The BLUNDER BOARD is Baaaack-- Message 8

Ed. Note: We just got back tonight from the Holy Land, where we didn't get a chance to post last week. It was so much more edifying than Blunderland that we quite lost ourselves. But now we're back to the reality of Anthony Cekada's world of goofs, gaffes, and giggles.

From a member of Brazil's large traditional Catholic community:

I examined the accuracy of a critic at Pistrina [Ed. Note: see "Autodidact of the Credence Table"] who complained concerning «obsessive misuse» of the pronoun this. I thought he perhaps exaggerated. I was wrong. I read every page for 5 or 10 seconds. Here is what I found. Some times 1 page shows many examples. I know that more examples can exist which I did not see, but this list proves Cekada lacks education.

Page 31, 36, 38, 39, 46, 63, 74, 111, 124, 125, 133, 145, 148, 155, 163, 164, 168, 175, 180, 204, 190, 191, 202, 210, 211, 215, 216, 243, 248, 273, 280, 289, 323, 328, 329, 331, 332, 333, 334, 341, 358, 364, 365, 375

The Reader Replies: Muito obrigada. You certainly merit a reward for stamina and persistence. On behalf of traditional Catholics in the English-speaking world, I apologize: how unedifying it must be for someone brought up in a tradition that values fine writing and clear thinking to read WHH. I promise that not all traditionalist American priests are so wanting of general culture.

From the looks of it, the little ragamuffin Tony, all backward and blinking, never had the benefit of a louche and trained religious to frighten him into making sure a noun followed the demonstrative. At Pistrina, we understand that modern grammarians now allow a pointing word (demonstrative pronoun) to refer to an antecedent phrase, sentence, or idea. However, the referent must always be readily identifiable. Ambiguity is the problem with so many of the vague references that we encounter in the unreadable WHH. Had Anthony Cekada enjoyed a formal education, he would have acquired a bias for precision and worked harder to assure clear reference.

Happily, our correspondent's list affords an excuse to share outside of a special post another one of our objections to WHH: Anthony's overuse of the offensive jargon phrase as regards ("especially lame," Garner says, "when used to start a sentence"). We don't have the enthusiasm to scan every page, but we do have the notes of Reader #3, who cited the following occurrences of this much disparaged affront to good style and direct expression: pp. 282, 294, 310, 339, 356, 367,and 369.

By the by, like Ko-Ko, we are very pleased with the idea of these little lists. Let's see...

As some day it may happen that That Book won't stay unclosed,

We've got a little list--we've got a little list

Of Cekada's grossest blunders that for truth's sake we've exposed,

And that pains us like a cyst--and pains us like a cyst.

Hmmm. Do you think there's a new blog here? For starters, perhaps The Pirate of Penance or The Mc-plod-o? We're lovin' it.