The news as it was written for the newscaster:
“Good evening, I’m Ken Bastida; Dana is off tonight.The result when read off the teleprompter:
He was murdered and then set on fire while celebrating his birthday. The body of Jimmy Frezshi was found by firefighters on Monroe Street…"
“Good evening, I’m Ken Bastida. Dana is off tonight; he was murdered and then set on fire while celebrating his birthday.Reposted from 2009 to add this example from the BBC:
The body of Jimmy Frezshi was found by firefighters on Monroe Street…"
Listen again... "This is BBC World News. I'm Jonathan Charles, kept hidden for almost two decades and forced to bear children."
Reposted from 2012 because I needed a laugh today.
thanks, I was wondering if that was real!
ReplyDeleteHe was murdered and set on fire, and he's only going to be off for one night? Sign me up for that health care plan!
ReplyDeleteActually, he only gets one night off if he's murdered, according to his contract. It's pretty strict. If he doesn't show up tomorrow, and he doesn't call in, he's probably going to be fired.
ReplyDeleteI think he's toast already :)
DeleteHahaha! That's terrible. I shouldn't be laughing. I can't help it though.
DeleteLMAO, omg the BBC clip. Talk about burying the lede.
ReplyDeleteWhat gets me is how modern people think all reasons for grammatical rules that predate them were simply stupid or they really can't think of a good reason why X old-timey rule exists anyway. The arrogance of the new. Yeah, some ideas seemed good at the time and now they've been outgrown but not all or even most. --A.
Ogawd. Thank you for the laugh. That was a lot funnier than it had a right to be. :D
ReplyDeleteJust had to say, "forced to have children" is still making me giggle. --A.
ReplyDeleteI find it strange that commenters are ignoring the blog post title: "A period should signify a full stop".
ReplyDeleteGiven that "period" is the American term and "full stop" the British term for the same punctuation mark, translating the title into British English would yield, "A full stop should signify a full stop".
My attention is drawn as much to the oddness of that construction as to the content of the post.
Adrian, you would be interested in these examples from the very interesting book The Prodigal Tongue:
Delete"And then something unexpected happened: the calque full stop popped over to America. A new version of the idiom in the US uses both: Period. Full Stop.
Barack Obama: "Voters who want to vote should be able to vote. Period. Full stop."
Marc Thiessen, of the American Enterprise Institute: "We do not interrogate terrorists any more. Period. Full Stop."
Music critic David Wild: "Bob Dylan is our greatest living writer. Period. Full Stop."
The Christian Science Monitor refers to this pairing as "the latest Washington cliche."