It's the herring that will perish.

I simply couldn't pass up sharing this passage from Sister Bernadette's Barking Dog (a book about English grammar):

Standard Enlgish is, of course, the version of the language that has resulted from years of hand-wringing about the speed with which it has changed. But to try to hold back language change is like trying, as Monty Python and the Holy Grail would have it, to cut down the largest tree in the forest with a herring. The tree will keep growing. It's the herring that will perish.

I thought so.

First Line

Well, you know, all I really want to do is read books. Sometimes an unusual book pops onto my radar screen, and I find myself strangely attracted. The latest of this sort is Sister Bernadette's Barking Dog, which is subtitled "the quirky history and lost art of diagramming sentences." Well, who knew that diagramming sentences could be the subject of a book (and "quirky" no less). Here's the first sentence (which I will refrain from diagramming):

Diagramming sentences is one of those lost skills, like darning socks or playing the sackbut, that no one seems to miss.

BTW, if you'd like to see an example of this lost art, check out this diagram of the first line of Milton's Paradise Lost.

And to all sackbut players out there . . . I'm very sorry.