carol_collins

Michael, thank you for those informative links. You've all given me great information and help, more than I anticipated. This site surely is a place to learn.

Thanks, you guys. I guess the best procedure is to scan them first, then give them good ventilation, and clean them. They were stored all stacked on top of each other in a big envelope down in N. Carolina, where it is very humid. Once I have them scanned, I might as well wash them and refix, as I probably have nothing to lose. Thanks again.

I have come into possession of old negatives (60-yrs. old), and some of them are

faded--they seem to have lost their density over time. Others are blurred, as

if the different tones faded into each other. It doesn't look like it was just

blurred at the time of taking. I have searched this forum and the internet for

help in restoring and preserving these negatives, but nothing is specific to

this situation. Would it help to wash them, then re-fix them, or is there

anything else that would at least stop further deterioration? Thanks for any

suggestions.

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Ellis, this book by John Trimble was copyrighted in 1975. I don't know if he is still at UT. But I like his writing. Concise and very helpful.

Frank: Well, Formal English is not a religion, though it abounds with superstitions, such as that one should never start a sentence with ?well.? Thank you for your editing of my brief comment, which was meant to encourage Kier, and not to reopen the Grammar Wars.

You, perhaps, failed to notice the quotation marks around the words "whom to steal from," indicating that those were not my words, but the words of someone who spoke them to me.

Styles change in clothing, in automobiles, in where to get tattoos, and in use of language, and today it is considered archaic by many grammarians to use ?whom? when ?who? would do just as well, and would be less formal and stodgy. However if one prefers to use the traditional ?whom,? he/she may do so.

I have no comment on the errors in grammar, punctuation and spelling in your response. I understood what you were trying to say, and see no need to pick a stranger to pieces, simply to inflate my ego. I am having enough trouble trying to decipher the abbreviations so prevalent in the current generation?s e-mail correspondence. I?m still trying to figure out IMHO. I e-mailed my daughter to ask her what the heck LOL meant. When I was teaching sixth grade, the students signed their clandestine notes, ?LOL,? which meant, ?Lots of Love,? but I doubt that?s what you guys mean.

 

?The great enemy of clear language is insincerity. When there is a gap between one?s real and one?s declared aims, one turns, as it were instinctively, to long words and exhausted idioms, like a cuttlefish squirting out ink.? ? George Orwell quoted in ?Writing With Style: Conversations on the Art of Writing,? by John R. Trimble, University of Texas at Austin.

Comfort yourself?I am an ex-teacher.

Kier, I enjoyed the discussion on your ethical question, and find it ironical that you end your dilemma about "stealing" to let us know that Grecco's book, at $20 "it's a steal." Do we have a new ethical dilemma to settle here now?

 

When I was a school teacher, I was told, "creativity is knowing who to steal from."

 

Do it.