A large part of our speech and writing is unnecessary and boring which makes reading and conversation a chore. We slog through the repetitions and tarry when we should be moving on. Sometimes we fail to understand what others say.
‘The New York Daily News’ would not have said of a motion picture that it ‘extolled the evils of the advertising business’ if it knew what ‘extolled’ meant. ‘Standard Times’ once ran a headline ‘Tie vote kills bottle bill, but not fatally.’ Whoever who wrote that headline should have known the exact meaning of ‘fatally.
’ On another occasion, the postal service of the United States issued a statement about ‘sortation’ of mail instead of ‘sorting.’ Sometimes we come out with familiar quotations in an incorrect way. A university student once wrote, ‘There is not a reason why, but there is to do or die.
’ Apparently, he was not aware of the original quotation ‘Theirs not to reason why, theirs but to do and die.’ It was originally written by Lord Tennyson. A book of quotations had the following: ‘Discretion is the better part of valour.
’ However, the correct version is ‘The better part of valour is discretion’ attributed to William Shakespeare. In a book of model essays, I found the following quotation: ‘Everything that is good is either immoral or illegal.’ It should have been written as ‘All the things I really like to do are either immoral or illegal.
’ Although Gertrude Stein wrote, ‘Rose is a r.