Pin It
ImageSMART TALK
by Dr. Manda Rynne

A MOMENT IN TIME:  This phrase gets trotted out regularly on TV, usually with gravitas heavier than a dumpster full of Emmies.  It has also done service as a book title, school essay assignment, you name it.  Here at the Institute for the Linguistically Impaired, we stopped counting and documenting this crime against logic and language years ago.

In treatment sessions, we always ask our patients, "What else is a moment in?  Do moments exist in space?"  Saying a moment does the job completely, thank you.

At the Edwin Newman Clinic, we often diagnose these patients as temporal retentives.  Those with full-blown Temporal Retention Syndrome (TRS) also like to say earlier in time and introduced for the first time. 

An insidious Englishism that's often a part of TRS renders patients unable to say or write that an event will occur in two weeks.  For them, only in two weeks' time will do.

Please support the Edwin Newman Clinic.  We have so much work to do.

----
v4i18
Pin It