Block · one region of the page, as the scanner read it. It may hold a whole story, part of one, several, or an advertisement; stitching blocks into articles is the next step. Text is supplied OCR.
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The draft read, “There is much that we can agree on.” Fearful of ending a sentence with a preposition - horrid thought! - Sup iutendent Reed made a change. There is much upon which we can agree,” she said. She stuck by the rule, the “much” smushed close to the “which,” and the sentence fell.
The same slavish obedience could be seen in Washington state some months ago. A TV reporter was writing about a gentleman named Stein who had been booted out of a restaurant. Evidently this sort of thing had happened before. Said the reporter: “The Blue Shamrock may be the only place in town out of which Stein has not been kicked.”
The sentence was grammatically pure, but I stumbled over the syntax. Would it have been better to write, “the only place in town that Stein hasn’t been kicked out of?” I think so, but it’s a judgement call.
I write some pretty heavy stuff about the Supreme Court. It’s formal writing, and here I stick by the established rules. But not all writing is formal writing, and once a writer has mastered the rules, a writer must know when to bend them. As the ballad tells us, you got to know when to hold and know when to fold. Please, ma’am, allow us a little room to turn around in.
COPYRIGHT 1993
UNIVERSAL PRESS
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