On Fri, 04 Jun 2004 09:54:53 GMT, wrote:



Bob LeChevalier wrote:

Spelling is convention. The Founders of the United States did not pay
much attention to how things were spelled. Shakespeare was even less
consistent - he spelled his name several different ways. Are you
going to say that Shakespeare had trouble with language?

It's okay to spell your name any way you want to. I could spell Holger
"Xyzabc" if I wanted to. However, I would constantly have to tell
people how to pronounce it.

Aboslutely. This is one of my pet peeves with HS/college "English"
classes: all the time that is squandered discussing what Shakespeare
(or other "greats") *Really_Meant* by e.g. some verse in some
sonnet.

Let's take one of your favorites, Bob. "All men are created equal..."
How would Shakespeare have written *that*? Some vague flowery
ambiguous fuzzy wording WTF-did-he-really-say statement ???

Shakespeare did *NOT* have a command of the language; his brain was
something akin to a random word generator.

The best "command of the language" is in Supreme Court decisions.
The precision and clarity is awesome. You may not always agree
with what the justices say, but you certainly have no doubt whatsoever
what the justices were thinking and meant, even if it'z wrong.....

Holger

http://www.mindspring.com/~holger1/holger1.htm