Bookish news: Diagramming Sarah Palin's sentences, wordplay and more
Parsing the statements of politicians has never been an easy task. But diagramming their sentences? Well, Slate takes up the challenge, diagramming the sentences of Sarah Palin. Above, Kitty Burns Florey worked on "I know that John McCain will do that and I, as his vice president, families we are blessed with that vote of the American people and are elected to serve and are sworn in on January 20, that will be our top priority is to defend the American people," giving up when it began to resemble the molecular structure of a chemical compound. Florey, author of "Sister Bernadette's Barking Dog," is a supremely expert sentence diagrammer, but Palin's syntax was just too much.
Big Orange Landmarks, the site that's visiting every cultural and historic landmark in Los Angeles in sequential order, fails to find No. 185, which was where Pepperdine University began (despite its landmark status, No. 185 -- President's House -- was razed in the 1980s). Pepperdine is now located in Malibu.
Creative Loafing, the Tampa, Fla.-based newsweekly parent, continues to publish but has filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection. Creative Loafing owns the Washington City Paper, the Chicago Reader and a handful of other noted alternative weeklies. All intentions, as of the Sept. 29 filing, were to continue to do business.
One of its properties, Creative Loafing Atlanta, has voted Wordsmiths Books as "best place for author readings/signings." Take note if you're headed down to Georgia.
The devil -- who, they say, once went down to Georgia -- will find more of a welcome there than in Tampa. That city's baseball team, the Rays, were in last place for years when they were known as the Devil Rays. This year's name change has brought them all the way to the playoffs. That which we call a Devil Ray, to paraphrase Shakespeare, would not rule the American League East.
-- Carolyn Kellogg
Image: Sarah Palin sentence diagram by Kitty Burns Florey for Slate
I teach composition to juniors in high school and I have begun to label my students' run on or confusing sentences as "writing Sarah Palin Style" or SPS in the side margins on their essay drafts. I will definitely share this piece with them when we diagram sentences.
Posted by: dhamill | October 09, 2008 at 01:46 PM