#e-b-white — Public Fediverse posts

“I would feel more optimistic about a bright future for man if he spent less time proving that he can outwit #Nature and more time tasting her sweetness and respecting her seniority.” - #E.B.White

#OnThisDay in 1985, #EBWhite, American #writer (New Yorker: Stuart Little; Charlotte's Web), died at 86.
#RIP 🕊️

Because there hasn't been enough Bok recently, I have made a helpful graphic to explain how 95% of memes conceptually work.

#bokpropaganda #ebwhite #frogdissection

#ebwhite #elwynbrookswhite #metacrisis #climatecrisis #societalcollapse #reciprocity

David Guion & Michael Handelman Tapped To Adapt E.B. White’s ‘The Trumpet Of The Swan’ For HarperCollins Productions & Hobie Films
#News #DavidGuion #Development #EBWhite #HarperCollinsProduction #HobieFilms #MichaelHandelman #TheTrumpetoftheSwan

https://deadline.com/2025/05/the-trumpet-of-the-swan-movie-david-guion-michael-handelman-1236389271/

In this post I attempt to pay tribute to one of my favorite writers and one of my favorite books. Writing lessons from Charlotte's Web by E.B. White.

https://blog.hdansin.com/the-elements-of-miracle

#EBWhite #CharlottesWeb #Writing #Blog

☕𝐓𝐇𝐈𝐒 𝐖𝐄𝐄𝐊'𝐒 𝐅𝐄𝐀𝐓𝐔𝐑𝐄𝐃 𝐏𝐎𝐒𝐓☕️

Stuart Little

https://www.freenovelsonline.top/2025/02/stuart-little.html

#freenovelsonline #freebooksonline #books #novels #EBWhite #StuartLittle

The Strunk cost fallacy

Myths have serious sticking power. This is true not just of the myths of antiquity but also of more modern and niche types, like the myths of English usage. It seems that nothing will ever stop people peeving pointlessly about split infinitives, double negatives, passive voice, singular they, &c.

One thing that makes usage myths sticky, and spready, is that when we’ve gone to the trouble of learning something, we’re often reluctant to unlearn it, even in the face of contradictory truth – especially when that knowledge gives us a pleasurable feeling of authority or expertise. Renouncing it means accepting that we’ve wasted our time, so instead we double down.

This makes it a form of sunk cost fallacy or sunk cost effect. The term is from economics but has spread to more general use. I’m about to spread it further, with a goofy twist: Doubling down on a bogus rule of language use because you’ve invested time or cognitive effort into learning it is hereby known as the Strunk cost fallacy (or Strunk cost effect).

Regrettably, there is no way to include E. B. White in the coinage without spoiling the pun, but both he and William Strunk Jr. bear some responsibility for promulgating a range of egregious misunderstandings about English grammar, usage, and ‘correctness’.

The dogmatic tone in those authors’ influential Elements of Style also fuels, among some of its devotees, intolerance of non-standardized dialects and informal varieties of English, because readers gain (or strengthen) the impression that in language use there can be only one right way. This is another fallacy, an insidious and socially toxic one.

If you find evidence that you have a mistaken belief about language use – it happens to us all – then my advice is to heed that evidence. Instead of allowing your defences to reject the possibility that you’ve wasted your time learning and maybe promoting a falsity, embrace the opportunity to revise your beliefs. Don’t fall for the Strunk cost fallacy.

In closing, here’s a related piece of snark:

Accidentally typed “Strunk and Why” and this sums up my feelings better than any tired rant I might muster

— Stan Carey (@stancarey.bsky.social) Oct 16, 2024 at 20:33

(I tried embedding an equivalent Mastodon post, but it didn’t work the way Bluesky’s did. I’m using both platforms for now.)

* * *

A few other coinages you might like: Whom’s Law of Hypercorrection; Indo-European Jones; scary quotes; the apostrophantom; the Typographic Oath for editors.

#books #EBWhite #grammar #humour #language #neologisms #peevology #phrases #prescriptivism #TheElementsOfStyle #usage #WilliamStrunkJr

#EBWhite
#Freedom
Written 1940
https://open.substack.com/pub/poormansfeast/p/july-1940-a-word-from-eb-white?utm_source=share&utm_medium=android&r=4lbnua

The entire kids’ publishing industry needs this pinned above their desks.

In fact, anyone working with or writing for kids could do with reading it.

E.B. White, author of 'Charlotte's Web' on what adults get wrong when writing for children.

