[...] Vimes had learned a lot from watching Lady Sybil. She didn't mean to act like that, but she'd been born to it, into a class which had always behaved this way: You went through the world as if there was no possibility that anyone would stop you or question you, and most of the time that's exactly what didn't happen.
Terry Pratchett, Fifth Elephant
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ive been told not to use contractions Ever. sorry but im not doing that lmao. this isn't a legal document. that's gonna stick out in the middle of otherwise extremely informal sentences if i feel like a contraction flows better im using it
lmao someone else also commented with this one
this makes sense to me as a training wheels rule for teaching essay writing to literal children, like teaching never to start a sentence with 'because.' it's an easy way to force a kid to use more formal language without them having to actually fully understand what constitutes formal language, like how the 'because' rule prevents kids from making sentence fragments without them having to understand what sentence fragments are.
however in theory your educational system should eventually teach you how to ride the metaphorical bike without training wheels. when full grown adults adhere religiously to these rules, one begins to suspect they don't know that most people eventually remove the training wheels
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i’m thinking about my hamlet again. if i played hamlet i’d give him a compulsion. something tangible and visible but also innocuous. i am leaning toward something to do with his hands (pinching the back of a hand? a specific motion?) and then i would do it during that speech ostensibly about claudius about how one flaw in a person can grow big enough to blot them out entirely
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Sports Night, "The Sweet Smell of Air"
Conference Room
NATALIE: He's gonna bake the bread?
DAN: He's not actually gonna bake it. I doubt they have a suitable oven in the classroom. He's just gonna pretend to bake it.
JEREMY: I'm looking forward to the day when I have kids and I do a demonstration in their class.
ELLIOT: What would you do?
JEREMY: Whatever I was in the mood for. I could make a nuclear reactor if I could get my hands on some decent plutonium.
DAN: Sure.
JEREMY: I can accelerate the aging process of a pumpkin.
KIM: Really?
JEREMY: Yeah. Pretty simple, actually.
KIM: Hmm.
CASEY: I'm back.
DAN: Hey.
CASEY: I'm back and I'm triumphant.
NATALIE: They bought the bread?
DAN: Misdirection, Natalie.
CASEY: I didn't do the bread.
DAN: What'd you do?
CASEY: I did what I do, Dan. I did what I do.
DAN: You screwed up your romantic life in front of fifth graders?
CASEY: No. I got there early and I'm standing out on the playground during recess, and I'm trying to think what I can come up with at the last minute, but I can't concentrate on that because all around me kids are playing games. There's some kickball going on over there, dodge ball over here, hopscotch in the corner, and like a flood, like a surge, I'm suddenly filled with this sense of "I know what the hell I'm doing." And when recess was over, we go back into the classroom—
DAN: And you called the highlights.
CASEY: I called the highlights. It was fantastic. I did interviews with the kids, I did injury reports. I had a little girl named Phoebe do a demonstration of jacks -- shy little girl, barely speaks above a whisper because she's so afraid she's gonna say something stupid, but when I got her talking about foursies, she was like Muhammad Ali.
NATALIE: Nice, Casey.
JEREMY: Beats an aging pumpkin.
CASEY: What?
DAN: Don't worry about it.
Sports Night, “The Sweet Smell of Air”
Season 2, Episode 12
Director: Alex Graves
Writers: Aaron Sorkin, David Handleman, and Kevin Falls
Transcript from sntranscripts.livejournal.com
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