Lmst

#CharlottesWeb #EBWhite #OneMansMeat #OneMansMeatFreedom #EBWhiteFreedom #FreedomEssay
#AntiFaBooks

> ... the free spirit of man is persistent in nature; it recurs, and has never successfully been wiped out, by fire or flood.. Being myself a knight of the goose quill, I am under no misapprehension about “winning people”; but I am inordinately proud these days of the quill.. the hypodermic which inoculates men and keeps the germ of freedom always in circulation.. capable of infecting others by mere contact and example.
https://housedivided.dickinson.edu/sites/teagle/e-b-white-on-freedom-and-democracy/#:~:text=I just want to tell,standing next to him thinks.
#EBWhite got me thinking of Albert Camus and Noam Chomsky on #HumanNatureAndFreedom.
#WriterFreedom

"That's Some Pig!" --- E.B. White
about Wilbur but the ambiguitiy with this photo is hard to resist...

https://www.lawdork.com/p/gregory-bovino-is-exactly-who-eb-white-warned-of

#EBWhite on #GregBovino #ThatsSomePig

/HT @chrisgeidner

A screenshot from the page linked in the post. There is a photo of Bovino and walking in front of a masked ICE thug, probably in Charlotte, NC. The title of the page says 'Gregory Bovino is exactly who E.B. White -- author of Charlotte's Web --- warned us about' The subtitle is 'DHS named its North Carolina anti-immigrant effort "Operation Charlotte's Web." In 1940, White wrote of the "smell" that "rises" from those who "adjust to fascism" over freedom.'
The author is Chris Geidner and the date of publication was Nov. 17, 2025

> I just want to tell, before I get slowed down, that I am in love with freedom and that it is an affair of long standing and that it is a fine state to be in, and that I am deeply suspicious of people who are beginning to adjust to fascism and dictators merely because they are succeeding in war. From such adaptable natures a smell rises. I pinch my nose...
https://housedivided.dickinson.edu/sites/teagle/e-b-white-on-freedom-and-democracy/#:~:text=I just want to tell,standing next to him thinks.

https://www.lawdork.com/p/gregory-bovino-is-exactly-who-eb-white-warned-of
#EBWhite #SinceritySmell #EBWhiteFreedomEssay #EBWhiteOnFreedom
/HT @chrisgeidner

#OnThisDay in 1985, #EBWhite, American #writer (New Yorker: Stuart Little; Charlotte's Web), died at 86.
#RIP 🕊️

Because there hasn't been enough Bok recently, I have made a helpful graphic to explain how 95% of memes conceptually work.

#bokpropaganda #ebwhite #frogdissection

A classic meme format showing a bored gargoyle and one with glowing eyes. The text reads "Bok is disinterested in your proposition" and "Bok is fascinated by your reworded proposition"

The reasoning is memes aren't very funny but gain power simply through a shared experience and reinforced belief, much like gargoyles I suppose. The frog reference is from the E.B White quote " Analysts have had their go at humour, and I have read some of this interpretative literature, but without being greatly instructed. Humour can be dissected, as a frog can, but the thing dies in the process and the innards are discouraging to any but the purely scientific mind."

#ebwhite #elwynbrookswhite #metacrisis #climatecrisis #societalcollapse #reciprocity

A social post from @lifeboatacademy which says: "I would feel more optimistic about a bright future for man [sic] if he spent less time proving that he can outwit Nature and more time tasting her sweetness and respecting her seniority." — E.B. White

The price of anything is the amount of life you exchange for it. ~ Henry David Thoreau

#AmWriting #WritersLife #WritingCommunity #AuthorLife #SciFiWriter #ebwhite #BookLovers #IndieAuthor #Bookish #author #bookstadon

(This image was crafted by artificial intelligence (AI) through a subscription service 😲😜)

A writer who waits for ideal conditions under which to work will die without putting a word on paper ~ E.B. White

#AmWriting #WritersLife #WritingCommunity #AuthorLife #SciFiWriter #ebwhite #BookLovers #IndieAuthor #Bookish #author #bookstadon

(This image was crafted by artificial intelligence (AI) through a subscription service 😲😜)

"Always be on the lookout for the presence of wonder." ~ #EBWhite

David Guion & Michael Handelman Tapped To Adapt E.B. White’s ‘The Trumpet Of The Swan’ For HarperCollins Productions & Hobie Films
#News #DavidGuion #Development #EBWhite #HarperCollinsProduction #HobieFilms #MichaelHandelman #TheTrumpetoftheSwan

https://deadline.com/2025/05/the-trumpet-of-the-swan-movie-david-guion-michael-handelman-1236389271/

In this post I attempt to pay tribute to one of my favorite writers and one of my favorite books. Writing lessons from Charlotte's Web by E.B. White.

https://blog.hdansin.com/the-elements-of-miracle

#EBWhite #CharlottesWeb #Writing #Blog

☕𝐓𝐇𝐈𝐒 𝐖𝐄𝐄𝐊'𝐒 𝐅𝐄𝐀𝐓𝐔𝐑𝐄𝐃 𝐏𝐎𝐒𝐓☕️

Stuart Little

https://www.freenovelsonline.top/2025/02/stuart-little.html

#freenovelsonline #freebooksonline #books #novels #EBWhite #StuartLittle

Suffice it to say, I’ve been obsessive lately.

