EDITOR@WORK: On a Rolle in England

Sunday, October 25, 2009

On a Rolle in England

Words to talk by: I was just reading a story about Florida State safety Myron Rolle, who is a Rhodes scholar at the University of Oxford in England, and I came across this paragraph -- Rolle has also picked up the local patois. “Once I put that flame on the hob, not the stove, I knew I was officially here,” he said.

Naturally, I looked up patois and hob. One online dictionary defined patois as a dialect peculiar to the illiterate classes; a provincial form of speech.

The first definition of hob is a hobgoblin, sprite, or elf (appropriate for Halloween). A hob is also mischievous behavior (behaviour if you're in England). And, finally, it's the flat top part of a cooking stove, or a separate flat surface, containing hotplates or burners.

Ah, the third definition of hob fits the sentence.

Questionable edit: Here's a story from a newspaper today -- “We have to do what Obama’s trying to do in health care reform,” Donna Shalala, the University of Miami president, said during a recent interview. Do you really need to say that the quote came from a recent interview? It would read better if the attribution was ...," said Donna Shalala, the president at the University of Miami.

EMAIL: tgilli52@gmail.com BLUESKY: PROFILE