BL> If you say that Dicken's writing is prosaic, then I agree with you;

 BL> it bores my arse off. That's what it means, stated like that: dull.



 BG> Not necessarily, that's the whole problem.  It can also mean exactly the

 BG> opposite, as it did in my original re Wells and Verne (neither of whose

 BG> writings are at all dull, IMO).



 BL> I will also agree that his writing is elegantly prosaic. To key-in the

 BL> other meaning of prosaic you have to make it clear which you mean, or

 BL> avoid it altogether and say he writes elegant prose. 



sorry to butt in, i don't wander this way too often, but life on night

shift is prosaic in the extreme, i've even written 3 messages to rod

tonight so i'm sure that you'll get my context (:



have you ever read raymond chandler? he writes of prosaic things but in

a very evocative way, in one of his novels, i've forgotten which one,

the first chapter has his hero phillip marlowe sitting in his office on a

hot boring day, watching flies crawling up the wall, listening to the

traffic noise outside. it is imho a tour de force of descriptive

writing, but is it prosaic?



                        Keith



... My memory is subject to C++ scoping rules!



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