The last word on uptalk (not really, but it wouldn't be so bad if it were[?])

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To repost now my mockery of uptalk, which took the form of parodying a well-known Christmas carol, may seem perverse in mid-January.

Tracy Kidder
But my excuse is that I hadn't come across until today this marvelous smackdown of a curious vocal practice current mainly among young women.

It's Tracy Kidder quoting with admiration a magazine piece by his longtime editor Richard Todd, who was writing about accompanying one of his daughters on a college tour. Consider the following a belated epigraph to that Yuletide post of mine.


"We met our tour guide, and then she asked us her name. "Hi, my name is Melissa?'"


   --  from "Good Prose: The Art of Nonfiction"
by Tracy Kidder & Richard Todd (Random House, 2013)

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