To tirelessly skewer zombie 'rules'

[Uncle Robin]

Posting this here since it is relevant to both reading and writing, and tackling zombies is apt in Samhain season

https://stancarey.wordpress.com/2012...t-infinitives/

[Quoth]

Zombies aren't actually a Celtic thing as such (closest is those resurrected by the cauldron, who then can't talk). It's an Afro-Caribbean thing. Halloween is from Samhain, which is one of four Celtic Fire Festivals.(pan-European before the Romans destroyed most mainland Celtic culture). They only marked solstices & equinox for the calendar. Orignal dates were halfway between exactly.
Samhain is the start of the Dark half of the Year and Bealtine (Now Mayday) the start of the light half. Thus Imbloc (both Fire Goddess Bridget and now St. Bridget, one of the 3 Irish Patron Saints, 1st Feb) is the middle of the Dark half and Lughnasagh (now spelled & said as Lunasa) is the middle of the Light half.

Turnips, not pumpkins (that's American) and Turnip/Swede lanterns are a late idea. Not about demons, witches etc originally, but a time when the Sidhe can most easily visit or humans can most easily travel to an Otherworld (there are many; Avalon isn't Glastonbury but from Welsh Isle of Apples, in Irish it's Inis Abhlach (bh is a sort of v sound). Tolkien's Elves are based on Celtic Fay, called Sidhe in Ireland, Sìde in Scotland and various names (all complementary!) in Wales and called Elves in Scottish Border / North of England (see Thomas the Rhymer aka True Thomas who thinks the Elf Queen of her massive horse is somehow The Queen of Heaven (an early title given to Mary, really Mirriam, mother of Jesus, really Joshua/Yeshua) This greatly amuses the Fay Queen).
Note in Scotland Fey is not same as Fay. Fey is mistakenly thought of as an spelling of Fay, but it's a human having a sense of impending death or some other disturbing information, related to Celtic concept of second sight (see what is really there).

[Quoth]

And of course the linked article has actually really nothing to do with Zombies or Samhain. Any good English language education was teaching the good stuff in that article about 60 years ago. But also teaching other nonsense!
The Victorians were obsessed with seeing imaginary connections to Latin, and sitting in on an American English class in 1990, it seems a USA obsession too. Why are/were USA juniors taught stuff about Latin roots (some of which isn't even true!)?

[Quoth]

Also Webster & then Merriam Webster is by design prescriptive, like The French Institute. The Oxford English Dictionary aim was to document and reflect usage.

Ernest Gowers "The Complete Plain Words" is prescriptive but was aimed at Civil servants and Journalists and Lawyers, not novelists. It and Strunk & White (I have both on paper (CPW 1964 print, S&W 2000, but dates from 1930s) & electronic) were never really right for Novelists and are now hopelessly outdated.

[Uncle Robin]

I do hope that tiresomely verbose off-topic lecture won't distract people from reading the linked article, from an Irisihman whose words I actually enjoy reading.

[Martinoptic]

Each to their own Uncle Robin. I quite enjoyed Quoths dissertation.

[Uncle Robin]

Originally Posted by Martinoptic

Each to their own Uncle Robin. I quite enjoyed Quoths dissertation.

Each to his own indeed - perhaps he could have shown the courtesy of posting that entirely unrelated material in its own thread.

[issybird]

Originally Posted by Uncle Robin

Each to his own indeed - perhaps he could have shown the courtesy of posting that entirely unrelated material in its own thread.

Please keep subsequent posts on-topic, per OP’s request.