reach for the sky (UNCLASSIFIED)

[Jonathan Lighter]

My practice.

Thirty years ago an anonymous referee castigated (no, ridiculed) an
HDAS-related proposal of mine on the basis that a publication date is
misleading.  The phrase was something like, "Does Lighter really believe
that literary works are written in the same year as they are published?"  He
went on to explain that on that basis, HDAS was a silly idea.

That made me sensitive. OED chooses (as a rule) strictly to observe the year
of publication. HDAS prefers the year(s) of composition, if known to
differ. (FWIW, I have seen books in bookstores in October that were
"copyright" the following year.)

And yes, Raine could have changed "Reach for the stars!" into "Reach for the
sky!" moments before book publication in 1911. But probably he didn't, and
science is a matter of probabilities.

Of course, anyone writing a learned disquisition on "Reach for the sky!"
would be expected to verify the phrase's existence in 1910 before
discoursing. HDAS did not have that luxury of time, and old habits, good or
bad, die hard.

JL

On Mon, Mar 28, 2011 at 11:12 AM, Laurence Horn <laurence.horn at yale.edu>wrote:

> ---------------------- Information from the mail header
> -----------------------
> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       Laurence Horn <laurence.horn at YALE.EDU>
> Subject:      Re: reach for the sky (UNCLASSIFIED)
>
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> At 9:52 AM -0500 3/28/11, Mullins, Bill AMRDEC wrote:
> >Classification: UNCLASSIFIED
> >Caveats: NONE
> >
> >>
> >>  1910 William MacLeod Raine _A Texas Ranger_  (N.Y.: Grosset & Dunlap,
> >1911)
> >>  154: "Now, reach for the sky, and prompt, too." ...The deputy disarmed
> >his
> >>  captive.
> >>
> >>
> >
> >Why the 1910 dating if the book was published in 1911?
> >
> Is the practice to cite the quote based on the book publication but
> date it according to its (slightly) earlier serialized appearance?
> (I'm not saying I remember reading Raine's "Texas Ranger" in a
> periodical the year before the book was published, I'm just thinking
> that could be a factor here and possibly elsewhere.)
>
> LH
>
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