{"id":6218,"date":"2014-11-29T00:10:37","date_gmt":"2014-11-29T08:10:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/rifftides\/?p=6218"},"modified":"2014-11-28T20:20:10","modified_gmt":"2014-11-29T04:20:10","slug":"other-matters-language-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/rifftides\/2014\/11\/other-matters-language-2\/","title":{"rendered":"Other Matters: Language."},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Three cheers, five stars and a slap on the back for Sony. I was trapped interminably in the electronics company&#8217;s voice mail system. Sony made up for it when I finally got a robot voice that said, <\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Due to an unusually high volume of calls, all of our associates are busy with other customers. Your call will be answered in the order <strong>in which<\/strong> it was received.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/rifftides\/wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/11\/Fowlers.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/rifftides\/wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/11\/Fowlers.jpg\" alt=\"Fowler&#039;s\" width=\"124\" height=\"200\" class=\"alignleft size-full wp-image-6219\" \/><\/a>The robot did not say, as nearly all voice mail robots do, &#8220;&#8230; in the order it was received.&#8221; A victory for clear English&#151;a tiny one&#151;but it helped keep my spirits up during the next interminable wait.<\/p>\n<p>I know: picky, picky, picky. But good usage matters. Tell your children. And give them <a href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.com\/gp\/product\/0198610211\/?ie=UTF8&#038;camp=1789&#038;creative=9325&#038;linkCode=ur2&#038;pf_rd_i=0192813897&#038;pf_rd_m=ATVPDKIKX0DER&#038;pf_rd_p=1944687662&#038;pf_rd_r=00MPR8HSAPXGJ4NB91AX&#038;pf_rd_s=lpo-top-stripe-1&#038;pf_rd_t=201&#038;tag=rifftidougram-20\"target=\"_blank\">this book<\/a> for Christmas. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Three cheers, five stars and a slap on the back for Sony. I was trapped interminably in the electronics company&#8217;s voice mail system. Sony made up for it when I finally got a robot voice that said, Due to an unusually high volume of calls, all of our associates are busy with other customers. Your [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-6218","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-main","7":"entry","8":"has-post-thumbnail"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/rifftides\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6218","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/rifftides\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/rifftides\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/rifftides\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/rifftides\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6218"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/rifftides\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6218\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/rifftides\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6218"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/rifftides\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6218"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/rifftides\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6218"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}