Things not what they seem

Richard Cory

Whenever Richard Cory went down town,
We people on the pavement looked at him:
He was a gentleman from sole to crown,
Clean favored, and imperially slim.

And he was always quietly arrayed,
And he was always human when he talked;
But still he fluttered pulses when he said,
“Good-morning,” and he glittered when he walked.

And he was rich—yes, richer than a king,
And admirably schooled in every grace:
In fine, we thought that he was everything
To make us wish that we were in his place.

So on we worked, and waited for the light,
And went without the meat, and cursed the bread;
And Richard Cory, one calm summer night,
Went home and put a bullet through his head.

Edward A. Robinson
1897

Cousin John Donald Wade

Hard times met him at the train.

That’s our favorite line from The Life and Death of Cousin Lucius, by John Donald Wade. Cousin John was born in 1892 in Marshallville, which is about as far north as you can get in South Georgia.

He was a deeply reactionary man, born 27 years after Appomattox, too late for slavery. So he took the best thing going — a job at a southern college pining for the good old days he’d missed.

Cousin John was one of the Agrarians, if that means anything to you. They were not little writers: Robert Penn Warren, John Crowe Ransom, Frank Owsley, Allen Tate.  Some Agrarians were Fugitive Poets, but Cousin John was not.

The Agrarian manifesto was called I’ll Take My Stand. Cousin John made two important contributions to the work: its title, and The Life and Death of Cousin Lucius.

His short story may not be the rightmost element in the collection (the thing is truly antediluvian), or even the most dishonest. But we still say it’s the best piece of writing.

Clericalism in New York?

From the 2/8/10 issue of The New Yorker:
[Parking permits] are distributed to city and state agencies — police, clergy, housing — to be used by workers when on official business.

Hmm, we said. When was the clergy designated a government agency in New York? We missed that.

Biscuits?

Biscuit 1. The first language angle is antidisestablishmentarianism — the belief that church and state should be one. When we were a youth it was widely advertised as the longest word in English. Smart kids used it to show off; smarter kids used it to win sandbox bets.

Biscuit 2. The second language angle is: An error in the New Yorker! For SL that’s holy grail.

Moron’s Rule #138

“A fish should not smell fishy.”

Moron’s Rule #138 is is nearly universal. We’ve endured it since we took up cooking in the late 70s.

No, geniuses. A fish should smell 100 percent fishy.

What they are objecting to, although they don’t know how to say it, is a different smell: rot. Fish gone bad, spoiled fish, rotting fish, fish just barely turned — it’s all the same smell, which is fish + bacteria.

Fish should smell like fish and nothing else. And the word for that, dear ones, is fish–y. So the issue here turns out to be neither fish nor the human olfactory glands, but rather a language deficit.

Of course, we don’t look to chefs for great prose. But we do insist that publishers who presume to take our money for books and newspapers  hire editors who can not only read, but think.

Inbox, raw

An occasional report on words, phrases, and pith.

Huh?
“Unqualified people were hired to do nothing,” reports a breathless LA Times in an exposé of county corruption. What qualifications, we wondered, are required to do nothing?

Quoth

Lord make me chaste. But not yet. Agustine de Phillippa

Quoth
I knew her before she was a virgin. Oscar Levant, about Doris Day.

Stress test

Good point on language in today’s NYT. Consider this sentence:

I never said she stole my money.

It can have seven very different meanings — depending on which word is stressed.

1. I never said she stole my money.
….It was Tommy who said it. Not me.

2. I NEVER said she stole my money.
….I said a few things, but not that.

3. I never SAID she stole my money.
….Maybe I implied it. But I didn’t say it.

4. I never said SHE stole my money.
….I said “That bunch on the corner stole it.”

5. I never said she STOLE my money.
….Far be it from me to cast aspersions!

6. I never said she stole MY money.
….It was the company’s money she stole.

7. I never said she stole my MONEY.
.… Everything but.

Two rules for success

1. Never tell everything at once.

---

Maybe that’s an old one. But we don’t get out much.

Miss Understanding

Cut to the chase,
There’s gold in them thar hills!
Feed a cold, starve a fever.

