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• Wednesday, January 14, 2009 07:51 AM

  Tuesday, January 13, 2009 08:18 PM: Vaporland on style and usage

  Don’t quote The New York Times Manual of Style and Usage to me. I’m sufficiently well-educated, confident, and curmudgeonly to use my own style.

  If you insist on using a style book put out for newspapers, use The Associated Press Stylebook and Briefing on Media Law. Otherwise, your best bet is the ne plus ultra of style books, The Chicago Manual of Style. Whoever writes the Q&A section of the online version has a great sense of humor. Grammar and style need not be dry.

  For a book on current usage, Burchfield’s preposterously “descriptive” update of Fowler’s Modern English Usage leaves little choice other than Brian Garner’s masterly Garner’s Modern American Usage. I can’t locate my copy of Garner’s right now, but I’ll bet we part ways on Democrat vs. Democratic if it’s mentioned.

  Unless I slip up and forget to do so, I make a point of saying and writing Democrat instead of Democratic. Why? Because I can. And because people like vaporland get so upset when I do it. What vaporland thinks of my use of Democrat is no more consequential to me than a little dog turd. (Would “little dog’s turd” be better?) I’m willing to use democratic regularly, but only rarely in its capitalized form.

  Back to the article itself.

  As I read Ms. Paglia’s current offering, I found myself disagreeing with her more than usual. Is it curious that I should agree with her more often than not? She’s either a bisexual or lesbian liberal woman (I think), while I’m a heterosexual conservative man (I know). . . .

  Now that I’ve finished the article, I find that we disagree on little. That leads me to this conclusion: She and I are both right most of the time. She may not be a Myers-Briggs INTJ type as I am, but I’ll bet we’re different on only one letter.

  I was a projectionist in a movie theater when Written on the Wind was screened. I saw it several times. You have my guarantee: Dorothy Malone’s Academy-Award-winning performace was “hot stuff” to a 15-year-old boy. Her “wild dance” in a gauzy gown assured the win.

  Ms. Paglia gets it. Other liberals don’t. Paglia never disappoints.

  —anti-vaporland Read anti-vaporland's other letters
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