Why can't people silence electronic devices?

If you have your laptop in a public place, and for some reason you are incapable of doing anything at all without making it get cross at you, put it on mute. No one wants to hear the angry Mac sound over and over. Also, there's a button on the keyboard for that.

Basically, if it makes noise that's not absolutely necessary, you should hit the mute button. Because if you don't, you're a jackass.

Why do people mis-use "beg the question?"

Yeah, yeah, Bill Buckley ranted about this more adeptly than I can. Well, he's gone off to the great Park Avenue maisonette in the sky, so we'll just have to soldier on.

Important: "Beg the question" is not the same as "pose the question."

When you beg the question, you assume that your proposition is true in order to prove it. If it helps you, think of this as "begging off" the question. You never address the proof substantively, because you have already decided it works.

This is probably not what you mean. So don't say "it begs the question."

Why do people say "A Midsummer's Night Dream?"

What does that even mean?

On a midsummer night, perhaps, one has a dream. A dream on a midsummer night. That is: a midsummer night's dream. Not a midsummer's night dream.

Come on.

Why do people use a superfluous "what?"

For example:

"And given the turmoil in the Redskins' organization over the last five years, Campbell may be going to a more stable situation in Oakland than what he experienced in the nation's capital."

What this man means is: "And given the turmoil in the Redskins' organization over the last five years, Campbell may be going to a more stable situation in Oakland than he experienced in the nation's capital."

"Than" is entirely sufficient. Indeed, that's why we have it.

Now, that's from a sports blog, but I refuse to cut people slack just because they may be illiterate meatheads. Illiterate meatheads should not be paid to write things.

Why do people make bad warm-weather fashion choices?

Look, not everyone in the world should wear shorts. The same goes for: tank tops, sundresses, and anything strapless. This may seem pretty skewed towards female fashion choices, but I've already addressed the problem for men.

You have other options. Linen is a winner, and comes in many shapes and sizes. And if you just desperately want to wear that adorable dress, maybe you should stop being such a fatty.

I don't care how trendy it is. If it fills people with physical revulsion, you should not wear it.

Why does The Office lack important knowledge of Ivy League stereotypes?

I'm willing to believe that the world at large does not differentiate the Ivy League schools, and sequesters them all in an effete, preppy bubble somewhere on the east coast of the United States.

Well, tough. Andy Bernard is not a convincing Cornell man. Ithaca breeds a slightly hardier, less pastel strain. It's cold there, and there are enormous hills. The students are popularly believed to be academically serious, or at least to think they are. Also, just a mite humorless. So if I had to choose a school for Andy, probably Dartmouth. I'd go with Yale, but his love for James Joyce is as yet unsubstantiated.

The Cornellian chip on his shoulder, though--they've got that down. Honestly, this is a school whose motto is in English.

Why was there no Madeira to be had in TriBeCa?

Sometimes, one would like to drink Madeira. It's not that strange, even if one is under sixty. One would also like to go not too far out of one's way to obtain said potable.

And snotty wine shops really should have it. Or at least apologize when they don't.

Why is The Tenant of Wildfell Hall in epistolary form?

I had never before had any particular reason to hate Anne Brontë. Well, now I do.

The Tenant of Wildfell Hall is written as a letter from Gilbert Markham to his brother-in-law Halford. So far, so good. Everyone likes letters.

Well, this one is the story of how Gilbert met and (eventually) married his wife. Again, so far, so good. Everyone likes love stories.

The suspense, however, is probably somewhat compromised if you are writing to your brother-in-law. Who probably knows that your wife is named Helen, and has dark hair. And that your step-son is named Arthur. In fact, since your sister was pretty closely involved with the whole process, your brother-in-law is most likely au courant with events.

The main problem, perhaps, is not with the epistolary form itself, but rather with the choice of addressee. But if it were just a proper novel, or even just a silly Brontë type novel, with the occasional address to the reader or irritating Christian excursus, Miss Anne wouldn't have had the chance to make such a mystifying choice.

Why do people swear as punctuation?

Everyone who swears, I suppose, swears more than is necessary. And by definition people use profanity when it is not appropriate.

But there are situations in which profanity makes sense. When you drop something on your toe, for instance, or miss the train. It would be more picturesque and polite to say something like "great googly-moogly" instead of one of our quaint four letter words, but perhaps also less human.

To scatter oaths randomly throughout a sentence, however, makes no sense. It robs the words themselves of the force they might have in a more reasonable context, and adds nothing to the sentence. Eventually, the expressions no longer indicate emphasis, so they become meaningless sounds.

Also, it's coarse. Which is enough, really.

Why don't people play the other Pomps & Circumstances?

There are several others, and they are all fabulous. You just hate the one you heard at your graduation, because they only played part of it, and they played it over and over, and it was awful and tiresome and hackneyed.

Elgar is awesome, people. Do not dismiss him on the basis of one piece. Especially since that piece is actually quite good, merely overplayed.

It merely displays your own ignorance to condemn him out of hand.

Why do people misuse "button-down?"

It does not mean you have to button your shirt all the way instead of merely pulling it on over your head. That is "Oxford shirt," or, for the uninitiated and literal-minded, "button-front." Even if you do up buttons down your shirt, it may not be a button-down.

