Random pleasing texts...
veryone1
needs a hobby; something to stave off the boredom.
I've long made a habit of reading any scrap of text I can lay my hands on (and shared with the late journalist James Cameron an absolute horror at the thought of ever being trapped somewhere with nothing to read). So I tend to collect texts. Newspaper clippings, epigrams, misprints, fragments of verse (or worse). Even stuff from book shop bags, for heaven's sake!
Cited above: 1. Jane Austen (Emma), 2. Joseph Heller (Catch 22), 3. Woody Allen, 4. Philip Larkin, 5. Bertolt Brecht (Threepenny Opera), 6. Tom Stoppard (Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead), 7. Anon.
My (personal) favourite IBM example:
Page 1, and elsewhere: I think you have heard me 'accuse' certain Hursley folks of using 'Mounce-isms'. Your document has a little bit of his style, or maybe you are where he got his style2 from. For instance, I would not use words like 'derailing' or 'crash'. Instead of 'crash' I would use the phrase 'abnormal termination' or 'system failure'. Instead of 'derailing', I would say 'the event which caused the loss of synchronization'.
Bob Yelavich commenting on a document (dealing with CICS task-related user exits) written by Carol Shanesy. I particularly liked that Page 1, and elsewhere...
Wordplay, too:
It's is not, it isn't ain't, and it's it's, not its, if you mean it is. If you don't, it's its. Then too, it's hers. It isn't her's. It isn't our's either. It's ours, and likewise yours and theirs.