Sentimental mush from the Washington Post
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Jonathan Yardley in the Washington Post published a piece of pompous, sentimental mush yesterday. It's all about a little book he learned about in college and still carries around to this day and will love till he dies (yadda yadda yadda; violins, please); and yes, you guessed it, the book is E. B. White's disgusting and hypocritical revision of William Strunk's little hodgepodge of bad grammar advice and stylistic banalities, The Elements of Style. I have discussed it many times before here on Language Log. The appearance of this slop would have made me pretty sick, except that the wonderful Jan Freeman was on it like greased lightning. Jan's piece is called Return of the living dead, and it's a delight. (It contains original scholarship, too.) I have nothing more to say, except read Jan Freeman. She is a wonderful language writer. She should be writing for Language Log. But our organization, vast and powerful though it is, doesn't have the resources to steal her from the Boston Globe.