June 04, 2006

Thou shalt not miss Jan Freeman

A splendid column by Jan Freeman in the Boston Sunday Globe today, about whether Newsweek could muster any excuse at all for their silly headline "Thou Shalt Not Like It" on their negative review of The Da Vinci Code. (Thou shalt is of course a prohibition. They wanted to express a prediction about your reaction, not forbid a positive one. Surely they knew the difference.) Read her lively discussion of this and a range of similar pseudo-Olde Englishe nonsense examples here.

Posted by Geoffrey K. Pullum at June 4, 2006 02:45 PM