Monday, October 01, 2012

Giving directions is hard!

Probably a good thing the In sign is ready for replacement.

Click to enlarge, if you haven't already. And no, that wasn't me who tried to claw it off the door.

4 comments:

TC said...

Do you mean "that wasn't I who tried to claw it off the floor?" Just saying because you're such a grammar maven.

bjkeefe said...

Heh.

I don't have the vocabulary to describe it, but once upon a time, Safire convinced me that "me" was legitimate in sentences like this. He said a plausible technical case could be made [technical words go here], and it was obviously better in sounding less stilted than the "I" version.

To be fair, he was talking about sentences like He is smarter than me compared with He is smarter than I, but the example you spotlight seems to fall into the same category.

In a more formal piece of writing, I'd probably reword, though, so I will give you seven points out of ten.

TC said...

When quoting Safire as an authority on acceptable casual speech we have to keep in mind he's the guy who wrote "Nattering nabobs of negativism" for Spiro Agnew. I know you know, but to your other readers out there nattering means idle talk to no purpose. He was Nixon's VP referring to the press. Nabobs are basically wealthy people. Nixon and Spiro hated the effete and intellectual press corps. Say, come to think of it, I wonder if Romney isn't a nattering nabob?

bjkeefe said...

And given that his entire campaign pitch amounts to "Obama=bad," I think he qualifies for all three of the Ns.

I did wonder why more mileage wasn't gained by Romney's primary opponents regarding his elitism.

And then I remembered, there's an acronym for that!

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