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QUOTATIONS, MISQUOTATIONS AND MISATTRIBUTIONS

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  “There is no problem that the mind of man can set, that the mind of man cannot solve.” I have always attributed this quotation to Dr. Samuel Johnson; however, it seems I was wrong. I have been unable to authenticate it from Johnson’s writings. Where, then, did I get it from? Google led me to Dr. Terence Meaden’s CV, in which he attributes these very words to Dr. Johnson. Misquotations abound, as do misattributions, but what are we to do about them? Must we double-check every quotation we encounter for the first time? I suggest that, when we cannot trace a quotation to its original source, we should at least identify the source from which we have taken it. In this case, we might write: “As Dr. Terence Meaden attributes it to Dr. Johnson in his online CV: ‘There is no problem that the mind of man can set that the mind of man cannot solve.’” It is not proof that Johnson said it, of course. But at least we are being honest about our source. Is that not preferable to perpetuating a po...
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ANNE CARSON - NOBEL IN LITERATURE 2026

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  I think the Nobel Prize in Literature is an event worth looking forward to. This year, 2026, it has been awarded to Anne Carson (1950–), a Canadian poet, essayist, translator, and teacher. I should have known that she was the recipient of the Spanish Princess of Asturias Award for Literature in 2020. I dutifully follow the proceedings on television from Oviedo every year in the fall, but somehow I missed her. This is therefore another of my literary confessions: I had never heard of Anne Patricia Carson. To my shame, I suppose. I tender my congratulations to her and to the English-language literary world. The fact that she has devoted so much of her life to Greek and classical literature in this day and age says something about her, and perhaps also about the enduring power of the humanities. We have someone comparable in Spain: Professor Irene Vallejo, author of the well-known El infinito en un junco ( Papyrus: The Invention of Books in the Ancient World ). These two women have...
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BREVITY IN WRITING

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Shakespeare comes to our aid often, as in this case about brevity in speech and writing:   Therefore, since brevity is the soul of wit , And tediousness the limbs and outward flourishes, I will be brief . Your noble son is mad. . . . ( Hamlet, Act 2, scene 2. )
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LANGUAGE, WRITING, AND ENGLISH

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Writing is, in some respects, more difficult than speaking. There is greater scope for misunderstanding when the writer is not there to explain, qualify, or correct what he has written. Faulty punctuation, grammar, or syntax can distort or even deform one's meaning in ways that speech, with its intonation and immediate context, often prevents. But why should we attempt to write in English if we have another language at our disposal? Nathan Heller gives us an intriguing answer in The New Yorker . Writers able to choose their working languages—Joseph Conrad, Jorie Graham, Vladimir Nabokov—often end up writing in English because, as Conrad reportedly put it, “English is so plastic.”
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EFFECTIVE WRITING SKILLS

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1.      Active and selective reading. 2.      Acquisition of words. 3.      Study of basic grammar.  4.      Proper p unctuation. 5.      The ability to use reference books, on paper or online. 6.      The mindful care for one’s readers.
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I DON'T HAVE A STITCH TO WEAR

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Plenty of jokes go around about women with a full wardrobe who claim they don't have a stitch to wear .  We hear that not only in English, but also in many other languages, I bet. No tengo nada que ponerme  I have heard many times in my married life. Carmen Martín Gaite, who was an expert on women, writes in her Usos amorosos en la posguerra española , 1987, "Yo no puedo ir. No tengo nada que ponerme." Not being a psychologist or sociologist, I ignore why females in general say this, contrary to fact and reality. It is a fact, however, that the ready-made phrase exists and can be attested in the American Scholar, for example, Autumn 2015, where we can read: "She seemed excited about the wedding, drawling that she hadn't a stitch to wear." I belong to a generation when men and women had few garments and wore the same day after day. So, I suspect that the expression is of recent coinage.  
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A PIN DROP AND EL VUELO DE UNA MOSCA

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I lost the hearing in my left ear when I was about six years old, owing to otitis media. This has certain advantages: at night I rest my right ear on the pillow and shut out the world. Everything becomes quiet and still, and I cannot oír el vuelo de una mosca —literally, “hear the flight of a fly.” As usual, English has a counterpart: one can hear a pin drop . Both expressions describe an extraordinary degree of silence. Try it sometime: go into a soundproof room, drop a pin, and listen. Or, better still, let a fly loose in the same room and see whether you can hear the flapping of its wings. How fascinating sound is—and how differently languages find ways of expressing its absence.
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