Monday, March 15, 2021

The Happy Accident

Note: Friday’s WORD featured Miami Herald columnist Carl Hiaasen’s contention that “there’s [n]ever been a greater need for people to be able to write at a functional level, whether they’re tapping on their computer keyboard or on their iPhone.” Mencken would obviously agree. 


“To the man with an ear for verbal delicacies — the man who searches painfully for the perfect word, and puts the way of saying a thing above the thing said — there is in writing the constant joy of sudden discovery, of happy accident.” 

 

—H.L. Mencken (1880-1956), the “sage of Baltimore,” journalist, essayist, satirist, cultural critic, iconoclast, scholar of American English and author, The Book of Prefaces, 1917.


 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Editorial Comment: We live for those.


 

 

PeezPIX

Merry March snow





 

 

 

The March issue of Senior News is Celebrating Women’s Stories. Check it out.

FREE! Get TODAY'S WORD ON JOURNALISM in your email This free “service” is sent to 2,000,000 or so subscribers around the planet more or less every weekday morning during WORD season. If you have recovered from whatever illness led you to subscribe and don’t want it anymore, send “unsubscribe” to ted.pease@gmail.com. Or if you want to afflict someone else, send me the email address and watch the fun begin. (Disclaimer: I just quote ’em, I don’t necessarily endorse ’em. Don’t shoot the messenger.) 

Ted Pease, Professor of Interesting Stuff, Trinidad, California. (Be)Friend The WORD

 

“I don’t think writers are sacred, but words are. They deserve respect. If you get the right ones, in the right order, you can nudge the world a little.” —Tom Stoppard

 

 


No comments:

Post a Comment