In a current advertisement for Juvederm, an injectable gel that treats wrinkles, we receive a beauty lesson and a punctuation tutorial all in one. The ad starts out innocently enough with the line “So smooth and natural, everyone will notice (but no one will know).” While this sentence has issues with ambiguity, its parentheses are employed beautifully. “But no one will know” is set off artfully from the rest of the sentence with parentheses, as opposed to a mere comma or a dash, as a means of deemphasizing the phrase, implying that it is something to be whispered. But what, may I ask, is going on in the rest of the ad?
We stand humbled in the presence of this most heavenly grammar critique. Hats off to The Soup!
After last week’s extensive discussion of octopoid conjugation and etymology, we at Academic Approach could not have been more intrigued to see today’s breaking news on CNN’s website: “World’s first six-legged octopus discovered.” Thank you, CNN, most sincerely, for covering this topic. However, in case you decide to do more reporting in this field, we do have a few points to address—six to be exact…
February 25, 2008 – 12:23 PM
Allow me to proffer one more sphere of activity for parents to worry about when contemplating their teenagers’ sometimes self-destructive on-line activity. I do not speak here of pedophiles or pornographers. Rather, I speak of the nefarious purveyors of bad grammar advice who populate internet grammar-help sites where they dispense their perversely incorrect insights upon the subtleties of English grammar
February 22, 2008 – 8:55 AM
When I found this video of an octopus frolicking gleefully across the ocean floor on two of its legs, I said to my well-meaning colleague, “could anything be better than a video of an octopus frolicking gleefully across the ocean floor on two of its legs?” “Yes,” my colleague replied, “a video of two octopi frolicking gleefully across the ocean floor on four of their collective legs would be better.” “No,” my more demanding colleague chimed in, noting “the video should contain three octopuses and six gleeful, frolicking legs or none at all.” At this point my grouchiest colleague added his unsolicited response, insisting that “best yet would be no octopodes frolicking on any gleeful legs anywhere at all.” Octopi? Octopuses? Octopodes? Which colleague was the best grammarian of the sea?