Yesterday's news contained a report about a bushfire survivor who was contemplating the enormity of rebuilding his house. That is a quote, and it was not the enormity of the task (though maybe that could go into the handy "understood" brackets we used to have in parsing exercises!) . Then I had a bit of a think and decided that maybe it really was an enormity!
I loved this little article, especially Howard's point of view! He sounds as though he too may have tried to teach grammar to Year 9. However I do think that it is now very difficult to explain why precision is so important to meaning. Certainly there is a slap-dash attitude towards writing which means the content can be easily misunderstood.
Thanks for this AR. (By the way, I admire you use of the semi-colon in your tag-line. I am always far too terrified to use them!)
