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Fall 2004 / The Merciless Grammarian Fall 2004 / Training
The Merciless Grammarian spews his wrath on nasty problems of grammar, mechanics, and style.
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Drawing by Nathan Baran Most Merciless of Grammarians, I was finishing up a paper on Athanasius Kircher for my history of science class when I decided to run it by two of my housemates. When one of them read it, she flagged the following sentence: Kircher went on to publish over thirty works on subjects ranging from hieroglyphics to magnetism. She said I should write the thirty as a numeral (30), but when I passed the paper along to my other housemate, he said I should change it back. What gives? Numerically challenged, Gregory Thomas Woolridge, Esq. Dear Challenged, How good to read the name of the Master of a Hundred Arts! How often have I pored over his subtle and ingenious diagrams, hoping to twist them to my own benighted ends. Your housemates, as you call them, seem to be pawns in a stylistic Cold War. Consider the superpowers: on the one side are the newspapers and their minions, on the other the vaunted scribes of academe. Various college writing handbooks have fallen in with either camp, now touting one approach to