Jose Carillo's English Forum - Advice and Dissent

ADVICE AND DISSENT

This section features discussions on education, learning and teaching, and language with particular focus on English. The primary subjects to be taken up here are notable advocacies and contrary viewpoints in these disciplines and their allied fields. Our primary aim is to clarify matters and issues of importance to language and learning, provide intelligent and useful instruction, promote rational and critical thinking, and enhance the individual’s overall capacity for discernment.

Writer-actor Stephen Fry’s response to grammar Nazis (YouTube)

Hillary Kelly, digital media editor at The New Republic, says in her TNR grammar blog, “The Best Response to Grammar Nazis, Ever,” that she had been despairing over her inability to fire back at some readers who “feel the need to correct my every stray comma (and sometimes try to correct my already correct language).” This lopsided state of affairs, she relates, made her “a pro at biting my proverbial tongue”—until one night recently when something happened that she says suddenly overturned the tables against her tormentors. She came across British writer-actor Stephen Fry’s videographic rant, “Kinetic Typography,” and she swears that it’s “the smartest, wittiest response to the grammar pedants I’ve ever seen.”

To get a better feel of Hillary’s sense of deliverance from victimhood, watch that video on YouTube now!

Stephen Fry’s Kinetic Typography - Language

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