The World Beyond BetterMost > The Culture Tent
In the New Yorker...
Jeff Wrangler:
--- Quote from: Front-Ranger on June 26, 2023, 12:37:45 pm ---Oh, I take it back. The article about the tactical bra by Patricia Marx was entertaining and well-written. It would have made a good S & M!!
--- End quote ---
I'm looking forward to that one. Patricia Marx is always entertaining. I remember her article on mattresses quite fondly.
I also remember reading (maybe in a Talk of the Town?) that she's good buddies with Roz Chast, whose cartoons I always enjoy.
serious crayons:
--- Quote from: Jeff Wrangler on June 25, 2023, 07:28:46 pm ---U and I are next to each other on the keyboard, too. ...
--- End quote ---
:laugh:
Good point. The difference, though, is that I make typos all the time, whereas TNY is famous for its proofreading. It really is unusual to find errors. Even this one could pass as correct.
--- Quote ---And I'm still annoyed by TNY's use of capitalization in direct quotations.
--- End quote ---
What do they do? I don't remember discussing this before. I grabbed a random magazine off my stack of unfinished issues, flipped through it and didn't see anything weird.
serious crayons:
--- Quote from: Front-Ranger on June 26, 2023, 12:37:45 pm ---The bio of Sarah Jessica Parker just kept going on and on and on until I had to just stop reading it.
--- End quote ---
There've been a lot of those lately. But having never watched SatC and not really caring much about SJP I've let myself off the hook for most.
--- Quote ---Oh, I take it back. The article about the tactical bra by Patricia Marx was entertaining and well-written. It would have made a good S & M!!
--- End quote ---
Patricia Marx's stories are among the few amusing things in TNY. Maybe because they aren't necessarily required to be funny; they could just be straightforward consumer articles. Not only are S&Ms not usually funny, I don't even like most of the cartoons (Roz Chast a notable exception, of course). Andy Borowitz is not as funny as The Onion doing approximately the same thing. The cartoon on the last page with the reader submissions are sometimes amusing, but the premises are usually dumb -- the humor has to come from some absurd pairing of characters, objects and settings, whereas many or most of the regular cartoons are just ordinary people sitting in a living room, chatting at a cocktail party or walking on the street.
They're good friends and I feel like they play music together or something like that, as revealed by one of their husbands, who is also a writer for TNY, in an essay a while back.
Jeff Wrangler:
--- Quote from: serious crayons on June 26, 2023, 01:09:55 pm ---Good point. The difference, though, is that I make typos all the time, whereas TNY is famous for its proofreading. It really is unusual to find errors. Even this one could pass as correct.
--- End quote ---
I once found a typo in a Bible (I think it was a running head).
--- Quote ---What do they do? I don't remember discussing this before. I grabbed a random magazine off my stack of unfinished issues, flipped through it and didn't see anything weird.
--- End quote ---
Sometimes they begin a direct quote that is a complete sentence with a lower case letter--and sometimes they don't. I disagree with the practice--wasn't what I was taught--but the inconsistency also annoys me.
I may be able to make some time later to hunt down some examples. Meanwhile, here's an example of the "correct" way to do it, a "rule" from a wonderful old grammar book called Warriner's English Grammar and Composition (apparently first published in 1951):
Capitalize the first word of a direct quotation:
Mr. Jackson said, "Your sister is her own worst enemy."
Do not capitalize the first word of a quoted sentence fragment:
I agree with Mr. Jackson's remark that my sister is "her own worst enemy."
serious crayons:
--- Quote from: Jeff Wrangler on June 26, 2023, 02:30:20 pm ---Capitalize the first word of a direct quotation:
Mr. Jackson said, "Your sister is her own worst enemy."
Do not capitalize the first word of a quoted sentence fragment:
I agree with Mr. Jackson's remark that my sister is "her own worst enemy."
--- End quote ---
Thanks! This issue has always been a bit grayish for me. Glad to know there's a specific answer and I've (at least usually) been doing it correctly.
But the New Yorker is never grayish! Any publication that can't write re-election without a diaeresis and spells out large numbers should certainly have a rigid rule about this, too!
Speaking of funny misuse, just today I came across an article (not in TNY) that used "eponymous" to mean publishing a book, not named after its author, after the author's death.
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