Donna Malayeri sent by email one of the most blatant violations of Elmore Leonard's Third Rule of Writing that I've ever seen:
With the discussion on the Language Log about using certain nouns as verbs, I thought you might find this example interesting. From Glamorama by Bret Easton Ellis: "'As if', I Alicia-Silverstone-in-Clueless back at him." The sentence was hard to parse at first, but once I did, I laughed out loud. :)
I've seen longer and more distracting violations of the closely-related Fourth Rule, but Ellis certainly deserves some recognition for this effort.
Posted by Mark Liberman at January 3, 2005 03:51 PM