May 16, 2007

Memo to Shinan Govani

"Political press conferences so often take on the chimera of a closely followed Hollywood script."
National Post, May 1 'o7


Could you look up the meaning of words like 'chimera' before you use them please? Do you mean the air, the atmosphere, the structural logic or pattern of a Hollywood script? Chimera means none of these things.


"[I] found myself face-to-face with the adorable and able America Ferrera--neither four-eyed or brace-faced in real life I stop to add"
Nat Post, May 16 '07


Apart from the fingernails-across-a-blackboard cadence of brace-faced, Shinan, try to remember this simple rule: either/or, neither/nor. You see the subtle difference?

"It was the night Ugly Betty officially turned into a swan and cleaned up at the awards, as did the little Purple one (winning the prize for Best Song), and to hear Mabius talk about Prince now means seeing his face light up like it's Christmas morning."
Nat Post, May 16 '07

Do they pay you a bonus for awkward and ugly sentence structure? It must be a whoppper

2 comments:

Linera Lucas said...

chimera is such a wonderful monster, so annoying to see her misused.

Martin Heavisides said...

I agree. Thanks for stopping by, Linera. (One of the plotlines of this blog, I expect, is going to be little pieces like this that chastise exceptionally bad writing.