“Sir, Friends of the vanishing apostrophe should start with Westminster City Council, whose vans carry the message: ‘Were working for a cleaner City.’ Yours faithfully, PAMELA HUTCHINSON, 6 Cleveland Gardens, W2, March 12.”
Letter in the Times March 14, 1984 [sent to me by my father, a connoisseur of all things rhetorical including sloppy usage and its foes]
“My own conclusion, after interviewing him at length one spring afternoon back in 1967, was that while [then-Social Credit leader R.N.] Thompson might not be anti-Semitic, he certainly was anti-semantic.”
Peter C. Newman in Maclean’s April 1, 1996
“Un tour de faiblesse”
Another of mine, from c. May 21, 2007
“This girl reminds me of Dreyfus. The army does not believe in her innocence.”
A joke apparently from Sigmund Freud, quoted by Michael Potemra in a review of F.H. Buckley’s The Morality of Laughter in National Review June 30, 2003
“It starts off like a Hungarian omelette: First, steal one egg.”
David Niven’s character Col. W.H. Grice in the 1980 movie The Sea Wolves.
“Display of farce”
Expression in a Tim Dolighan cartoon May 12, 2000 [re the UN].
“Have you ever noticed that anybody driving slower than you is an idiot, and anyone driving faster is a maniac?”
“Morning Smile” from Andrew Chan of Mississauga in Globe & Mail August 28, 1999 – but the line originated with comedian George Carlin
“I thought I had been working my butt off these last 25 years, but a rear-view glance in the mirror proves otherwise.”
Jane Christmas in National Post March 8, 2001