perplexidly....
Okay —
What is up with words like “perplexidly”? Listen, there are things that people purporting to be writers should know and one of those things is adverbs and another is how adverbs work.
Just tossing an “ly” on any old word will not make it an adverb. I am sorry, it is a nice try, but it will not. [I know this because I had grandmothers who taught English and they got strict about stuff like this.] And, if you do it anyway and somehow do mutate a perfectly innocent word like perplex into some strange new aberrant adverb, pay attention to what you are affecting there :
The.
Verb.
[Verb. Adverb. Notice “verb” is in both of those. That is a nifty clue.]
What this all means to some of the people I have been reading in the Nicholl competition is, if some guy walks across a quad “perplexidly,” that sentence does not mean the guy is perplexed, that sentence means the walk is perplexed. Because “perplexidly” is a mutant faux adverb.
I only bring this up because I am sure seeing a lot of perplexidlies in scripts I am reading.
where the art work comes from :
that is girl with dunce cap by arthur tress
0 Responses to perplexidly….
LOL!
Oh you mock my pain.
Notice Woeful did not say
LOL-LY
I don’t know what you’re talking about, Max. Perplexidly is a perfectly cromulent word.
Commercial I heard about 39457890734 times this morning: “At WhateverthefuckChevrolet, they do things different.”
Me, each time: “LY! L-Y fuckers! DIFFERENT-LY! ARRRRGH!”
Sometime you have to throw English a beating to get the desired point across. It’s one of those “I’d rather be wrong than inaccurate” artistic decisions. It does, however, abrogate your right to grammatical certitude*.
*A right that, by law, I am not allowed to come within 500 feet of.
Anita, LOL[ly].
Sarah, I do that, cut the ly off an adverb sometimes. It creates a specific effect. That might get old every fifteen minutes on a radio though.
Valiant, I agree, I am not a grammara Nazi, I bend a whole lot of English. But for a reason. Please have a reason. Aaaaah!
[I have to hunt ginny now]
It’s perplexedly.
Really, gah!
LOL
I seem to remember ginormous rolling across someone’s blog and onto the pages of a dictionary.
Ergo, perplexidly I scamper off.
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Oh you know ginormous is a word perplexid girl.
Quad? Why would anyone want to walk across your thigh? Now this is perplexing.
I can think of a couple reasons.
:::whistling:::
Perplexed, he walked across the quad.
Personally, I’d crawl slowly across the quad, but that’s just me.
Well that does not sound very gray. Maybe you need to take that passion quiz again while you are more rested.