Comments on: >Go west, young man, WEST!

By: Bardo

Bardo — Sun, 18 Sep 2011 12:59:34 +0000

Superior thinknig demonstrated above. Thanks!

By: Deborah

Deborah — Sun, 28 Dec 2008 19:25:00 +0000

>I belatedly note that gri-MACE is the pronunciation favored by older British sources and is indeed still considered acceptable. There’s even a poem about the “arriviste” pronunciation GRIM-iss.

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Tue, 23 Dec 2008 04:13:00 +0000

>These things exist to thrill the copy editors among us. Where would we be without our chances to show off?

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Tue, 23 Dec 2008 04:09:00 +0000

>these errors exist to thrill the copy editors among us

By: Becky Young byseabury@yahoo.com

Becky Young byseabury@yahoo.com — Sat, 20 Dec 2008 23:56:00 +0000

>In Grey’s Anatomy, set in Seattle, the latte capital of the world, Bailey kept asking people to bring her a “mocha latte.” What’s that? She either would order a mocha or a latte.

And in “Sleepless in Seattle,” there’s no way Tom Hanks and son would have rowed a little boat from their house boat on Lake Union all the way to Alki Beach in West Seattle. They would have had to go through the Ballard Locks with all the big yachts and ocean-going vessels, then out on Puget Sound for quite a distance.

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Fri, 19 Dec 2008 19:56:00 +0000

>More proof Sally went to Northwestern… she faked her Big O.

Signed, a fellow UC grad

By: Roger Sutton

Roger Sutton — Fri, 19 Dec 2008 16:29:00 +0000

>I’ve been listening to the audiobook of the second Maisie Dobbs mystery, where at one point the heroine “gri-MACED.” I wondered if this was one of those British pecularities like prin-CESS or ur-I-nal but I got Egmont’s Doug Pocock on the phone to say the word like he was back home. Nope, the narrator simply messed up, much as in that memorable Lily Tomlin routine in which she recalls herself reading aloud in school, and all is fine until she gets to the word “island,” and became known as Lily “Iz-land” Tomlin for the rest of her schooldays.

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Fri, 19 Dec 2008 16:27:00 +0000

>You’re right, Roger. It’s a don’t sweat the small stuff question. It may drive me crazy (and, frankly, make me feel a little smug) to know when someone makes a local mistake. The big problem is when does the small stuff become the big stuff? When does the weight of inaccuracies alter the sense of time and place?

Betty Carter

By: Jennifer Schultz

Jennifer Schultz — Fri, 19 Dec 2008 16:14:00 +0000

>I’m very critical of movies set in New Orleans. Characters with the stereotypical Southern accents, Mardi Gras parades in the French Quarter (there are none), Cajuns living in New Orleans….this will ruin a movie for me.

I am amused, more than annoyed, by the requisite slow ceiling fans (they do have air conditioning there), jazz funeral, and voodoo queen.

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Fri, 19 Dec 2008 13:38:00 +0000

>My husband, an ardent birder, rose screaming from his movie seat when we saw "Mary Poppins" in Cardiff, Wales. It happened when the robin was singing and twittering away in a duet with the nun Maria. . .oops, with Mary P.

It was an American robin, a large thrush with a red breast when everyone in the movie theater knew an English robin is a much smaller non-thrush bird with an orangey breast.

He didn't make any kind of fuss about Dick Van Dyke's accent.