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From: ken@ihuxq.UUCP (ken perlow)
Newsgroups: net.nlang
Subject: re: flammable vs. inflammable and Strunk & White
Message-ID: <606@ihuxq.UUCP>
Date: Tue, 7-Feb-84 15:24:30 EST
Article-I.D.: ihuxq.606
Posted: Tue Feb  7 15:24:30 1984
Date-Received: Thu, 9-Feb-84 22:11:50 EST
Organization: AT&T Bell Labs, Naperville, IL
Lines: 32

--
>>> 	I suppose I should add that the reason I have no urge to get a copy of
>>> Strunk & White is that I have little regard for such "manuals of style", mainly
>>> because I find that most entries in such are the result of some person's warped
>>> view of aesthetics rather than simple reasoning. (I was absolutely thrilled (oh,
>>> frabjous day!) when I found out that a few years ago, it was decided that ending
>>> a sentence with a preposition was acceptable.) Just out of curiosity, could those
>>> of you who use Strunk & White explain why you find it to be a reasonable set of
>>> guidelines?

"Strunk & White" is not only a manual of style, it is a short,
succinct, and delightful piece of prose.  It is the work of literate,
orderly minds and a thing of joy forever.  Read it.  If you yourself
are literate, you will agree.  If you are not literate, then it
makes no difference--you need it.

Dictionaries are fine.  We need them, too.  But they only give us
the tokens of the language and a soupcon of the syntax.  They
can't help much with semantics.  Semantics is hard.  Most compilers
of even simple languages can't diagnose semantic errors.  After all,
English lets us put all sorts of words, even syllables, end-to-end
and make perfectly legal, grammatically correct constructions.
Unfortunately, it does not always let us mean something by doing so.

That's why. 
-- 
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JE MAINTIENDRAI   ***** *****
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