Monday, May 21, 2007

Progress on the journalistic front

It's been a while since Russell Smith published anything language-related in the Globe & Mail. But on May 17th he addressed the issue of try and...

I'm very pleased to say, it is a very different approach than he has taken in the past. First, he sets out the alternatives. Then he explores various syntactical variations that argue against the try and... formulation. Next he discusses other verbs that allow the same pattern. This is followed by a historical overview of usage by famous writers and a reference to Fowler's assertion that there may be a subtle difference between try and and try to. Finally, Smith presents his own opinion.

Bravo!

2 comments:

The Ridger, FCD said...

Just wondering - is this article worth paying for?

Brett said...

No. Don't pay for it.

I don't know why the link asks you to pay. If you search for "Trust me, writing headlines isn't easy" on google, you should be able to get a free version. But when I link to that free version, all you get is the partial view.