26 Feb
2003
26 Feb
'03
2 a.m.
Ron Hardin, who worked at Western Electric in Columbus (I think)
at the time, confirms that he is the author:
Festoon was mine, chiefly written one Saturday with a tragically flawed
copy of Lester's _Introductory Transformational Grammar of English_
bought that morning on a $1 table at Woolworth on my knee.
The tragic flaw was that there are severe lexical constraints on language,
which is why there are so many made-up words in festoon, to avoid them.
The introduction of awful phrases came in reaction to writer's workbench
from Lorinda Cherry, which had a real mine of them; and phrases from my
boss, S D Hester, who was a wretched writer. People contributed on noticing
that.
It was greatly helped by troff (``The _pay_ people to write this crap?'' is
a typical reaction. Apparently it was not out of the question for Western
Electric.)
Norman Wilson
Toronto ON
On the internet, nobody can tell you're whether you're on the internet.