The KellyGram

Published by Bob Kelly

Resident Wordsmith and Quotemeister

WordCrafters, Inc.

www.wordcrafters.info

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In This Issue:

• The Quote Corner (Words)
• "Sticklers Unite!"
• Chiasmus Revisited
• Smile Awhile
• Back Issues
• A Final Word

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THE QUOTE CORNER (Words)

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All words are pegs to hang ideas on.

Henry Ward Beecher

Theres a great power in words, if you dont hitch too many of them together.

Josh Billings

To speak of "mere words" is much like speaking of "mere dynamite."

C.J. Ducasse

Gentle words, quiet words, are, after all, the most powerful words. They are more convincing, more compelling, more prevailing.

Washington Gladden

Words are chameleons, which reflect the color of their environment.

Learned Hand

Words so innocent and powerless as they are, as standing in a dictionary, how potent for good and evil they become in the hands of one who knows how to combine them.

Nathaniel Hawthorne

Words form the threads on which we string our experiences.

Aldous Huxley

It is a weak mind that can think of only one way to spell a word.

Andrew Jackson

The most valuable talent is that of never using two words when one will do.

Thomas Jefferson

Words are, of course, the most powerful drug used by mankind.

Rudyard Kipling

Jesus showed great range of emotion in his words. When he whispered, Simon wept and John sobbed. When he thundered, Lazarus came forth from the tomb.

Virgil A. Reed

Be brief; for it is with words as with sunbeams. The more they are condensed, the deeper they burn.

Robert Southey

Words are vehicles that can transport us from the drab sands to the dazzling stars.

M. Robert Syme

Words are seductive and dangerous material to be used with caution.

Barbara Tuchman

Pleasant words are a honeycomb, sweet to the soul and healing to the bones.

The Bible: Proverbs 16:24

Words are the voice of the heart.

Anonymous

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"STICKLERS UNITE!"

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In March 1956, Lerner and Loewes great musical production, My Fair Lady, debuted on Broadway. Among its many hit tunes was: "Why Cant the English Teach Their Children How to Speak," in which Professor Henry Higgins (played by Rex Harrison), laments the sorry state of the English language, and makes this observation: "In America they havent used it for years."

That seems to be as true today as it was nearly a half-century ago. Despite the ongoing battle fellow word lovers and I (sticklers all) have been waging against the forces of illiteracy, it often seems futile. Its almost impossible to pick up a newspaper or magazine, or listen to a news broadcast, without seeing or hearing such statements as: "This is where Im at," "It was a victory for he and Jones," "It was taken off of the agenda," etc.

The growth of the Internet, which gave birth to such phenomena as emails, chat rooms and blogs, has only made a bad situation worse, as nearly every rule of punctuation and grammar seems to have been sacrificed on the altar of brevity.

All may not be lost, however. In the midst of this literary darkness, a light has begun to shine, and is growing brighter every day. In began last year, with the release in Great Britain of a book entitled Eats, Shoots and Leaves, by a British journalist named Lynne Truss.

Subtitled "The Zero Tolerance Approach to Punctuation," it seemed an unlikely candidate for stardom. However, much to the surprise of the author, and virtually everyone else, the book took England by storm, selling more than 500,000 copies. First published in the United States in April of this year, it quickly climbed to #2 on the New York Times Nonfiction Bestseller List and currently ranks #6 on Amazon.

Not only is Eats, Shoots and Leaves a delight to read, but its amazing success offers a ray of hope that the literacy battle we have been waging for so long has not been entirely in vain. The authors battle cry is "Sticklers Unite!" Ive never thought of myself in that term but, as one whose nightly ritual includes yelling "You idiot" at the TV weatherman as he announces what the temperature is expected to be: "tomorrow morning at 11 a.m.," I guess I qualify. And thats just fine with me.

The constant misuse of "íts" and "its" has long been among the greatest burrs under my editors saddle, perhaps because the difference is so easy to grasp. "Its" always and only is a contraction for "it is" or "it has." In every other case, the word is "its." So, author Truss especially endeared herself to me when she wrote: "No matter that you have a PhDif you still persist in writing, Good food at its best, you deserve to be struck by lightning, hacked up on the spot and buried in an unmarked grace."

Whether or not you consider yourself a stickler for proper punctuation, we strongly recommend that you rush out and buy a copy of Eats, Shoots and Leaves. Its a delight to read at any time, whether its 6 a.m. in the morning or 11 p.m. at night.

By the way, if youre wondering how this book got its name, we refer you to the "Smile Awhile" feature in this issue of The KellyGram.

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CHIASMUS REVISITED

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In our March 2004 issue, we reported that one of our readers, Michelle Cubas, had called our attention to a particular figure of speech that was new to us. Called "chiasmus," its defined as "an inversion in the order of words in two corresponding parallel phrases or clauses, or of words when repeated." An example: "People dont care how much you know until they know how much you care." Michelle was also kind enough to tell us she found it at the following website: http://www.earnestspeakers.com/figuresofspeech.html.

We decided to do a bit more research on the subject, which led us to a weekly ezine called: Dr. Mardys Quotes Of The Week: A Weekly Celebration of Chiastic, Oxymoronic, & Paradoxical Quotations, published by Dr. Mardy Grothe, a Rhode Island-based psychologist, speaker and "quotation anthologist."

Each week, he features excellent quotations, along with some fascinating information about the individuals he quotes. For a free subscription, send a blank email message to: chiasmus-on@mail-list.com. You may also want to look in on his websites: www.drmardygrothe.com; www.chiasmus.com; and www.oxymoronica.com.
For this "quotation anthologist," this has been a real find, and were doubly grateful to Michelle for pointing us in this direction.

Were now in the process of reviewing our own extensive collection of quotations to uncover those which qualify as chiastic. Watch for them in a future issue of The KellyGram.

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SMILE AWHILE

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A panda walks into a café, orders a sandwich, eats it, then draws a gun and fires two shots into the ceiling. "Why?" asks the confused waiter, as the panda heads for the exit.

Producing a poorly punctuated wildlife manual, the panda tosses it to the waiter, saying, "Im a panda. Look it up."

The waiter turns to the relevant entry and, sure enough, finds the explanation: "Panda: large black-and-white bear-like mammal, native to China. Eats, shoots and leaves."

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BACK ISSUES AVAILABLE

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A number of our readers have expressed interest in seeing previous issues of The KellyGram, and were pleased to announce that theyre available on our website: www.wordcrafters.info.

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A FINAL WORD

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Not one shred of evidence supports the notion that life is serious.

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