Penmanship [Was: Illinois bans male pronoun]

[Jonathan Lighter]

If anyone cares, I have _my dumb!_ back to 1999, antedating UrbanDictionary by five years.  Can anyone beat it ?

  BTW, I also nominate "My dumb!" as "Quote of the Year that Should Have Been Uttered by a Person in High Authority but Wasn't for Some Reason."

  JL

"Joel S. Berson" <Berson at ATT.NET> wrote:
  ---------------------- Information from the mail header -----------------------
Sender: American Dialect Society
Poster: "Joel S. Berson"
Subject: Re: Penmanship [Was: Illinois bans male pronoun]
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My dumb! It's been so long since anyone composed any literary
efforts with a pen that I took "penmanship" figuratively.

(Although a look at OED2 shows that that sense, "2. The action, or
style, of penning, i.e. wording or composing, a document; literary
composition", goes back to 1795.)

Joel

At 1/4/2007 05:54 PM, you wrote:
>At 13:34 -0500 04/1/07, Joel S. Berson wrote:
>>What's wrong with saying 'teaching good writing"?
>
>Perhaps because that is different? I write well (i.e., my prose is
>clear, etc.), but my penmanship is sometimes poor (i.e., there are
>times even I can't read my handwriting).
>
>Barbara
>
>>At 1/4/2007 10:36 AM, you wrote:
>>>penpersonship? No. Should be 'penperoffspringship.'
>>>
>>>Fritz
>>>>>> george.thompson at NYU.EDU 1/4/2007 7:29 AM >>>
>>>I'm sure we all wish that our schools would go back to teaching good
>>>penpersonship.
>
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