Do not believe what they say about shall and will, that the difference between them is unimportant and not worth the trouble to understand. You will hear this from some teachers and read it in some manuals, but there is a meaningful distinction to be made between these two verbs, tricky though it might be …
Author Archives: rultimo
Logic in a Time of Confusion
The pundits say—well, the pundits say a lot of things, and too often it can be difficult to figure out the truth in public discourse, whether political, commercial, or social. We have learned as a culture to carve out rivers of words, and when we have to brave those torrents, as we all have to …
On the Need of an Orderly Mind
That is a section heading in the introduction to William Follett’s Modern American Usage, edited and completed by Jacques Barzun and others in 1966, and if my sense of our cultural moment is at all vivid, the phrase will strike us as piquantly quaint—a nice enough idea, but surely old fashioned these days. In that …
Producing Tone
The great Austrian poet Rilke was a friend of the great French sculptor Rodin, each making symbols in different media, Rilke in words and Rodin in bronze. Poets and sculptors and artists of every kind are often lonely figures, sensing themselves isolated and the heart of their work not understood. Rodin, though, believed that Rilke …
Logic, Emotion, Reason
If we were only logical creatures, confronting a contradiction would be enough to give us pause. If I said with real passion for my homeland that everyone is welcome here, but some, of course, are not, I would be contradicting myself outright, and you would know to be wary of other opinions I might hold …