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The Course of Words

China cups

Copyright 2004 Ben S. Pollock   Saturday, March 13, 2004. Green tea from red China. Nice, but no one says "red China" anymore. -30-

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The Course of Words

Thanks for the memoirs

Copyright 2004 Ben S. Pollock   Thursday, March 11, 2004. What does it say about a person when, first, they continue to carry on about years’ old problems as if they were fresh and, second, they evidently feel a need to tell people about them? It’s evidence perhaps of this being the memoir-and-Oprah age of […]

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The Course of Words

Disagreeing to agree

Copyright 2004 Ben S. Pollock Wednesday, Jan. 21, 2004. It is OK to for a publication, or an individual writer, to be superior to readers. Ps and Ws, increasingly in recent years, attempt to be either equal to the reader or beneath them. The first is thought to appeal to the reader more strongly. The […]

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The Course of Words

Humor, put to pasture

Copyright 2003 Ben S. Pollock Friday, Dec. 26, 2003. Consider the retirement this month of Arkansas Democrat-Gazette humor columnists Richard Allin and Charles Allbright. It’s fair and appropriate and honest (as in honest opinion, NOT truth and NOT fact) to point out the positives in the involuntary departure. I believe their firing — for that’s […]

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The Course of Words

Blair flare fair

Copyright 2003 Ben S. Pollock Monday, Dec. 22, 2003. Let’s look at plagiarism, one of journalism’s big topics in 2003, culminating in the revelations around Jayson Blair. Plain definition is that plagiarism is thievery, the taking of others’ words, phrases, sentences and paragraphs — the ideas of others — as one’s own. Theft. So obvious […]