Jones elaborated that interest rates are low.
Not on my watch. It now reads:
Jones added that interest rates are low.
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Author of "It Was the Best of Sentences, It Was the Worst of Sentences" and "Grammar Snobs Are Great Big Meanies"
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You know, like grammar and stuff.
June Casagrande
Author of "It Was the Best of Sentences, It Was the Worst of Sentences" and "Grammar Snobs Are Great Big Meanies"
It Was the Best of Sentences, It Was the Worst of Sentences
New!
"Mortal Syntax: 101 Language Choices That Will Get You Clobbered By the Grammar Snobs"
Grammar Snobs Are Great Big Meanies
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Blog Archive
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2009
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October
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- Now THAT'S Etymology
- Whom Can We Rely On, New York Times?
- Great Moments in Copy Editing
- Copy Edit du Jour
- If I Were Callin' the Shots Around Here ...
- Copy Edit du Jour
- What Happens In Cabo ...
- Berks are Such Knob Jockeys
- Weasel Words
- They're Finding Me, I Swear
- Online Service News Headline du Jour
- Wonderings and Googlings (Wherein I wonder about w...
- Icky Quotation Attribution du Jour
- From the 'How Not to Do It' File ...
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October
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4 comments:
Five syllable attributions are pretty horrific. Isn't the idea to be less intrusive?
Hmmm. Now I'm rethinkin' whether something not in quotation marks actually qualifies as a quotation. What ev. It's Friday night.
But re the larger question of whether it stinks: I agree that they should be less intrusive.
And the idiom I know is to "elaborate on" something. Not to elaborate something.
Besides, that definition of "elaborate" isn't really a transitive verb anyway.
All this fuss just because a feature writer wanted to use something fancier than "added."
I think the grammar book we use at school calls that an indirect quotation, so I have no problems with your terminology.
And yeah, if he really wanted to use "elaborate" it would require probably some re-working of the sentences around it.
Silly feature writers!
Ah, thanks. That helps.
So often, I look at something I wrote in the past and think, "What the hell was I thinking" (calling that a quotation or telling people to hyphenate bee pollen or whatever the hell nonsense I'd been talking the hour, day, or week before). So thanks for sparing me the worry that I was talkin' drivel once again.
: )
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