Surely you jest: At the guillotine
About John McIntyre
John McIntyre, mild-mannered editor for a great metropolitan newspaper, has fussed over writers’ work, to sporadic expressions of gratitude, for thirty years. He is The Sun’s night content production manager and former head of its copy desk. He also teaches editing at Loyola University Maryland. A former president of the American Copy Editors Society, a native of Kentucky, a graduate of Michigan State and Syracuse, and a moderate prescriptivist, he writes about language, journalism, and arbitrarily chosen topics. If you are inspired by a spirit of contradiction, comment on the posts or write to him at john.mcintyre@baltsun.com.
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Comments
My son's eighth grade class just finished reading _A Tale of Two Cities_. He will certainly appreciate this.
Posted by: Laura Lee | March 27, 2009 9:43 AM
Midway through the priest story, you knew where this was going. That did not make the punchline any less funny.
Posted by: Robert (the Single One) | March 27, 2009 3:07 PM
I remember hearing that one when I was in engineering school. Forty-four years ago. Only an engineer can appreciate how true it is.
Posted by: Retired in Elkridge | March 27, 2009 4:22 PM
I hate to nitpick, but the rules of common usage on this blog called for "surely you jest:" to precede the title of the story.
I note that the sidebar contains the missing clue to the content of the post, but the post title is terribly, dare I say horribly, incomplete and misleading.
Posted by: Bruce Robinson | March 27, 2009 7:20 PM