Think you know what these things mean? Miss Understanding bets you don’t.

The most watched video ever

That’s our prediction and we’re sticking to it.

See it yourself:

The T-Mobile Dance

And then watch How They Did It

We hit the lottery!

It’s all over but the paperwork.

On Monday we received a check for $4.5 million. After the customary 10-day hold (10 business days, that is — don’t make that mistake!), we will enjoy the fruits of our fortune.

Meanwhile, we’ve decided to go public with our strategy in order that others can repeat it. In these difficult times, everybody needs something to fall back on.

Inbox, raw

Quoth

I’d make it a lot lower-percentage. —  Oscar Robertson, told that today’s young players don’t vigorously defend against three-pointers “because it’s a low-percentage shot.”

Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities. — Voltaire (François-Marie Arouet)

A great many people think they are thinking when they are merely rearranging their prejudices. — William James

The anti-umbrella

We recently acquired a patio “umbrella.”

Or not. It’s made of a mesh that blocks neither sun nor rain.

So is really an umbrella?

What if a shovel were specifically designed not to dig or even beat a mule?

Would it really be a shovel?

SL holds no brief. We’re just asking.

Bambi, Googled

Recently a Google photography crew hit a baby deer on Five Points Road in Rush, NY. Sad, but it happens.

But there was worse to come — not for the deer but the Google. Seems the crew uploaded the gore.

So if you Googled Five Points Road you got to watch a bloody baby deer writhe on the center line.  (The pics are gone now. Mama G didn’t raise no fools.)

Biscuit?

We may or may not get a language angle out of this. Initial comments from Mountain View were promising:  “The deer was able to move and had left the area by the time the police arrived.”

Right. And now he’s at a nice farm.

Malware attack!

Evil breached the SL gates today. We report this because it’s so unusual: Our always-connected systems haven’t been compromised in many years.

Evil came to the party as Software Protect 2009, proclaiming itself a searcher and destroyer of spyware. In fact it had only the worst intentions. Run it through the Google for the whole story.

Nasty little beastie

Of course, we knew Software Protect 2009 was a fraud the moment we saw it. Why? Because it burst onto our screen, without invitation, and flung wide its raincoat. Even Gates doesn’t do that any more. Well, not as much.

Inbox, raw

An occasional report on words, phrases, and pith.

Retraining
What retailers must do to customers after holiday sales, in order to convince them to buy at full price.

Quoth
Uneventful. — Captain John Smith of the Titanic, at a pre-launch press conference, asked to describe his career so far.

Quoth
When facts change, I change my mind. What do you do, sir? John Keynes

Gifting issues?

Christmas at your throat again? Not sure what to give Strong Language? Here are some ideas.

1. A U.S. Senator. Sure, we joke about it. But we’ve wanted one since we were six, and now there’s a sale. You can’t afford not to buy! Previously owned is fine, but no timeshares please.
2. The Underground Grammarian. Snobbish, precise, occasionally hilarious, and not for everyone. Shoot it through the Google and you may find a gift from SL to you.
3. Water boiler from True Hot, $442.00 at Downtown Glory. This miracle outil de cuisine takes the place of your existing saucepan and brings a new shine to your stovetop decor. It’s a thing of
   beauty, but it’s SO much more. .Reusable, indestructible, and green as a seasick elf — you’ll put this versatile vessel into service every day. The no-nonsense, fireproof, all-metal body is custom-rolled for super-efficient heat transfer at the molecular level. Plus if you love to cook with fine water — and who doesn’t? — don’t guess on temperature. Bring it to a perfect 212° every time.* And the True Hot is GUARANTEED. Fuel source not included.
   .
   * at identical altitudes

Inbox, raw

An occasional report on words, phrases, and pith.

Disgorgement
A danger to early Ponzi scheme investors. Even if entirely innocent, they may be forced to repay their gains in order to ease the losses of those who got in too late.

Clawback
Recovery of previously given monies or benefits, such as a disgorgement order might mandate.

