Single-mindedly working on getting this book done. Just sent the following note to Peter and Wendy who are going over the parts as they get them.
Movie names should be italicized. I haven't been doing that. So please put an xx after them. You don't have to write "italicize." I'll know what to do. I think you know that I don't like quote marks around names so even if it's a short story or article or anything that's supposed to have quote marks I'd rather use italics or nothing. I also don't like quotes around words used as unfamiliar terms, nicknames, or words used as words if the meaning is clear without them. Quote marks around quotes are fine of course. So anything I've neglected which is most of it, please just xx.
I think I got my aversion to quotes from reading people's year end letters that were full of them with such sentences as <We all had a "wonderful time" this summer.> Really. It drove me batty.
One word that's been lost but which I like and miss is fewer. I don't like to see less used for number but it's locked in now. (See - it doesn't need quote marks because it's obvious.) I like may as in "may I borrow this" though "can" doesn't bother me. (I thought can needed some help there.) Can has been accepted for may since I was a kid so people can't answer to "Can I go with you?" anymore with "I don't know, can you?"
As James Kirkpatrick pointed out forty years ago, "We've lost the word 'gay.'" (He would have used the quotes around gay there.)
The worst to me that is close to becoming accepted is "I" as the object as in, "He gave the book to JIm and I." It's everywhere.
I don't know what to do about who and whom. I can see whom is going out of style and sometimes it seems stodgy. But I can't say "for who the bells toll."
My father had a problem with who and whom going out of style too - but in a different way. He was into diction and his generation pronounced the H in who and whom and other words that began with wh. It had H air in it like an F sound has F air. He used to grill me on it. I was hopeless though.
