Some of you may have seen this over-the-top letter from Giles Coren to sub-editors (I guess thats Brit-speak for "copyeditor?) at the Times, in which he throws a tantrum because his words were changed from "for a nosh" to "for nosh." The man can write, I'll grant him that, and he's correct that "for nosh" sounds lame, but he's pretty clearly a self-centered twat. And I don't understand one of his arguments:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2008/jul/23/mediamonkey
Okay, I understand that "for a nosh" sounds MUCH better than "for nosh." But the syllable stressing thing? Huh. I read the last phrase with the following stress:And worst of all. Dumbest, deafest, shittest of all, you have removed the unstressed 'a' so that the stress that should have fallen on "nosh" is lost, and my piece ends on an unstressed syllable. When you're winding up a piece of prose, metre is crucial. Can't you hear? Can't you hear that it is wrong? It's not fucking rocket science. It's fucking pre-GCSE scansion. I have written 350 restaurant reviews for The Times and i have never ended on an unstressed syllable. Fuck. fuck, fuck, fuck.
WON der ing WHERE to GO for NOSH
as opposed to:
WON der ing WHERE to GO for a NOSH
Either way, "nosh" gets a stress.
What am I missing?