If you can read this you're too close T-Shirt

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My secretary read the first few thousand words and announced “I wouldn’t have that book in my house!” I said “you’re throwing it away!” She said “Certainly not … I’m keeping it in the office.” She’s reading the stories at her desk with a sign behind her that says “If you’re reading this you’re too darn close.” One of the problems rigorous Quoism runs into, incidentally, is the impossibility, to date, of italicizing a period. Gone and not forgotten. Grief without pain. Hell to start and hell to stop. Hold ‘er, Newt. Hold everything. Hotsie totsie. How do you do in a case like this? How many times? If you are close enough to read this you are too (damn) close. (2) If you can read this (sign) you’re (are) too darn (damn, damned) close. Dear Quote Investigator: The witty author Dorothy Parker was once asked to suggest an epitaph for her tombstone. Over the years she crafted several different candidates, and I am interested in the following saying which can be expressed in multiple ways: Originally “Quoiisin,’but one i(some say the left, some the light) was, as Dcmincement’s colleague AchiMc laupiniere once pur it lightly, “.soon winked.”

WHAT DO WE speak of when we speak of “literature”? Before beginning to “answer” that question, we must ask another question: “What do we speak of when we speak of‘What’?” This is itself a peculiarly written question, since it cannot be asked in conversation without leading to this sort of thing: “What?” But maybe You spoke only French. Then he may have said, “Je suis You.” “You are fou,” a speaker of both languages, who assumed that You, too, was bilingual, may have replied. In print You might have cleared up the matter by writing (we’re speaking of French print now), “Pas ’you,' ‘You.”5 But You appears—in engravings of the period6— to have been illiterate. Behind it stood our little force— None wished it to he greater; For every man was half a horse And half an alligator.4The curiosity of a motorist on a country road was aroused by the lettering, too small to read, on the spare tire of a car ahead. Anxious to know what it said, he put his foot on the accelerator and read: “If you can see this you are too darned close for comfort.” Delivered by mistake but to great applause bciore the International Polymer-Polypeptide Congiess last year In Kcw. It was the great advance of Hercule Demincement, in his pioneer work Quoi qua ‘Quoi,' to show that even to say “Wh . . .” (“Qu . . .”) is to assume too much.2 Since then we have tended to speak of “ ‘What,’ ” for argument’s sake, as '"Quoi?” and of the work of Demincement and his followers as Quoism.3 Death could be funny, the funniest thing about it being the world’s fear of it. She amused Mr. Benchley by thinking up epitaphs to embellish her own tombstone, such as “This is on me,”“Excuse my dust,” and “If you can read this, you are standing too close.”

Demincement also raises the question of “pain.” In Anglo-American print, it is unclear whether “pain” (or “’pain’”) is being italicized for emphasis or to show that it is French. For instance:A driver of a motor car In Washington, Pa., while trailing a small coupe, noticed very small letters on the spare tire covering. Anxious to know what was being advertised, he drove close enough to read the inscription, which said: “If you can read this you are too darn close.” Hellman’s remark about Parker was discussed in her memoir. It also appeared in publications in 1968 and 1969. Detailed citations are given further below. One fellow claims he even knows the message stencilled on the flying saucer. It says “If you can read this you’re too darn close… to knowing a top military secret.” inverted commas.” Imagine how difficult it would be to express the statement “‘inverted commas’" (that is to say, the phrase “inverted commas” surrounded by . . ,1) by wiggling our fingers. Especially if the conversation were literally (so to speak) AngloAmerican—that is, between an Anglo on the one hand (so to speak), and an American on the other. The British, of course, use (’) to mean (”). At this point we would be forced to clarify our remarks by wiggling our fingers—now two on each hand, to signify “quote” marks, now just one on each hand, to signify socalled “single-quote” marks, or, as the British call them,