Winter Storm essays

Winter Storm essays The white storm that I was caught in happened twenty-seven years ago. The natural disaster I refer to struck on Friday, January 28, 1977, The Blizzard of 77", or as author Erno Rossi, M.A. termed it White Death. What happened on that Friday so long ago was actually a winter hurricane. It had been such a cold, brutal winter. Lake Erie had been frozen solid by Christmas. With extreme temperature and record snowfall, the snow had piled up on top of the ice. So as the 50 mile an hour wind swept across Lake Erie, it blew the powdery snow off the lake, and into Buffalo and the surrounding counties. Into my county it came with a vengeance. I was working as an office clerk at a local linen factory. At that time I did not have my license to drive, so I had to depend on others for my transportation. On this particular day it was my Dad who drove me to work, and who would also drive me home. As we went to work that day it had been snowing heavily. Note enough for us hearty Upstate New Yorkers to stay home though. As the morning had progressed, so had the snow and the wind. My Dad had called me to let me know that he was leaving work early, everyone was being sent home. My Dad came and picked me up at about 12:00 noon. At which point the winds were even stronger and visibility was zero. There we were my Dad and I leaving the city of Batavia to make our six mile trek home in the storm. As we inched our way out of the city we were headed north to our home in Oakfield New York. When I say inched I mean it literally. The windshield wipers couldnt work fast enough to keep the snow off the windshield, the wind was howling around us. We couldnt see. I would roll my window down and pop my head out to see if we were still on the road, but that did little good. So we crept on. It seemed we were alone in this white vacuum. ...

Consistent Style Sheet Eliminates Value Judgments

Consistent Style Sheet Eliminates Value Judgments Consistent Style Sheet Eliminates Value Judgments Consistent Style Sheet Eliminates Value Judgments By Maeve Maddox One of our readers, Pankaj, has asked for clarification on the posting called The Gentleman Fled on Foot. Was I addressing a matter of diction, or was I advocating the denial of respect for persons in unfortunate circumstances? Some publications and newsrooms have a policy of referring to people by surname only, once the full name has been mentioned. Others have a policy of adding the honorific to the surname every timeor for a set number of timesafter the full name has been mentioned. In either case, I see no problem. When a policy is in place, the writer knows whether to use Mr/Ms/Rev/Dr with the surname, or to go with plain Jones. My post was concerned with a practice that Ive observed often enough to regard it as a trend. Apparently many news sources have no set policy because they sometimes refer to people by surname only, and sometimes with the honorific plus surname. I first became aware of this strange practice several years ago when my dissertation adviser was murdered in his campus office. Ill call the professor Jones, and the man who killed him Smith. One of the articles published in a local paper, having named both men in the lead, went on for several columns to refer to the professor, who had a Ph.D. and was usually called Dr. Jones, as Jones, but referred to the other man as Mr. Smith each time he was mentioned. It could be that the tendency to be super-polite when talking about criminals grows from the knowledge that anyone who has yet to be convicted must be referred to as an alleged whatever. Perhaps writers who call bank robbers gentlemen are just being cautious. I dont know. In any case, the question forced me to look at why this inconsistency of diction bothers me. Ive had to conclude that Mr. Pankaj is a more accepting person than I am. In the absence of a style sheet rule, Id be inclined to leave off the Mr. when it comes to perpetrators of the more horrid crimes. Want to improve your English in five minutes a day? Get a subscription and start receiving our writing tips and exercises daily! Keep learning! Browse the General category, check our popular posts, or choose a related post below:When to use "on" and when to use "in"Do you "orient" yourself, or "orientate" yourself?People vs. Persons