I had a fun and busy weekend with Julie mostly spent preparing for my Halloween party next Friday. I spent about $240 stocking the bar, so you people better show up. There will be a fog machine. What more could you want? I also managed to keep up with the World Series, which is shaping up to be fantastic.
Men’s Health has published a list of 17 things you’ve probably never done but should. Some of my favorites:
- Disagree with the person you fear most.
- Read a novel with more than 300 pages, written before 1950, set somewhere other than the United States.
- Eat brussels sprouts. To make it easier, pretend a gun is pointed at your temple and you have a choice: Take them orally or another way.
- You think you’re tough? Say exactly what’s on your mind when you’re at your most vulnerable. We’ll see how tough you are.
CNNMoney has their 25 Rules to Grow Rich By, which isn’t very good grammar, but who cares? The most important rule of them all, in my opinion:
- If you’re not saving 10% of your salary, you aren’t saving enough.
And finally, here is a word puzzle to drive you crazy for a while.
October 23rd, 2006 at 1:26 pm
Actually, “25 Rules to Grow Rich By” is perfectly fine grammar (assuming you weren’t expecting it to be a complete sentence). See these google results, for more info.
October 23rd, 2006 at 1:40 pm
Your link seems garbled, but obviously the English language is not science and there are different opinions on what is correct usage. It’s widely considered bad form to end a phrase or sentence with a preposition. Better would have been “25 Rules by which to grow rich.” That darn Latin influence on our language!
October 23rd, 2006 at 5:33 pm
I may have mistyped the href attribute, but you might want to check to see if the comment engine your using is stripping href attributes from <a/> tags.
Here it is in unlinked form: http://www.google.com/search?q=“preopsition stranding” OR “stranded preposition” “John Dryden”
An even better one might be the FAQ from alt.usage.english:
http://alt-usage-english.org/e.....repos.html
The point is that preposition stranding, despite being frowned upon by certain grammar books, is widely understood to be an “artificial” problem, one that suddenly started being claimed incorrect in the 17th century, despite centuries of history as proper usage, by a guy who decided that, if you can’t do that in Latin, you shouldn’t be able to do it in English—basically, so that there could not be an English sentence formulated that had no direct equivalent in Latin.
I actually tend to avoid stranding prepositions in my own writing (which tends to be fairly formal anyway), but I avoid it somewhat less in speaking (as it can rightly be judged more “pretentious” than “correct”); and given that most grammarians and grammar freaks I’ve had the opportunity to hear an opinion from (yes, that was deliberate) tend to consider it a “superstition”, I don’t think there’s really much justification for correcting someone else for chosing otherwise… especially given that this particular phrase pattern (”words to grow _ by/on”) is very well-established in the English language, indeed.
October 23rd, 2006 at 5:35 pm
Hm… your comment engine seems to have garbled that one as well (at least in the preview)… helpfully unescaping percent-encodings and plusses for me. :-/
October 23rd, 2006 at 10:05 pm
Yeah, that’s what I meant by “Latin influence.” I tend towards formal writing myself and two years of Latin has had its own personal influence on me. This is just one of those examples in which people disagree:
Disputed English Grammar.
I happen to fall in the camp that sees the logic behind avoiding dangling prepostions (again, Latin influence at work here). It would be easier for me to diagram, at any rate!
Now in informal writing, creative writing, or conversation, who cares? Which is what I said in my blog entry.
Maybe I shouldn’t have even mentioned it. I’m sure you could find dozens of examples in the archives of this blog in which I make these very same “mistakes.”
October 24th, 2006 at 7:31 pm
So is the part of the word game that drives you crazy the fact that every single time I try a guess I get a “cheating attempt logged” screen?
October 24th, 2006 at 10:02 pm
It is rough on the server side, for sure. Wasn’t as bad when I first started. Probably it’s getting too popular.
October 31st, 2006 at 12:29 pm
Well, with some help from friends, I’ve managed to solve the entire puzzle including the metapuzzle! Finally! If anyone needs hints, let me know.