Now stir the fire, and close the shutters fast, Let fall the curtains, wheel the sofa round, And, while the bubbling and loud hissing urn Throws up a steamy column and the cups That cheer but not inebriate, wait on each, So let us welcome peaceful ev
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Your column is a pack of damn lies, a reader wrote to William Safire about a political piece he did in the New York Times. Brushing aside the stern criticism, Safire immediately debated whether it should be damn, the way it sounds, or damned, as the past participle of the verb, to damn. The ed on some words is simply slipping away, he points out. We're seeing more barbecue chicken, whip cream and corn beef. His conclusion: Ears are sloppy and eyes are precise; accordingly, speech can be loose but writing should be tight.
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As she came up to the arch Elizabeth saw with a start that it was written on. She went closer. She peered at the stone. There were names on it. Every grain of the surface had been carved with British names; their chiselled capitals rose from the level of her ankles to the height of the great arch itself; on every surface of every column as far as her eyes eyes could see there were names teeming, reeling, over surfaces of yards, of hundreds of yards, over furlongs of stone. She moved through the space beneath the arch where the man was sweeping. She found the other pillas identically marked, their faces obliterated on all sides by the names that were carved on them. 'Who are these, these ...?; She gestured with her hand.' 'These?' The man with the brush sounded surprised. 'The lost.' 'Men who died in battle?' 'No. The lost, the ones they did not find. The others are in cemetries.' 'These are just the ... unfound?' She looked at the vault above her head and then around in panic at the endless writing, as though the surface of the sky had been papered in footnotes. When she could speak again, she said, 'from the whole war?' The man shook his head. 'Just these fields.' He gestured with his arm. Elizabeth went and sat on the steps on the other side of the monument. Beneath her was a formal garden with some rows of white headstones, each with a tended plant or flower at its base, each cleaned and beautiful in the weak winter sunlight. 'Nobody told me.' She ran her fingers with their red-painted nails back through her thick dark hair. 'My God, nobody told me.
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I get up in the morning with an idea for a three-volume novel and by nightfall it's a paragraph in my column.
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Averageness is a quality we must put up with. Men march toward civilization in column formation, and by the time the van has learned to admire the masters the rear is drawing reluctantly away from the totem pole.
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My extensive experience and success providing families with sound financial advice and planning will give AOL users the background and tools to effectively manage their household finances. The monthly Rags to Riches column will show you how real people have done extraordinary things to get financially secure.
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He types his labored column -- weary drudge! Senile fudge and solemn: spare, editor, to condemn these dry leaves of his autumn.
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A column of ants began to follow me onto the tennis court. Because I would not step on them, I lost the match. But I won with God.
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I really like the Observer. I think I'd love to have a column with a broad reach that would enable me to do some proper reporting, but keep it on sort of a humorous level. I've always had a very happy experience writing for them.
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The actor who lets the dust accumulate on his Ibsen, his Shakespeare, and his Bible, but pores greedily over every little column of theatrical news, is a lost soul.
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Newspaper readership is declining like crazy. In fact, there's a good chance that nobody is reading my column.
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