Comments on: How To: Be a Ladies’ Man

By: Dawn

Dawn — Wed, 19 Nov 2008 00:48:00 +0000

You beat me to it, “I’m with ugh”! That’s exactly the post I was thinking of too.

In any case, loved this post! Very interesting. Would be good to know if all of Louis Kahn’s families knew about each other.

By: i'm with ugh

i'm with ugh — Tue, 18 Nov 2008 20:21:00 +0000

Can you guys add “Heather Dawn” to the spam blacklist? You don’t have to approve all comments, you know.

Nothing worse than someone smugly enforcing rules he/she doesn’t understand. From the guest post of grammar legend Pat O’Conner:

Myth #2: Don’t End a Sentence With a Preposition.

An 18th-century Anglican bishop named Robert Lowth wrote the first popular grammar book to claim that a preposition didn’t belong at the end of a sentence (as in, What was this guy up to?). Others before him had made the same claim, notably the poet John Dryden.

This affectation, like the one about not “splitting” infinitives, proved popular with Latin-educated schoolmasters, probably because Latin sentences don’t end in prepositions. But the pedants were forgetting one small detail: English isn’t a Latinate language, it’s Germanic. And in Germanic languages, sentences routinely end in prepositions. Great English literature from Chaucer to Milton to Shakespeare to the King James version of the Bible is stuffed with these “terminal prepositions.”

Probably the word “preposition,” from the Latin for “position before,” suggested to pedagogues that a preposition must never come last. Be that as it may, Curme and Jespersen recognized the final preposition as natural and instinctive, and Fowler went further: “The legitimacy of the prepositional ending in literary English must be uncompromisingly maintained,” he wrote. Amen!

(Amen, indeed.)

(mentalfloss.com/blogs/archives/14636)

By: ugh

ugh — Tue, 18 Nov 2008 20:10:00 +0000

I love this website but I can not stand the arrogant people it attracts and how they feel the need to prove something to a bunch of strangers on the internet. I’m pretty sure you still knew what that sentence meant, right? Go get a job as an english teacher or an editor and put your energy into that instead.

By: Jösh

Jösh — Tue, 18 Nov 2008 15:03:00 +0000

\”…I mean, obviously you “can,” you just did, but should you??\”

Im pretty sure someone who is preaching about proper sentance structure shouldn\’t be using two question marks, because, last time i checked -That isnt grammatically correct either.

By: Heather Dawn

Heather Dawn — Tue, 18 Nov 2008 14:28:00 +0000

“…only one of which he was actually legally wed to.”

Really? Can you end a sentence with “to?” I mean, obviously you “can,” you just did, but should you??

REcaptcha: and confusion

By: Tdave

Tdave — Thu, 02 Aug 2007 04:21:45 +0000

When Mr. & Mrs. Kauffman visited their son at Taliesin, Mrs.K told her husband that she was somewhat disturbed by the amount of what she described as “camaraderie” among the males.

By: lulu

lulu — Wed, 01 Aug 2007 15:03:20 +0000

If we’re really on the subject of being a “ladies man”…maybe it would be appropriate to discuss the possible reasons why these ladies left/he left. FLW was rumored to have encouraged orgies, swinging and homosexuality with his students at his Taliesin West compound in an effort to push their boundaries. Maybe the wifeys didn’t know what they were getting in to!

By: Maggie

Maggie — Wed, 01 Aug 2007 14:06:31 +0000

*cough*flatroofs*cough*

By: Sid Morrison

Sid Morrison — Wed, 01 Aug 2007 12:39:50 +0000

Unfortunately “Fallingdownwater” (heh heh) isn’t the only example. Wright was arguably a talented stylist and artist, but a mediocre architect, because a real architect has to understand structural engineering, building science, and strength of materials. Wright paid those very very short shrift. High $ custom commision buildings should last HUNDREDS of years with ordinary maintenance, not require extraordinary intervention to keep from falling down in the scant decades after their completition. No excuses (well, OK, the fire at Taliesin wasn’t the fault of faulty architecture!)

By: Tdave

Tdave — Wed, 01 Aug 2007 07:54:04 +0000

Well, to come to Wrights defense. When he designed Fallingwater he had a support wall that Edgar Kauffman, the businessman and amateur architect who commissioned the house, said was unneccessary. Wright insisted on the wall so Kauffman told the workmen to build the wall but make it stop 3 inches short of the balcony above, leaving a gap. Kauffman later showed Wright that the balcony was well supported without the wall by showing him the gap. The main problem with Wrights buildings is that the concrete is cracking after seventy or so years of existence.