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Jump to navigationJump to searchThere Are Tittles in This Title: The Weird World of Words by Mitchell Symons (view source)
Revision as of 08:44, 20 October 2014
, 08:44, 20 October 2014no edit summary
|summary=Tittle are the dots above 'i's. There is a case here of Symons not quite tittling all his 'i's nor crossing all his 't's.
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I love spending time with Mitchell Symons books. If you don't know him, he's written this book, that book, and a book actually called ''This Book'' and a book actually called ''That Book''. He knows his trivia, he gets a lot of info on the page, and can really come across at the best of times as a convivial host. So pair him, as has happened here, with the weird and wonderful world of words and only great things could be expected. Unfortunately, then, only just above average things were expectedachieved.
The volume starts fine, with trivia about some rare or forgotten words, and statements of the unusual and unexpected regarding our fine language. There are some box-outs regarding the derivation of some terms and phrases, which don't always come in the best of places as regards flow. Here are kangaroo words (in which a similarly-defined word is piggy-backed, such as the ''tomb'' in ''catacomb''), meeting Shakespeare's neologisms. So far so standard, and quite enjoyable, even if each page seems to mimic something I've read before elsewhere, and not really go too far.
