I’m working on a story spread for a magazine layout right now. Searching for a nice pull quote to help fill the page, I ran smack dab into this monstrosity:

Late fall and winter brings windy conditions to the region and offshore action slows considerably though you can expect to find glass-calm conditions offshore during the prime months of May to early November when you’ll have the best chance at catching blue marlin, striped marlin, black marlin, sailfish, dorado, wahoo and yellowfin tuna.

Would anyone like to apply the methods used in Sin and Syntax to decipher what the writer of this sentence is trying to say?

My favorite sentence is actually a well-known phrase. The interesting thing about the sentence is that there are actually two versions of it, depending on where you are from. If you haven’t guessed it by now, the sentence is:

Great minds think alike, but fools seldom differ.

I enjoy this sentence because it reminds me of all the times my sisters and I would have these really amazing (in our own minds) ideas. We’d make up a song and sing “great minds think alike,” which my mom would reply “fools seldom differ.” My sisters and I would just giggle at our mother and continue on with the plan we had set out to accomplish.

The first part of the sentence “great minds think alike” is a common phrase. The “fools seldom differ” part of the sentence is widely known in Britain, and rarely heard of here in the U.S. I couldn’t tell you why.

Now, I’m not sure if selecting a quote from an anonymous source actually counts as a favorite sentence. It probably doesn’t. Which is why I have backup. And it comes from a local source, of sorts.