#writers #writing #EBWhite

The Strunk cost fallacy

Myths have serious sticking power. This is true not just of the myths of antiquity but also of more modern and niche types, like the myths of English usage. It seems that nothing will ever stop people peeving pointlessly about split infinitives, double negatives, passive voice, singular they, &c.

One thing that makes usage myths sticky, and spready, is that when we’ve gone to the trouble of learning something, we’re often reluctant to unlearn it, even in the face of contradictory truth – especially when that knowledge gives us a pleasurable feeling of authority or expertise. Renouncing it means accepting that we’ve wasted our time, so instead we double down.

This makes it a form of sunk cost fallacy or sunk cost effect. The term is from economics but has spread to more general use. I’m about to spread it further, with a goofy twist: Doubling down on a bogus rule of language use because you’ve invested time or cognitive effort into learning it is hereby known as the Strunk cost fallacy (or Strunk cost effect).

Regrettably, there is no way to include E. B. White in the coinage without spoiling the pun, but both he and William Strunk Jr. bear some responsibility for promulgating a range of egregious misunderstandings about English grammar, usage, and ‘correctness’.

The dogmatic tone in those authors’ influential Elements of Style also fuels, among some of its devotees, intolerance of non-standardized dialects and informal varieties of English, because readers gain (or strengthen) the impression that in language use there can be only one right way. This is another fallacy, an insidious and socially toxic one.

If you find evidence that you have a mistaken belief about language use – it happens to us all – then my advice is to heed that evidence. Instead of allowing your defences to reject the possibility that you’ve wasted your time learning and maybe promoting a falsity, embrace the opportunity to revise your beliefs. Don’t fall for the Strunk cost fallacy.

In closing, here’s a related piece of snark:

Accidentally typed “Strunk and Why” and this sums up my feelings better than any tired rant I might muster
— Stan Carey (@stancarey.bsky.social) Oct 16, 2024 at 20:33

(I tried embedding an equivalent Mastodon post, but it didn’t work the way Bluesky’s did. I’m using both platforms for now.)

* * *

A few other coinages you might like: Whom’s Law of Hypercorrection; Indo-European Jones; scary quotes; the apostrophantom; the Typographic Oath for editors.

#books #EBWhite #grammar #humour #language #neologisms #peevology #phrases #prescriptivism #TheElementsOfStyle #usage #WilliamStrunkJr

Cover of The Elements of Style. It's cream-coloured, with the authors' names in large white sans serif text, and the other text in black serif text. This includes the book title, the words "Third Edition" below it, and a blurb from the NYT above it that reads: "Buy it, study it, enjoy it. It's as timeless as a book can be in our age of volubility."

Wrote about finding myself in E.B. White.

https://joebelknapwall.com/figure-out-who-you-are/#more-1802

#writing #essayist #ebwhite #dollyparton

#EBWhite
#Freedom
Written 1940
https://open.substack.com/pub/poormansfeast/p/july-1940-a-word-from-eb-white?utm_source=share&utm_medium=android&r=4lbnua

As an essayist of much lesser note, I've been revisiting the essays of E.B. White with great delight and satisfaction, and have been pleased that, thus far, I don't find much to object to in modern terms in his work or controversy beyond the cyclicly fashionable disdain for the Strunk & White book, which is understandable mainly if you're the kind of person who takes guidelines as hard rules. He's just such a distinct voice, and a mentor I've never met.

#essays #essayists #ebwhite #writing

The entire kids’ publishing industry needs this pinned above their desks.

In fact, anyone working with or writing for kids could do with reading it.

E.B. White, author of 'Charlotte's Web' on what adults get wrong when writing for children.

#childrensbooks #bookstodon #charlottesweb #ebwhite #authors #childrensLiterature #yafiction #publishing #publishers

Anybody who shifts gears when he writes for children is likely to wind up stripping his gears. But I don't want to evade your question. There is a difference between writing for children and for adults. I am lucky, though, as I seldom seem to have my audience in mind when I am at work. It is as though they didn't exist. Anyone who writes down to children is simply wasting his time. You have to write up, not down. Children are demanding. They are the most attentive, curious, eager, observant, sensitive, quick, and generally congenial readers on earth. They accept, almost without question, anything you present them with, as long as it is presented honestly, fearlessly, and clearly. I handed them, against the advice of experts, a mouse- boy, and they accepted it without a quiver. In Charlotté's Web, I gave them a literate spider and they took that

Some writers for children deliberately avoid using words they think a child doesn't know. This emasculates the prose and, I suspect, bores the reader. Children are game for anything. I throw them hard words, and they backhand them over the net. They love words that give them a hard time, provided they are in a context that absorbs their attention. I'm lucky again: my own vocabulary is small, compared to most writers, and I tend to use the short words. So it's no problem for me to write for children. We have a lot in common.

From @mariapopova …
“In 1973…[a] man sent a distressed letter to E.B. White, lamenting that he had lost faith in humanity. The beloved author, who was not only a masterful letter-writer but also a professional celebrator of the human condition & an unflinching proponent of the writer’s duty to uplift people, took it upon himself to boost the man’s sunken heart with a short but infinitely beautiful reply”…
https://www.themarginalian.org/2014/05/06/e-b-white-letters-of-note-book/
#EBWhite #LostFaith #humanity #hope

#EBWhite

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