In a highly effective tactic to avoid working, I’ve been reading a couple pages of the Guardian Newspaper’s Style Guide. Not only a great correction for many grammatical and style mistakes that one often makes in casual writing, but hilarious as well.
actor
male and female; avoid actress except when in name of award (eg Oscar for best actress)
One 27-year-old actor contacted the Guardian to say “actress” has acquired a faintly pejorative tinge and she wants people to call her actor (except for her agent who should call her often)
The stylebook can bought via The Guardian Bookshop, or downloaded in PDF format.
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I wasn’t close to the pain of the anguish and suffering in South East Asia, I haven’t been affected by loss recently and I’ve only known one person who’s died in my life. But people lose their loved ones, those close to them and I can still relate. Whole communities have been washed away and there is no way of really comprehending it – they’re simply gone and what was there is now merely rubble leaving people in need. I was reading some poetry by Walt Whitman today, and came across this which I think clearly expresses a feeling, a feeling of contemplation: