Monday, May 13, 2013

Mystery, Joni Mitchell and less and fewer

Another lamp post reveals the mysteries of its surface.

Just at the moment I find myself listening  a lot to Joni Mitchell whose songs I enjoy as much as the pitch of her voice.   I believe that the originator  of Tone Deaf mentions her from time to time.  I was tipped off about her years ago by someone whose name I have been trying to remember, and who was not unknown to RR. He was was mad about music of all sorts, but possessed a  vapid character which it was difficult to warm to. Problem was that I didn't appreciate Joni back then. Perhaps I should have paid more attention to him   It is only now that I have become a fan. "You don't know what you've got till it's gone."

I warm to Ian Martin who wrote in The Guardian, "The scarier the world becomes, the more important it is to focus on the correct use of "less" and "fewer". It is not pedantry. It is rather submitting to the moral imperative which underlies grammar.

 

1 comment:

Roderick Robinson said...

Other commenters, and esp. Lucy, may recall the Joni enthusiast as (a) the guy who turned up to dinner with us saying he hadn't brought a bottle of wine because he hadn't passed an off-licence (in fact he'd passed three) and (2) invited us to a veggie dinner which included sprout samosas (or some such) and demanded Beef Wellington when we extended the return invitation. He didn't get it, by the way. I decided to drop him and to make this abundantly clear passed on the message via a mutual acquaintance. It's not surprising you forgot his name; it wasn't memorable.