Dan Savage’s Writing Shoots And Scores

Given my normal inclination to rant about writing mistakes, I thought I’d shake it up and give a nod to the latest Savage Love. Responding to a guy who likes to dress up in little-girl dresses, Dan writes, “And looking down his nose at you in your little-girl dresses and me in my big fag relationship allows him to feel morally superior at absolutely no cost to himself. ”

That “you in your little-girl dresses and me in my big fag relationship” is a charming pair of parallel phrases. The opposites little and big are like salt on caramel: a perfect contrast to the samness of the sentence structure.