Re: Proof Reading (was Winter Holiday Reading Level)


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Posted by Andrew Craig-Bennett on September 21, 2003 at 16:26:21 from 195.93.32.8 user ACB.

In Reply to: Re: Proof Reading (was Winter Holiday Reading Level) posted by Jonathan Labaree on September 21, 2003 at 11:55:19:

"The Nellie, a cruising yawl, swung to her anchor without a flutter of the sails, and was at rest. The flood had made, the wind was nearly calm, and being bound down the river, the only thing for it was to come to and wait for the turn of the tide.

The sea-reach of the Thames stretched before us like the beginning of an interminable waterway. In the offing the sea and the sky were welded together without a joint, and in the luminous space the tanned sails of the barges drifting up with the tide seemed to stand still in red clusters of canvas sharply peaked, with gleams of varnished sprits. A haze rested on the low shores that ran out to sea in vanishing flatness. The air was dark above Gravesend, and farther back still seemed condensed into a mournful gloom, brooding motionless over the biggest, and the greatest, town on earth."

One is ever so slightly gobsmacked! I don't have the book in front of me, but I am pretty sure that textual correction, which I said was well known, was made by I.A. Richards! Your English Professor should hang his head for very shame!

Anyway, as you see, the words are, without a doubt, describing the varnished sprits of the Thames sailing barges gleaming under the red peaks of their canvas in the evening sunlight as they drift up on the flood - the barges are in the offing, which is to seaward if you are anchored in Sea Reach.

In those days, yachts were often kept at Gravesend and there would have been some four thousand Thames barges in trade.



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