Date:  Tue, 27 Jan 1998 10:36:48 -0500
From:  "Dennis R. Preston" <preston[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]PILOT.MSU.EDU>
Subject: Re: ADS-L guidelines, appreciation doubted

I am especially enchanted by the idea that a mail list limited to
professional talk could not 'remain interesting.'

dInIs

>On Tue, 27 Jan 1998, Bapopik wrote:
>>   AMERICAN SPEECH has covered "-gate" words not once nor twice, but four
>> times. See "Among the New Words" 53.3 Fall 1978, 54.4 Winter 1979, 56.4
>> Winter 1981, and 59.2 Summer 1984.
>[...]
>>   Both Tim and Beverly have written or at least strongly hinted in the past
>> that anyone (me) who posts etymologies is "unprofessional" and shouldn't be
>>on
>> ADS-L.
>
>Well, I enjoy the etymologies and the jokey etymologies and just about
>everything about words and new coinages. But then I'm a Richard Lederer
>fan and have coined many of my own words for my novels. So maybe I
>"shouldn't" be on ADS-L to get those things. But the WORDS-L list, the
>one I expected to have these kinds of discussions, is nothing but a chat
>session made into messages; I've been monitoring that digest, and they
>have lots of fun, but they seldom even discuss words at all. So this is
>the only place that I see words discussed. I'm here because I'm a
>logophile. I'm not sure that a mailing list can be "solely limited to
>professional talk" and still remain interesting; even over on
>software-testing-L (swtest-discuss), we have side sessions on test
>problems and types.
>
>If there are guidelines that direct us only to talk about dialect
>(whatever that is), maybe I ought to go over to the Web site and read them
>again. I read the welcome message and didn't get this particular bit out
>of it.

Dennis R. Preston
Department of Linguistics and Languages
Michigan State University
East Lansing MI 48824-1027 USA
preston[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]pilot.msu.edu
Office: (517)353-0740
Fax: (517)432-2736