I've been happily overdosing on Season One episodes of
The West Wing since I got back, including the following gem from the card game in "Mr Willis of Ohio":
BARTLET: There are fourteen punctuation marks in Standard English grammar. Can anyone name them, please? [Ed: I admit that at this point I paused the DVD to count them off myself.]
C.J.: Period.
JOSH: Comma.
MANDY: Colon.
SAM: Semi-colon.
JOSH: Dash.
SAM: Hyphen.
LEO: Ah... apostrophe.
BARTLET: That's only seven. There are seven more.
TOBY: Question mark, exclamation point, quotation marks, brackets, parentheses, braces
and ellipses.
C.J.: Ooh.
JOSH: Wow!
TOBY: Do you call the raise sir?
BARTLET: There are three words, and three words only in the English language that begin with the letters DW.
JOSH: This is a pretty good illustration of why we get nothing done.
BARTLET: Can anyone name them for me please?
SAM: Three words that begin with DW?
BARTLET: Yes.
SAM: Dwindle.
BARTLET: Yes.
TOBY: Dwarf.
BARTLET: Yes.
TOBY [to Sam]: C'mon Princeton. We've got dwindle, we've got dwarf.
BARTLET: I see you five and raise you five by the way.
TOBY: Dwarf... dwindle.
LEO: Fold.
JOSH: Fold.
C.J.: Last card down.
BARTLET: "Witches brew a magic spell, in an enchanted forest where fairies..."
TOBY: Dwell! Dwell, dwell! Dwindle, dwarf and dwell!
BARTLET: Well, the answer's correct but let's check with our judges and -- oh no, I'm sorry, time's expired.
In the spirit of this, and for those of you that are as bored at work as I am, here's a little
English Language trivia, linked off
About Last Night, to help you while the evening away.
5 Comments:
What does US politics have to do with grammar? :0
Nothing, really, but trivia's always good in my book --- whereas at NIE, despite three months of a grammar workout, all I remember is that there are only seven conjunctions in the English language.
So much for being an English teacher.
Maybe that's why you were sent to do GP :)
Hey! Teach GP, also must know grammar one!
There are four.
"Dweeb."
i.e., me.
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