YBQ Review in American Speech

[Shapiro, Fred]

First of all, it's a pleasure for me to note that I have the highest personal and professional regard for Dick Bailey.  He is probably completely unaware that I would never have gotten into the quotation dictionary biz were it not for him.  (In the late 1980s, Oxford University Press-New York advertised for a director of a "Center for North American English" -- an abortive precursor, obviously, of Jesse Sheidlower's position.  Dick recommended my name to OUP and I interviewed for the position.  The interviewer and I quickly concluded that I was not really qualified for that job, but he asked me whether I was interested in doing some kind of legal reference work for them.  This led to the Oxford Dictionary of American Legal Quotations, which in turn led to the Yale Book of Quotations.  Dick also was extremely helpful to me on another important project, but that's a story for another time.)

Dick's review is a good one, but the repeated use of the YBC abbreviation is bizarre, to say the least.  There are also some other errors in the review.  One of these, incorrectly saying that I left out "That's all folks" from Looney Tunes, is probably attributable to the reviewer, but with regard to "YBC" and other typos I wonder whether Dick was victimized by some really poor copyediting on the part of American Speech.

Fred Shapiro



________________________________________
From: American Dialect Society [ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU] On Behalf Of Laurence Horn [laurence.horn at YALE.EDU]
Sent: Thursday, December 27, 2007 9:02 PM
To: ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU
Subject: Re: American Speech Table of Contents for A Quarterly of              Linguistic              Usage: 1 December 2007; Vol. 82, No. 4

At 2:05 PM -0500 12/27/07, Charles Doyle wrote:
>Here my question: Why does Richard Bailey's review of the _Yale Book
>of Quotations_ in _American Speech_ abbreviate the title as "YBC"?
>
>--Charlie

It's a puzzler, even more so than the fact that Johnnie Cochrane has
been turned into Johnnie Cockran without anyone noticing.
"Cuotations?"

LH

>_____________________________________________________________
>
>---- Original message ----
>>Date: Thu, 27 Dec 2007 13:45:50 -0500
>>From: Grant Barrett <gbarrett at WORLDNEWYORK.ORG>
>>Subject: American Speech Table of Contents for A Quarterly of
>>Linguistic Usage: 1 December 2007; Vol. 82, No. 4
>>
>>A new issue of American Speech has been made available:
>>
>>A Quarterly of Linguistic Usage: 1 December 2007; Vol. 82, No. 4
>>
>>URL: http://americanspeech.dukejournals.org/content/vol82/issue4/?etoc
>>
>>-----------------------------------------------------------------
>>Contributors' Column
>>-----------------------------------------------------------------
>>
>>CONTRIBUTORS' COLUMN
>>
>>       American Speech 2007;82 np
>>       http://americanspeech.dukejournals.org/cgi/reprint/82/4/np?etoc
>>
>>-----------------------------------------------------------------
>>Articles
>>-----------------------------------------------------------------
>>
>>SIZE MATTERS
>>       Michael Adams
>>       American Speech 2007;82 339-340
>>       http://americanspeech.dukejournals.org/cgi/reprint/82/4/339?etoc
>>
>>GULLAH NEGATION: A VARIABLE ANALYSIS
>>       Tracey L. Weldon
>>       American Speech 2007;82 341-366
>>       http://americanspeech.dukejournals.org/cgi/content/abstract/
>>82/4/341?etoc
>>
>>VOWEL DURATION IN THREE AMERICAN ENGLISH DIALECTS
>>       Ewa Jacewicz, Robert A. Fox, and Joseph Salmons
>>       American Speech 2007;82 367-385
>>       http://americanspeech.dukejournals.org/cgi/content/abstract/
>>82/4/367?etoc
>>
>>LIKE AND LANGUAGE IDEOLOGY: DISENTANGLING FACT FROM FICTION
>>       Alexandra D'Arcy
>>       American Speech 2007;82 386-419
>>       http://americanspeech.dukejournals.org/cgi/content/abstract/
>>82/4/386?etoc
>>
>>AMONG THE NEW WORDS
>>       Wayne Glowka, Sarah Wyatt Swanson, Susan Presley, David K.
>>Barnhart,
>>       and Grant Barrett
>>       American Speech 2007;82 420-437
>>       http://americanspeech.dukejournals.org/cgi/reprint/82/4/420?etoc
>>
>>-----------------------------------------------------------------
>>Reviews
>>-----------------------------------------------------------------
>>
>>QUOTATIONS AND CULTURE: The Yale Book of Quotations
>>       Richard W. Bailey
>>       American Speech 2007;82 438-442
>>       http://americanspeech.dukejournals.org/cgi/reprint/82/4/438?etoc
>>
>>AMERICAN DIALECTS RENDERED ACCESSIBLE: American Voices: How Dialects
>>Differ
>>from Coast to Coast
>>       Mark Mabbett
>>       American Speech 2007;82 442-444
>>       http://americanspeech.dukejournals.org/cgi/reprint/82/4/442?etoc
>>
>>------------------------------------------------------------
>>The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
>
>------------------------------------------------------------
>The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org

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