Jun 27, 2010

A mangle-my-ear sentence

Sentences like this make me irrationally angry:

"Wheeler had walked into two Pittsburgh banks and attempted to rob them in broad daylight."
As opposed to when? The middle of the night? Skinny daylight? Dawn? It's such a stupid comment -- banks are almost always robbed in daylight and daylight is always goddamn broad.

I know to most people it doesn't matter and maybe they're right, but I feel like my ears are being mangled and like a sentence like that should only exist to beat someone with. It's a stupid sentence parading as something important -- oh wow, you're supposed to say, in broad daylight, my my my -- and it's grating and ingratiating and so stupid. It makes me homicidal. And, listen, I know sometimes when you write you're just not thinking and sometimes I write these sentences too, and I know, okay, it happens, and, okay, okay. But, , respect the language.

*deep breath*

It should be noted that the actual piece, Errol Morris' The Anosognosic's Dilemma, looks pretty good, despite that sentence, and, also, the last time a sentence made me mad, I wrote a rash and ridiculously aggressive e-mail to someone I consider a friend. Talk about stupid. I've apologized, but he really deserved better.

It really is irrational, but some sentences, maybe when they're not even important and even when they're fine-whatever ones, I just collaps into self-righteousness and rage.

2 comments:

  1. I actually think that the reason that people write sentences like that is prosody -- the emphasis at the end of two words ending on hard consonants of closure is like a little drum flourish. It has almost nothing to do with WHAT is being said.

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  2. Yeah, I think that's true, but, still, it's not an eiher-or, and they could find another way to say it and maintain the prosody.

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