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To the Editors of the CRIMSON:
Your attention is called to the growing use of sort of, kind of, really, almost, rather, simply, and anyway by those most conscious of what words sound like.
The other night I dined with a lady whose analysis of our English Department depended on these adverbs. "It's really rather fortunate," she told me, "that some sort of departmental change is being made." I pressed her to a definition of this unsettling news, which she tendered after a slight pause.
"Why it's almost basic," she said.
I volunteered that someone was encouraging closer faculty-student relationships. "Tutors are kind of busy for that," she said, shrugging: "they tend to fraternize with their own kind anyway." I nodded.
"Quite simply," she concluded, "they're making every concession they can."
Admittedly, the English Department and its tutors are none of my business: but the lady is, and I hate seeing her in such a lamentable position. Tricked in her adverbs, she is fast becoming silent and inarticulate. Joseph C. Walker '58
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