I just spent an hour writing a very reflective entry about Leonard's Welcome-Back Ukulele. It was a very touching piece. Since I am typing here at the RCC Reading and Writing Center, my weekend teaching gig, and the computer was giving me some problems, I decided to save it as a draft and fix it up when I got home this afternoon. It seems to have disappeared altogether.
Now I know how Hemingway must have felt at the Paris train station when Hadley forgot the suitcase with all of his short story manuscripts. The internet is the train station. This computer is Hadley. And I, of course, am Hemingway.
Actually, I guess this computer is Pauline, the woman with whom Hemingway had an affair and later divorced Hadley to marry. My computer at home would be Hadley. Of course, I'll never leave her for this computer. I'll just buy a new computer and store her in my garage, planning on copying her hard drive, but never getting around to it.
4 comments:
Yah, too bad about your data loss. Dan would say "Get a Mac!". But then, you don't know Dan... I guess you and Pauline and your new Garage Mistress will have to survive on the Windows OS.
By the way, as an English teacher (or maybe as you),
How do you feel about moving punctuation that is not actually part of the quote to the outside of the quotation marks? I would like our language to change to allow this.
I found the missing data, fortunately. I'm not sure what you mean about quotational punctuation.
Dan said "Get a Mac!".
versus
Dan said "Get a Mac!"
There are better examples, but I'm tired...
OIC. Dan said,"Get a Mac!". Is redundant, punctuationally speaking. In fact, instead of leaving off with the passion od an excalmation point, you follow with a whimpy period-thus robbing your sentence of all your drama. It would be like Ian jumping around at the end of the Survivor Finale shouting "I came in third! I came in third!"
Whereas, letting the exclamation point end both the quotation and the sentence is getting twice the bang for your punctuation buck.
The bottom line is that it's a rule because it's a rule.
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