There Once Was A Gal From - 11 May 2015

<p>Ever try to write a well-known passage in limerick form? It's harder than you think. How about this one:  "There once was a lady who's sure / All that glitters is golden and pure/ There's a stairway that heads up to heaven, it's said / And the cost of the thing she'll incur." Plus, the diacritical mark that readers of The New Yorker magazine find most annoying. And how do you really pronounce the name of that big city in Southern California--the one also known as the "City of Angels"? Also, clopening, Z vs. Zed, seeding a tournament, the wee man and Old Scratch, and a word game based on the novels of Charles Dickens.<br /><br />FULL DETAILS<br /><br />What do readers of The New Yorker complain about most when they write letters to the editor? Those two dots above vowels in words like cooperate and reelect. The diaeresis, as those marks are known, has remained in use at the magazine ever since the copy editor who planned on nixing it died in 1978, and the whole saga is chronicled in fellow New Yorker copy editor Mary Norris's new memoir, Between You & Me: Confessions of a Comma Queen.<br /><br />March Madness is over, but the confusion lingers as to why teams are seeded in tournament brackets. The best theory is that brackets resemble sideways trees, and the teams are spread out evenly so the best can prosper—just like a in a garden.<br /><br />A Southernism we love: You might as well go out and let the moon shine down your throat. It means you're taking medicine that won’t be effective or eating something flavorless. Not to be confused with pouring moonshine down your throat, which would be both flavorful and 4<br /><br />Americans pronounce the letter Z like "zee," while those in other English-speaking countries say "zed." That's because Noah Webster proposed lots of Americanized pronunciations and this is one of the few that stuck. David Sacks' book Letter Perfect is a great resource for more on our alphabet.<br /><br />Baristas and retail workers are all too familiar with the dreaded clopen shift. You're as