   | WE TWO ~ Victoria and Albert: Rulers, Partners, Rivals by Gillian Gill "In the Queen's childhood, her mother had adjured her to grow tall like her father and his royal brothers, but Victoria had been unable to comply. Her supporters claimed she was five feet one inch; her detractors gave her a bare four ten. In the gutter press, she was known as "Little Vic," which rankled with her. Fortunately, horses, thrones, and sweeping staircases were standard issue for a queen, and Victoria made full use of them." "In the evenings and at weekends when the queen was, as it were, off duty, Melbourne, Palmerston, Melbourne's sister, Lady Emily Cowper, Lady Cowper's daughters, sons-in-law, and grandchildren, together with various members of the charming and rakish Paget clan, were key members of the Queen's domestic circle. The Pagets were relative newcomers to the English aristocracy and had risen in society in large part because they were handsome, energetic, and fun, and thus invaluable in relieving the tedium of court life, especially for the sovereign." "Palmerston was also amusing and well informed, and in the long, tedious palace evenings in the year after [Albert's] marriage, the prince enjoyed discussing European affairs with the foreign secretary. Albert was gratified when his line of argument seemed to win, failing to realize that Palmerston had lived at court for far too long to fall out with Her Majesty's husband over the port." |
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News today of the death of Christopher Hitchens was sad, though not unexpected.
The universe of the written word is far poorer with Hitchens' passing. Personally, I often marvelled that, armed with the same lexicon that we all have at our disposal, he did things with it that left me agog. The overall wit that he dislayed in the process, of course, was superlative. Whether you agreed with any point that he made, you had to admire his craft in making it. Choose any of his columns here to sample, and you will concur:  Client needs brochure, STAT! Happily, we set up a template weeks ago, so that when these last minute needs arise, all we have to do is fill in some blanks, pop a picture into the assigned space, print out the required number -- and Bob's your Uncle! Marketing crisis anticipated, and averted. Holiday punctuation 9-1-1 received today: Oh, Guru of Grammar, I'm writing our holiday cards and I'm stumped. Should I use dashes or commas? "We've had a rockin'-awesome-crazy-wonderful-fantabulous-extraordinary-superb kind of year."
The answer in this example is to use commas. The dashes join a string of words or a whole phrase into a single word, for syntax/punctuation purposes. But you're just using a lot of modifiers as themselves...a string of modifiers. So, separate them with commas! The example I like to use is: She got that creepy, shivery, something's-under-the-bed feeling.... See how you have an example of both adjectives separated by commas and another set of words connected by hyphens to behave like another adjective in the list? Note: Adjective = a word that describes (or modifies) a thing  Hot off the virtual press: Image Management's November/December newsletter. Write and Polish has been honored to serve as proofreader on this publication. Enjoy! Post scriptum: 9 December, more on SOPA and PIPA.  Social/electronic marketers, take note: this article discusses QR codes and what might be next. There is also an interesting interview with Jeff Hayzlett, former CMO/VP at Kodak. There are two vidoes posted here, the first is a snippet out of the second; skip it and just listen to the second one in its entirety (only 4 minutes). We find the ability to put a logo inside is very persuasive. Hayzlett also makes an excellent point about the continued 1-to-1 correlation between quality/success in 3D and online! |
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