…at the Wall Street Journal. I am not afraid to write about what matters!
Tag Archives: grammar
Grammar Matters
It matters muchly! Bigly!
From The Comma Queen (which I had previously thought was my title) and the copy chief of Random House, an important conversation. Also, an article about the latter’s new book. And if that weren’t enough excitement, a piece about the birth of the semicolon (something I could have used in this post, but which I decided would have been too cute by half).
I Shall But Love Thee Better After Death
And when thou hast learned to spell my name correctly! This is a photograph I took in Florence, Italy, recently, and it is an “Elizabeth Barrett Browning lived here” plaque, with some poetic writing about her-heart-of-a-woman, et cetera. That said, it spells her second name incorrectly – without a double T. Doppia T, Italians!
What I love about it, as a student of the Italian language, is the use of the passato remoto and the imperfect. I took a translation course in Italy in February and it was really hard to get the hang of when to use those two together.
