Taper Wickel wrote:
"Brian" == Brian Randall <brian@azurite.org> writes:
Indecisive. I'll leave this one as is -- I think the meaning is
clear, and it would probably work out like the 'nother thing'
vs. 'nother think' debate, which was completely inconclusive. :/
"The best laid plans" is directly from Robert Burns's poem "On a
Mouse", which reads
The best laid plans o' mice and men
Gang aft agley
(The second line's occasionally semi-translated "go oft awry", which
works.)
And it's "another think", really.
http://www.wsu.edu/~brians/errors/thing.html from Dr. Paul Brians of
Washington State.
For what it's worth -- unfortunately, common usage and technical
defenition do not always go hand in hand. Everyone in my area used
'thing' coming when I was growing up, and generally still does.
I'm going to rule that if it's incorrect usage, 1) it's not part of
this fic, 2) it's dialogue, which isn't always correct anyway.
Let's try and head this off before we restart the fiasco that killed
Rursus Iterum.
(Ahem. We now return the pedant to his regularily scheduled lurking.)
--
Taper Wickel taper@waxwolf.com
http://www.waxwolf.org/