I almost wish I were a sheep farmer, just so as to be eligible to read Sheep! magazine, surely the most enthusiastically named trade periodical ever. The cover of the current issue has an adorable picture of a lamb and a kitten on it, and features such intriguingly entitled articles as Golf Course Sheep Poo a Threat to Public Health, Wether or Not (aha!), and Herd It Through The Grape Vines. Fantastic.
This approach to magazine titling is probably not transferable to other professions, sadly. A pharmaceuticals trade rag called Drugs! probably wouldn’t find its way onto the lobby coffee tables at Gigantopharm UK PLC, for example.
[Original link via Errata.]
3 comments 2008-04-24 22:09 Categories: Day Job, Words
This chart of an entire year’s worth of variations on the theme of “X is the new Y” snowclone is brilliant. (Spotted on Languagelog.)
Taking the instances out of context creates some pleasing apparent non-sequiturs, like “12 is the new 1″, “nepotism is the new polio”, and “October is the new December”. Intriguing. The section on technology and computing is also quite interesting, if you follow that sort of thing; hardware nerds will be pleased, I am sure, to note at least one literally correct inclusion: the Sempron really is the new Duron, the one line replaced the other. And it’s nice to see that the actual phrase “x is the new y” makes the list.
0 comments 2007-01-20 10:43 Categories: Geek Stuff, Words
G. K. Chesterton points out that The Pickwick Papers is Dickens’s one hack book
, because it was actually written to order, on the suggestion of his publisher. It takes about ten chapters for the novel to break out of the constraints of the original brief, during which process you can actually see Dickens learning to be Dickens; you start off in an unfamiliar little place populated by flat characters engaged in somewhat dull interactions, but after while he finds his voice and you’re pulled into the Pickwickian universe.
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3 comments 2006-12-08 14:22 Categories: Books, Reviews, Words
I went to see Alan Bennett’s The History Boys at the Lowry on Friday. It was really quite good, but not as brilliant as I had been led to believe it might be. It is very enjoyable to watch, engaging and funny, but, as usual with these things, the hype is bigger than the thing hyped. And I don’t think it’s down to the cast or staging or anything like that. I’m just not convinced that Bennett’s play is quite as amazing as everyone makes out.
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4 comments 2006-11-27 11:22 Categories: Reviews, Words
I have the supposedly undesirable habit of persistently using the word “less” where “fewer” would be more “correct”, and I am regularly chastised for it by certain individuals. It would appear, however, that I’m not actually as wrong as I have been led to believe: according to this interesting Language Log post on the less/fewer “rule” “less refers to quantity or amount among things that are measured and to number among things that are counted.” (my emphasis). Hooray! Another silly prescriptivist rule I can gleefully ignore.
And you know those notices at supermarket checkouts that say “5 items or less”, heralding the impending collapse of civilisation with their abuse of the English language? They’re not actually Portents Of The Ungrammatical End Of Days; they are, in fact, perfectly correct.
2 comments 2006-11-16 13:37 Categories: Words