Speaking as a guy who likes words for their own sake, the idea of turning good words into bad holds an undeniably corpulent appeal. I don't mean bad words in the sense that I'll be made to eat soap; I mean bad in the no-good, dysfunctional sense, like hippodermis, or quasimofo.
Writing as a bloke whose perverse ambition is fleshed out in the sentences above, the idea of using quotes to frame a question bubbles to the top of the stack. "What is wrong with you?" comes to mind, though the exact location within the mind has now shifted from point B to point A.
Simply put, this is nature's way of separating the audio cortex from the video lobe, thus avoiding the sensations of vertigo and ick that come from asking a guy to do a bloke's job, or vice versum. If Mother Nature had wanted us to use the same part of the brain for speech and hardcopy, she would have said so in writing.
Jeff, I e-mailed you re: points B and A of the mind.
ReplyDeleteCraig, it is a thing of beauty, and will serve to point out several points (make that two) that I was trying to get across (make that over) in the piece. One more pot of coffee, and I will add it, somewhere, I think.
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