[Ads-l] [Non-DoD Source] Re: "man" avoidance

[Jonathan Lighter]

JIm Acosta, CNN:

"But isn't that a bit of a strawhorse argument?"

JL

On Mon, Sep 26, 2016 at 5:58 PM Jonathan Lighter <wuxxmupp2000 at gmail.com>
wrote:

> 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."
>


-- 
"If the truth is half as bad as I think it is, you can't handle the truth."

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