REJECTED SUBMISSIONS: A sampler of wry observations — The shorties below were deemed to be vulgar, insipid, flippant, provocative, politically incorrect — or some combination thereof.

Paradox of a myth held as truth: When you’re right, you’re wrong — The ear should overrule dubious “rules” as to ending sentences with prepositions. To wit: From now on, ending a sentence with a preposition is something up with which I will not put. — Winston S. Churchill Heed your ear at risk of being blasted by misguided pedants. As for me, I won’t put up with not ending sentences with up. (Bad example!)

Paradox of a myth held as truth: When you’re right, you’re wrong — The ear should overrule dubious “rules” as to infinitive-splitting. To wit: At first I decided to ignore simply [the rule]. Then I decided simply to ignore it. Finally I decided to simply ignore it, because that sounded much better. Eddy York Eddleston, Scottish Borders Heed your ear at risk of being blasted by misguided pedants. As for me, I won’t to hesitate flout convention. (Bad example!)

From the annals of extraneous superfluous redundancies —

From the annals of extraneous superfluous redundancies —

Google as you will; meanwhile, here’s an ad hoc usage guide — Grammarians lament the perpetual confusion as to “lie” versus “lay” — which is compounded by their respective sound-alike past-tense renderings: “lay down” versus “laid down.” One of my readers, J.R. …

Depends on the role: invited editor versus stop-by reader — Post-mortem reflections Last week, two of us here were publicly branded (though not outed by name — we know who we are) “Grammar Police.” The writer — to whom we subscribed — threatened to block us if we didn’t desist from smugly citing — in private notes — pedantic errors, such as…

Memento found 24 years after widow’s request — Not quite how it went down, but could have been … My friend Scott, who sells and repairs vacuum cleaners, tends the greens early mornings at a ritzy golf club, aptly named Belleview. Back in 1999, Scott was approached by an elderly lady whose husband, a member of the club, had recently been killed after crashing his car on “dead man’s…

Before doing the math, read the fine print! — My daughter, Lauren, despairing of ever affording her own house, chose to stake her saving$$,$$$ on a Gibraltar pool, which was installed in our backyard last November. As the filling date — May 17th — encroaches, I’ve been fretting about the impact on my water bill, which is exorbitant as…