#childrensbooks #bookstodon #charlottesweb #ebwhite #authors #childrensLiterature #yafiction #publishing #publishers

From @mariapopova …
“In 1973…[a] man sent a distressed letter to E.B. White, lamenting that he had lost faith in humanity. The beloved author, who was not only a masterful letter-writer but also a professional celebrator of the human condition & an unflinching proponent of the writer’s duty to uplift people, took it upon himself to boost the man’s sunken heart with a short but infinitely beautiful reply”…
https://www.themarginalian.org/2014/05/06/e-b-white-letters-of-note-book/
#EBWhite #LostFaith #humanity #hope

Democracy is based on the recurrent suspicion that more than half of the people are right more than half of the time.
-- E. B. White

⬆ #Wisdom #Quotes #EBWhite #Democracy

⬇ #Photography #Panorama #TheMaze #Dollhouse #Canyonlands #Utah

🧵
> When I was a child people simply looked about them and were moderately happy; today they peer beyond the seven seas, bury themselves waist deep in tidings, and by and large what they see and hear makes them unutterably sad.
#EBWhite #EBWhiteOnMedia ?

1960:
> The modern machine is rapidly acquiring man’s characteristics, and nothing I have read lately has convinced me that machines are as closemouthed as we have always tended to think they are.
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/1960/12/03/how-television-changed-us
#EBWhite on #MachinePrivacy #PrivateCorrespondence

This is NOT the first time #SearsIsland has been targeted with a destructive energy project! Tell #GovernorJanetMills to build the #WindTerminal on #MackPoint, instead of Sears Island. There is federal funding available, so there's NO REASON to be CHEAP (Mills has balked because #Maine would have to clean up #industrial #pollution at Mack Point -- which should be cleaned up anyways!

"The possible industrial development of the island has been a point of controversy for many years. Writer #EBWhite (#CharlottesWeb), a resident of nearby Brooklin, Maine, noted in a 1975 essay for the New Yorker that he had attended an evening forum about a #CentralMainePower Company proposal to construct a #NuclearPower plant on Sears Island. White reported to New Yorker readers that the Central Maine Power Company 'feels very good about nuclear generating plants, is not worried about #radiation or accidents.' [Or rise in sea temperature from heated wastewater causing environmental damage, apparently]. In response to a goat farmer, their spokesman acknowledged #radioactive 'iodine can contaminate milk... [b]ut he was cheerful about the prospect. You would simply put the animals on a controlled diet, he said, and after about forty days the radioactivity would be gone.' [#Hormesis anyone?] Facing #LocalOpposition, the plant was not built."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sears_Island

#Environment #EndangeredSpecies #ProtectSearsIsland #WindTerminal #SandDunes
#Searsport #ProtectWahsumkik #Wahsumkik
#EndangeredSpecies #ProtectTheDunes #GovernorJanetMills #WabanakiAlliance #Wassumkeag

I love E.B. White. Re-reading Charlotte's Web made me cry.

#ebwhite #charlottesweb #reading

🎵"I write the words that make the barnyard sing.
I write words of love, like 'Some Pig!'
I write the words in my web that catch the flies.
I write the words. I write the words."🎵

https://youtu.be/__7NUrkFirA?feature=shared

#ComplimentACharacterWithASong
#HashtagGames
#CharlottesWeb
#EBWhite
#BarryManilow

#EBWhite #Charlotte #Mothers #Reading #Wonderous
#SarahFreligh

"I would feel more optimistic about a bright future for man if he spent less time proving that he can outwit Nature and more time testing her sweetness and respecting her seniority."

-- “Coon Tree”, Essays of E. B. White, 1956

(“coon” as in “raccoon”)

#nature #EBWhite

Charlotte and Wilbur: the original Web influencers.
Sorry, Peter Parker.
#CharlottesWeb #EBWhite #Spiderman #Internet #SocialMedia #communication #communications #media #spider #spiders #web #webs

Bringing my traditional NYE post to Mastodon! E.B. White's thoughts from the December 29, 1934 issue of "The New Yorker," still the most beautiful thing that has ever been written about New Year's Eve. #newyear #newyearseve #ebwhite

#Friendship #Compassion #Love #Kidslit #EBWhite

As I've just finished teaching a class about humor in media, this quotation from E. B. White has come to mind.

I'm fairly certain my students were not discouraged by humor's innards.

#humor #HumorStudies #EBWhite #SaturdayReview #MediaStudies

Original source: Saturday Review, October 18, 1941. https://archive.org/details/sim_saturday-review_1941-10-18_24_26/page/16/mode/2up