The Definitive Reading & Listening Guide to Constance Hale’s “Sin and Syntax” – Part II

Welcome to Part II! Thank you for coming back to this long list of people who make us all look a little bad at what we strive to be/do.

Without further ado, let’s get started!

NOTE: I may have missed a few, but, as far as I know, this is the complete list—again, in many parts—of every person, book, song, and more mentioned by Hale.

Another Note: I have note yet constructed list III. And that’s because there are a lot of mentions in this book and I’ve been writing other stuff. But maybe I’ll get back to it one day.

• Richard Lederer (Anguished English)

• William Safire (“On Language” column in the New York Times)

• Tom Stoppard (“Arcadia”)

• Patricia O’Connor (Woe is I)

• Peggy Noonan (What I Saw at the Revolution)

• Cosmopolis (movie)

• Bo Diddley (“Who Do You Love”)

• Paul Simon (“Me and Julio Down by the Schoolyard”)

• Matthew Zapruder (“April Snow” poem)

• Horace (Roman poet)

• Francis Bacon

• The Bible

• M.F.K. Fisher (American food writer)

• Elsa Schiaparelli (fashion designer)

• Erma Bombeck

• Kenneth Koch (“Permanently” poem)

• Geoffrey Nunberg (American linguist)

• Bruce Olds (novelist)

• Laura Hillenbrand (Seabiscuit)

• Roger Angell (The New Yorker journalist, “In the Fire”)

• William Finnegan (“The Sporting Scene: Playing Doc’s Games”)

• Homer’s The Odyssey

• Dr. Seuss’s Hop on Pop

• Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch (aka Q. Although, Cornish writer)

• Arnold Zwicky (linguist)

• Jan Freeman (Active Resistance: What We Get Wrong About the Passive Voice)

• Language Log (blog)

• Geoff Pullum (“Confusion Over Avoiding the Passive“)

• Germaine Greer (“The Female Eunuch”)

• Richard Rapaport (“The Playground of Big Science”)

• Garner’s Modern American Usage

• Jamaica Kincaid (“Girl”)

• James Weldon Johnson (“Lift Every Voice and Sing”)

• Blind Gary Davis (“Lord I Fell Just Like Goin’ On”)

• Elizabeth Cotton (“Mama, Nobody’s Here but the Baby”)

• Howlin’ Wolf (“Moanin’ at Midnight”)

• George Strait (“All My Exes Live in Texas”)

• Memphis Minnie – “If You See My Rooster (Please Run Him Home)”

• Robert Johnson (“I Believe I’ll Dust My Broom”)

• Lee Hazlewood (“These Boots Are Made For Walkin'”)

• Led Zeppelin (“The Song Remains the Same”)

• The Rolling Stones (“(I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction”)

• The Seeds (“Can’t Seem to Make You Mine”)

Happy Reading and Listening!