- By Jim Evans
- Entertainment
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SMART TALK
by Dr. Ced Riley
FOREWARN: At the Center for English as a First Language, patients are taught how to test for redundancies: Do a term's opposites or alternatives make sense?
If postwarn is as silly as postpone until earlier, then maybe the term should stand on its own, prefix-free. I mean, doesn't warn mean to tell someone about a danger before it happens? Yes? Then why not say warn?
Saying forewarn is a symptom of Temporal Retentive Syndrome. Here's another example: Some of our patients like to preplan their actions. Why can't they plan anything? Maybe we should call hindsight postplanning?
After treatment in the Edwin Newman Clinic for Temporal Retentives, patients begin to listen better and clean up their language. The sharp ones even see the absurdity in preregister - do you ever postregister? - and apply elsewhere if a school asks them to preregister in advance.