Monthly Archives: April 2026

an hundred

 

The invention of letters was followed more than two millenia later by the invention of movable type, a revolution without which the Renaissance and the Reformation would not even have been possible. But with the increase in the availability of the written word, there have been losses once again. For every work of Shakespeare put between covers, there are twenty cheap romance novels. For every book designed to teach an intelligent public, there are fifty newspapers distorting events. And for every learned tome, there are AN HUNDRED volumes of pornography.

“The Decline of the Book & the Fall of Western Civilization,” By Martin Cothran, The Imaginative Conservative, March 8, 2026

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It should be a hundred. An hundred is an archaic form which the author is using, in an affected manner, to show that he is highbrow.

 

— posted by Roger W. Smith

   April 2026

subject-verb disagreement

 

Backing Trump as he tries to rewrite the Constitution by executive fiat is much of the Republican Party and a collection of conservative legal scholars who rushed, in the wake of his decree, to try to give substance to the president’s thin, unpersuasive argument. Against Trump IS the weight of Supreme Court precedent, historical consensus and the plain words of the clause itself. – Jamelle Bouie, “The Birthright Con,” The New York Times, April 1, 2026

It should be: ARE the weight …

the subject of the sentence is comprised of three nouns: weight, conesnsus. and words.

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This should be elementary, but journalists and commentators in the media frequently ignore the rule. Sloppiness is one thing, but they obviously don’t even know it.

— posted by Roger W. Smith

   April 2026