----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Angus MacSpon" <macspon@ihug.co.nz>
To: "Philip Bloom" <dracos12@hotmail.com>
Cc: <lurkerdrome@sbcglobal.net>; <thermopyle@tds.net>;
<chibipoe@mindspring.com>; <ffml@anifics.com>
Sent: Wednesday, November 19, 2003 12:16 AM
Subject: [FFML] Re: [Sailor Moon] [AU] Alternate Views 01

At 8:01 PM +0000 18/11/2003, Philip Bloom wrote:

 > > Smiled is not a speech tag.  Neither is nodded.

It is if the author chooses it to be. It's a stylistic thing.

You are wrong in your criticism of Thermopyle here Lurker.  It is

true, he

can use it stylisticially, but Therm is absolutely correct in

pointing it

out as being wrong regardless.

A lot of people say that.  I wonder how many of them have ever

actually

bothered to LOOK IT UP?

In my dictionary (Oxford) I clearly find, under the verb "smile":
     To exhibit, indicate or express by smiling; to grant, bestow,

etc,

     with a smile; with direct speech as obj., to say with a smile.
That last bit is pretty conclusive, don'cha think?

Yes, it IS correct to say:
     "Hello," he smiled.
Stylistically, you may not like it.  (I don't particularly like it
myself.)  But it is NOT wrong.

Can we call an end to another grammatical myth, please?

Cheers,
Angus

I did look it up, just to make sure that what I had been told time and
again was true.  I found many pages that specifically said it wasn't
correct.  As for dictionaries... check this link-- 
http://www.onelook.com/?w=smile&ls=a --and you'll see only two of the
eighteen general dictionaries give the definition you stated.  One of
them is the Cambridge International Dictionary of English.  The
Cambridge Dictionary of American English does NOT list that
definition, however.  Merriam-Webster's doesn't list it at all.

I'm not surprised that there are a couple of dictionaries that list
that definition.  It's a very common usage, even though it's just as
incorrect as all other non-speech action verbs.  Neither Oxford's
Advanced Learner's nor Cambridge International, for example, list
'nod' as 'to say with a nod,' even though that's a very common example
of this mistake as well.  Smile has become acceptable to some degree,
enough so that some dictionaries list its use as a speech tag in their
definitions, but it is still viewed as technically incorrect.


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