It is only a button-down if you have to button down the points of your collar. So they do not fly away and make you look like a slob.

Why does nothing at all happen in Washington Square?

You can't even argue that it's deeply psychological, because it's not. Catherine is rather dull, and has no great profundity of feeling. Townsend is probably rather a scoundrel, but not an interesting or original one. The aunts are like aunts everywhere, and Dr. Sloper is stubborn, but unimaginative.

Probably the book is written for the express purpose of poking fun at novels in which young lovers are tragically parted, and then, after the passage of some decades and the disappearance of obstacles, they find each other again and get married and live happily ever after. Those novels are rather silly--Persuasion is the best of the bunch, and it has its follies--but to show them up is an inadequate reason to inflict Washington Square on us.

Why do people say "metonymy" when they mean "synecdoche?"

Metonymy is when you say "Ceres," but mean "grain." Or even when you say "Hibernia," that noble ivory figure who weeps over potatoes in Punch, and mean "Ireland," that small green island that also weeps over potatoes.

Synecdoche is when you say "keel," and mean "ship." It is not a town in New York.

They are similar, it's true. There may even be some cases in which both apply--"the White House" for "the United States," perhaps, which is essentially metonymy but also literally synecdoche.

But when you say, "Part for whole; you know, metonymy," you sound like a moron. Because you are incorrect. These are specialized terms, with specific meanings. They are rarely necessary to use in order to be understood. One could even say that they can act as an impediment to understanding, especially when used incorrectly.

So don't.

Why do public figures go by diminutives?

Can you imagine Vickie, Empress of India? How about Joanie of Arc? Vanya the Terrible? Horry Nelson? Woody Wilson? Prince Chuck?

Yikes.

Yes, people call Lady Thatcher "Maggie," and they called Lord Beaconsfield "Dizzy," but those were nicknames, used in print presumably only in the less reputable papers. And, yes, "Evita" Perón and Lady/Princess "Di." Still appalling, but rather appropriate for those ladies.

But why are we saddled nowadays with "Tony" Blair and "Jimmy" Carter? They might not be easier to take even as Anthony and James, but they are adults. They should at least pretend to grow up.

Why are the Schlegels so hateful?

In A Room with a View, E.M. Forster's hatred of the bourgeois is sort of silly and charming. No one's life is ruined except perhaps Cecil's, but he'll be all right in the end.

This cannot be said of poor Leonard Bast, in Howards End. The Schlegels manage, with no hint of remorse, to kill him. He literally dies. Because they, in their hateful, inconsiderate way, make him irrevocably dissatisfied with his life. Indeed, they give him such an over-weening pride that he refuses help when they finally realize that they might have some responsibility for his tragic penury. And this is all their fault.

And for some reason this is approved? Because "only connect" is a sufficient creed? Even if it kills people?

Art is all very well. But isn't it supposed to take you out of the Slough of Despond?

Why is reality television so inane?

Everyone else knows this; I am behind the times. But now I have seen it for myself.

Today, I watched half an hour of America's Next Top Model. Not really by choice, obviously.

Perhaps I need not recount the hideous clothing, the perversely atrocious make-up, the ugly product, and the bizarre contortions. Those, I'm sure, are familiar to all who have ever watched this form of (I use the word advisedly) entertainment.

And so, I suppose, were the asinine comments made by the judges, who referred to bad eyebrow make-up as a "double entendre." What, pray, can that mean? Moreover, they spouted a great deal of nonsense about how they want to see emotion, or character, or something like that. Because models are definitely not kept around because they look nice in photographs. Not at all.

Um, and the judges were dressed like insane people. So I'm glad they're pronouncing matters of dress and poise.

Why does nothing happen after The Voyage of the Dawn Treader?

So, stuff sort of happens in The Magician's Nephew (which I place at the beginning in defiance of publication dates), and stuff definitely happens in The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe.

Nothing happens at all in Prince Caspian. This is why the film so desperately rips off every fantasy movie of the last ten years, because it needed to fill the other 147 minutes of the 150--pretty much everything that isn't the credits.

Things happen in The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, including Caspian finding a wife, which might make that whole Susan interpolation from Prince Caspian (the film) a little awkward, but whatever. It's a sort of engaging book.

The Silver Chair? Nothing.

The Horse and His Boy? Nope, nothing. Plus, racism! I don't think they're making a film of this one, so they helpfully transferred the racism from it and the Middle East to Prince Caspian and the Iberian peninsula and/or Italy (I can't tell, probably Italy by the actors, but Ben Barnes's accent was laughable).

The Last Battle? Nothing to see here. As far as I can recall, everyone goes for a nice long jog. For pretty much the whole book.

Now, this could be worse. They could be books in which nothing happened that took more than twenty-five minutes to read, or not have great lines like: "There once was a boy named Eustace Clarence Scrubb, and he almost deserved it." But they did approach levels of nothing happening known elsewhere only in Sir Walter Scott, which--wow.

Why doesn't Ethan Frome have a point?

Does it? Does it really? You're just saying that, aren't you?