” = (Bobbs-Merrill, 1974), p. 10.

pp. 79–80 Simon’s “As for ‘I be,’ …” = pp. 165–166.

p. 80 FN 22 The Partridge quotation is from p. 36 of (Hamish Hamilton, 1947). The Fowler snippet is from (Oxford, 1927), pp. 540–541.

pp. 80–81 “Somewhere along the line …” = preface, p. xi.

p. 81 FN 25 “The most bothersome …” = preface, p. xv.

p. 83 “1—Language changes …” = Philip Gove, “Linguistic Advances and Lexicography,” Introduction to Reprinted in Sledd and Ebbitt; Gove’s axioms appear therein on p. 67.

p. 84 FN 28 “the English normally expected …” = p. 459 of Fourth Edition (Scott, Foresman, 1989).

pp. 87–88 FN 32 Norman Malcolm’s exegesis of Wittgenstein’s private-language argument (which argument occupies sections 258–265 of the ) appears in Malcolm’s (Prentice-Hall, 1963), pp. 98–99.

p. 89 “A dictionary can be …” = “Usage Levels and Dialect Distribution,” intro to the (Random House, 1962), p. xxv; reprinted in Gove’s letter to the.

pp. 91–92 “[T]he words ‘rule’ …” = S. Pinker, p. 371. The chunk also appears in Pinker’s “Grammar Puss” article, p. 19.

p. 92 FN 36 “No one, not even …” = p. 372.

pp. 92–93 “When a scientist …” = “Grammar Puss,” p. 19.

p. 96 FN 40 Garner’s miniessay is on s pp. 124–126.

p. 99 FN 46 “[Jargon] arises from …” = p. 390.

p. 100 FN 51 “knowing when to split …” = pp. 616–617.

p. 101 “hotly disputed …” = s miniessay, which is on pp. 603–604.

p. 105 FN 57 A concise overview of these studies can be found in Janice Neuleib’s “The Relation of Formal Grammar to Composition,” October ’77.

p. 110 FN 62 Dr. Schwartz and the Task Force are listed as the authors of (Indiana U. Press, 1995), in which the quoted sentence appears on p. 28. The Forster snippet is from the opening chapter of.

p. 112 FN 65 “vogue words have such a grip …” = p. 682.

p. 114 “At first encounter …” = Karen Volkman’s review of Michael Palmer’s in the October ’98, p. 6.

p. 114 FN 66 The miniessay is on p. 462 of .

p. 114 “This is the best and only way …” = President Clinton verbatim in mid-November ’98.

pp. 114–115 & p. 115 FN 67 Quoted bits of Orwell’s “Politics and the English Language” are from the essay as it appears in, e.g., Hunt and Perry, eds., Fifth Edition (Houghton Mifflin, 1999), pp. 670–682.

p. 115 FN 68 The Jameson sentence also appears in s miniessay on, p. 462; plus it appears in the same article mentioned in FN 66.

p. 122 The various quoted definitions of here come from Third Edition (Houghton Mifflin, 1992), p. 124.

p. 123 “The reality I care about …” = preface, pp. ix-x. The next five quotation-snippets — on pp. 123–124 and in FN 80—are also from the preface.

p. 124 “Sometimes people strive to …” = p. 345.

p. 124 “To the writer or speaker for whom …” = p. 604.

p. 124 “Whatever you do …” = p. 186.

1999