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I am posting this as a benchmark, not because I think I'm playing very well yet.  The idea would be post a video every month for a ye...

Tuesday, June 20, 2023

Law of lengthening limbs

 I once devoted substantial time to research the “law of lengthening limbs,” that states that “Friends, Romans, countrymen” or “Pride and Prejudice” sound better than *“Sensibility and Sense” or *“Lucinda and John.” I found it in legal doublets ("aid and abet") and in soap opera titles (“The Bold and the Beautiful,” The Young and the Restless"). This seemed both well-known and under-analyzed. My own subtitle (“Translation, Parody, Kitsch”) violated the rule, as did Mailer’s “The Naked and the Dead,” but I could find more evidence for it than against it. The real object of study here is my own weird fascination with things like this! One of many research “dead ends.”  

1 comment:

Andrew Shields said...

The violation of such an existing pattern can have an emphatic effect, as in your subtitle.