[Ads-l] fewofa

[Ben Zimmer]

On Fri, Jan 2, 2015 at 10:46 AM, Jonathan Lighter wrote:
>
> Historian Douglas Brinkley on CNN:
>
> "It's amazing how much Lincoln could say in so few of a words."
>
> Let's see if this is corrected in the transcript.

CNN's utterly unreliable transcript reads:

http://edition.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/1501/02/cnr.03.html
"...he [Mario Cuomo] worked on books on Abraham Lincoln and was amazed
that Lincoln could say so much in the Gettysburg address or
emancipation proclamation and so few words."

I found the clip in the TV News Archive on archive.org (a terrific resource):

https://archive.org/details/CNNW_20150102_150000_CNN_Newsroom_With_Carol_Costello#start/1180/end/1200

Here's how I would transcribe it:

"He worked on books on Abraham Lincoln and was always very amazed that
Lincoln could say so much, in the Gettysburg Address or Emancipation
Proclamation, in so few of words."

Definitely hearing it as "so few of words," not "so few of a words."

--bgz

-- 
Ben Zimmer
http://benzimmer.com/

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