Miscellaneous

Yesterday?s installment of Garner?s Usage Tip of the Day carried this quotation. As I read it, I couldn?t help but think of people whose ?primary business? is practicing law:

The writing of literate Americans whose primary business is not writing but something else is pretty bad. It is muddy, backward, convoluted and self-strangled; it is only too obviously the product of a task approached unwillingly and accomplished without satisfaction or zeal. Except for the professionals among us, we Americans are hell on the English language.

?Donald J. Lloyd, ?Our National Mania for Correctness,? in A Linguistics Reader 57, 57-58 (Graham Wilson ed., 1967).