[Ads-l] [Non-DoD Source] Re: "man" avoidance
Jonathan Lighter
wuxxmupp2000 at GMAIL.COM
Mon Sep 26 21:58:57 UTC 2016
So retro.
"A *human* named..." is undoubtedly what we prefer today.
JL
On Mon, Sep 26, 2016 at 1:49 PM, Laurence Horn <laurence.horn at yale.edu>
wrote:
> > On Sep 26, 2016, at 12:42 PM, MULLINS, WILLIAM D (Bill) CIV USARMY
> RDECOM AMRDEC (US) <william.d.mullins18.civ at MAIL.MIL> wrote:
> >
> >>
> >> It's like the middle-schooler who writes, _Ulysses_ is a book by a man
> named James Joyce."
> >>
> >> "A man named" adds nothing to the sentence . . .
> >
> > Unless the assignment is "Give me a 100 word book report." "A man named
> " gets you 3% farther down the road.
> >
> >
> But "...a human being named...", while less informative than "...a man
> named...", does add an additional word.
>
> LH
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------
> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
>
--
"If the truth is half as bad as I think it is, you can't handle the truth."
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