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Artistic licence meaning in english3/31/2024 “The man walked down the road” means the same thing as “He walked down the road.” Structurally those things are nearly identical, so they barely count as two ways, but we could also say “He plodded along the street.” Or we can add more details, “The man, stoop-shouldered and sun-burned, trudged beside the highway.” We can turn the structure around, “The crumbling road guided his footsteps to his destination.”Īll of those are correct ways of explaining the same basic situation. And the beauty of English is that there are thousands of correct ways to construct a sentence to convey a particular meaning. New social, cultural, and technological situations require new ways of describing or discussing what’s going on. Language has rules that have evolved as we’ve used it. It really takes two hands.But there are no official lists of rules handed down from on high. I’ve always assumed this comes from having been admonished in school for doing something incorrectly, so that they think of grammar as a long list of prohibitions: “Thou shalt not dangle thy participles” and so forth. They believe that there is always one and only one correct way to use a specific word. See, folks think of grammar and usage in very stiff and absolute terms. Being a technical writer by profession for over two decades, I can’t begin to count how many times co-workers and other colleagues have come to me with questions about spelling and usage that fall on the fringes of what I think the heart of language is. And I’m not pedantic about words in the way that people expect, either. I’m nowhere near as pedantic about grammar as people expect. People know what a dictionary is, but a style guide, not so much. I also get that way about syntax, which would make me more of a style guide thumper, but that joke wouldn’t work as well. ![]() I can be pedantic about the meanings and usage of words. Labeling myself a dictionary thumper is not inaccurate. And it’s true, it would be extremely painful to be literally thumped with a hardback book the size of one of these unabridged dictionaries. I’m going to wear it and let people laugh at the joke. And it is a silly t-shirt, which I was delighted to order. The friend thought I was being silly to point this out. You can’t tell in the picture, but it was hard to hold it still, because it’s too heavy and awkward. Three fingers are on the front, but the pinkie is still helping, by stabilizing the dictionary’s weight. I can hold it with one hand for a short time, but notice that I have to cup my hand under it, to support all the weight. I got out the smallest of them, and tried to hold it as they are in the picture. Trying to hold it one-handedI own four unabridged dictionaries. He’s not even using all four fingers! The pinkie, at least, is curled under. Seriously, look at the picture on the t-shirt. ![]() It would need to be a fairly thin dictionary to be held that way. Look at how easily the person is holding it with only one hand. ![]() ![]() There is no way that the dictionary pictured is unabridged. But I commented to one of the friends who had sent me the link that there was one problem. It is rare to find a t-shirt with a dictionary joke, so of course I ordered it. Of course it’s the perfect thing for Gene. A close up of the t-shirt.Recently a couple of different friends sent me a link to that day’s Shirt-Woot.
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