pet peeves

[George Thompson]

I have been reading the Times Literary Supplement for 30 or more years,
going back to when its articles were all unsigned.
I used to think that it kept a couple of pre-set-up slugs in its printing
office, for use when reviewing an American book.  If the review was on the
whole favorable, then they pulled out slug "A", which read something like
"It is a pity that this otherwise excellent book should be marred by a
number of ghastly Americanisms".  If the review was negative, that called
for slug "B": "This book, worthless as it is, is made even more repellant
by a number of ghastly Americanisms".
Actually, I rather miss those days.
The current hullabaloo in England over the doings of Rupert and his pimps is
nothing compared to the crisis when TLS began to print signed reviews.
 "First we lost India; then Suez; and now. . . !"

By the way: my own pet peeve is the expression "pet peeve".
Please avoid it hereafter.

GAT

On Wed, Jul 20, 2011 at 7:10 PM, victor steinbok <aardvark66 at gmail.com>wrote:

> BBC finally put up its list of 50 "offensive" or "irritating" Americanisms
> and it's every bit as ridiculous as was expected. Mark Liberman covered the
> initial article on LL and Pullum followed up with a post on the 50. It's
> hard not to read it without laughing--it's reminiscent of early days of
> Wikipedia in that the information is unverified, at best, and represents
> mostly very personal, non-extendable views.
>
> http://goo.gl/sSb0n
>
> High-school newspapers have better researched pieces. (Note, in particular,
> that a substantial number of selections come from US-based correspondents
> and obvious ESL correspondents.) The list tops off with "I could care less"
> as one such "Americanism".
>
> VS-)
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------
> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
>



--
George A. Thompson
Author of A Documentary History of "The African Theatre", Northwestern Univ.
Pr., 1998, but nothing much since then.

------------------------------------------------------------
The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org