This was true, luckily for me. Mother always said. “A dog without influence or private means, if he is to make his way in the world, must have either good looks or amiability.” But, according to her, I over did it.
WordPress always, it seems, has suggestions for better ways for me to write things. I have never known it to simply let me post something without reminding me that it might be improved. While I am grateful for the genie’s help on many occasions, I suspected that it may be an automatic sort of operation.
So, to test things out, I retyped the above small, 34-word excerpt from P.G. Wodehouse, a brilliantly funny – and meticulous – writer, into this post. I took it from page 58 of his book of short stories, The Man With Two Left Feet.
Sure enough, wordpress suggested I might benefit from its proofreading prowess. I pressed “cancel” and saw that it had placed a tiny red line under the word, “I.” To highlight this for you, I have changed the colour of the word in the above quotation to a bold red.
I have redone it below, replacing “I” with the suggestion that wordpress humbly promoted for my approval as a possible meliorism, colouring the change also in red:
This was true, luckily for me. Mother always said. “A dog without influence or private means, if he is to make his way in the world, must have either good looks or amiability.” But, according to her, eye over did it.
Then I attempted to update the draft. The wordpress genie again suggested that I avail myself of its expertise. I canceled the update and, this time, the word “eye” was underlined in red. I clicked on “eye.” WordPress, this time, asked me “Did you mean “I”?”
I then, or is it eye then, re-updated this post, bravely ignored its cautionary message… and clicked “Publish.”
mightyturk 