09.06.08

Infamous flying lesson’s

Posted in language misuse, punctuation, word misuse at 9:45 am by Bill Brohaugh

Noted and cringed at:

In an otherwise enlightening blog entry:

When I came out of grad school I landed a literary internship at the infamous Joseph Papp Public Theater in NYC and I had the fortune of co-dramaturging Don Cheadle’s play GROOMED.

Infamous? Has this renowned theater gone bad? Perhaps there were student’s there:

appallingostrophe

As has been pointed out, maybe this is correct, after all—maybe it’s simply a contraction of singular “student is.”

Or perhaps the theater is infamous because the actor’s, intern’s and student’s are dodging golf balls. Here’s a note from infamous JohnnyB, regarding a newspaper article about a school next door to a driving range:

I found this quote interesting.

So far no children have been hit by errant golf balls, although some have flown over the playground and a few cars have been hit.

Flying children would seem to be more noteworthy than flying golf balls, but that’s just my opinion.

4 Comments »

  1. Keith Josef Adkins said,

    September 6, 2008 at 11:04 am

    Bill. Thanks for stopping by the Root and thanks for sticking my face into that “infamous” pile of bad word usage. LOL.

    Noted and CHANGED.

    Thanks,

    Keith Josef Adkins
    TheRoot.com

  2. Bill Brohaugh said,

    September 6, 2008 at 3:04 pm

    Thanks for checking in, Keith. I appreciate the good humor–and the change, too.

    While I have you on the line, may I express my compliments for your successes in the theater, a demanding and fascinating artform that I pursued myself for a time, and was unable to conquer. And may I express my jealousy for your being able to work with Don Cheadle. He’s one of the industry’s best, and his performances never fail to engage.

  3. Fritinancy said,

    September 6, 2008 at 5:05 pm

    This is far from an isolated instance of this odd use of “infamous.” I wrote about it myself here: http://tinyurl.com/5y9tm6

    I suspect it’s similar to “irregardless”: the use of a prefix (any prefix) as an intensifier.

    As for apostrophe abuse, while watching the RNC (you can thank me later) I spotted a sign on the convention floor that read “College Republican’s for McCain.”

  4. Bill Brohaugh said,

    September 7, 2008 at 10:57 am

    At least it wasn’t “College Republican’s for M’Cain.”

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