Switchback English
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Some passages in English reverse the field repeatedly and get you coming and going. This, for example, was a front page headline in the New York Times a few years ago:
FEDERAL JUDGE EXTENDS BAN Is that good or bad? Two wrongs do not make a right. Three lefts sometimes do. I try to sort out switchback expressions by charting each positive and negative reference as a "Yes" or a "No" and then counting them up. FEDERAL JUDGE This would give the "yes" vote a 3-2 majority, so the ruling would favor affirmative action. But if "affirmative action" is taken as a single, redundant affirmative, then the tally is even at 2-2, so it’s necessary to seek further clarification in the story under the headline. In a preliminary (MAYBE) That’s a 5-4 vote against affirmative action, which would certainly surprise the judge and the Times editors. So much for that system of analysis. I yearn for a simpler time when, as James Thurber recalled it, his enigmatic friend Christabelle (who had promised her butler that she would write him into her next novel as the uncharacter of a nonbutler) would respond to someone’s assertion by saying, "That’s not unmeaningless." |
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