Quoth
“Shut up,” he explained. Ring Lardner

Quoth
Give me the coroner and I’ll rule the county. Al Capone

Good work, Jan Kemp

Glory, glory to Old Georgia! — fight song.

The University fired Jan Kemp in 1982 for refusing to cheat.

She was a remedial teacher, helping kids who were judged not quite ready for the rigors of Old Georgia. (Full disclosure: We knew UGA as the school of last resort, required by law to accept any mammal in the state, including us.) But Ms. Kemp was serious about her job. She wanted those kids to succeed. And whenever one of them failed a regular class, she was saddened.

But when her boss ordered her to muscle an English prof into changing three grades for athletes, Jan Kemp refused. She didn’t believe in exceptions for that category.

UGA President Fred Davison fired her. She sued him and the school.

Coaches, administrators, local boosters and a few students organized an outpouring of abuse upon Ms. Kemp that was up-close and personal.

But she stood her ground. And in a too-rare ending, she cleared a million bucks, put Davison on the street, and began a reform in college sports.

Jan Kemp died on Dec. 7. See the AJC obit.

Here’s the biscuit

Wait a minute — nice story, but what’s the language angle? For SL it emerged when Jan Kemp’s boss reacted to her refusal to change grades:

“He screamed at me that it would be done. He asked me who did I think was more prominent — me or a prominent basketball player and two prominent track stars?”

Is that a math question? Or vocabulary? We’re still not sure.

The Hot Rod speaketh

Following are remarks allegedly made by Illinois governor Rod Blagojevich to his advisers about the opportunity to appoint Barack Obama’s successor. For a certain common profanity, we’ve substituted the alternative spelling buck.

Disclaimers: The transcript was furnished by the Feds, so no opinion is offered about its accuracy.  SL defends presumption of innocence.  Text inside brackets is our paraphrasing. The subject here is language, not politics.

The Governor speaks:

Referring to a U.S. Senate seat: It’s a valuable bucking thing. You don’t just give it away for bucking nothing. I’ve got this thing and it’s bucking golden.

Referring to Obama: [You're telling me I have to] give this motherbucker his senator? For nothing? Buck him!

Meanwhile Patti, Rod’s wife and herself a child of Chicago ward politics, is yelling on the speakerphone with a message for the local paper:

Referring to 2 journalists: Just fire them [or we'll] hold up your bucking stadium project. Buck them!

Do the math

1. The Rodster has a 13 percent approval rating.
2. A 2-year U.S. Senate term was worth $7.6 million and change at today’s NYSE closing bell.
3. A governor who appoints his own bad self can clear even more.

Given these realities, we’d be astonished if the governor didn’t take a practical interest in the matter.

Here’s the biscuit

The language angle is profanity. It’s sometimes called strong language, but it’s usually pretty weak. If the Guv spends 5 to 7 at Marion, it might be his words that put him there, but it won’t be the cursing.

We’re also put in mind of a couple of other things:

The worthy Gov. Spitzer, said to have roared in the hallways of Albany not long ago: I’m a bucking steamroller!

The old Louisiana definition of political reform: Turn the fat hogs out, bring the lean hogs in.

See also: The Language of Scandal.

Inbox, raw

An occasional report of interesting words, phrases, and pith.

Exit greeter
A Walmart security position. The exit greeter stands near the door and asks people leaving the store with merchandise to prove they are shoppers, not shoplifters.

In-school field trip
A learning experience outside the routine, but inside the school. It’s easy on the budget — no field, no trip — and, at least in Georgia, it still requires parental permission.

Quoth
I think I’m O.K. where I am. — Ford CEO Alan Mulally in testimony before Congress, addressing a suggestion that he cut his $22 million salary. Like declining a second cookie.

Quoth
The whole world owes me a living. — Walt Disney

And don’t miss:
31 Treats for Youse, our occasional file cleanup that turns up some of the greatest in strong language. As poor old Job said, How forcible are right words!

Words to annoy Britons!

Researchers at Oxford University have compiled a list of the most irritating words and phrases in the English language, or at least its British variant.

They published their work in Damp Squid, a book named after the widespread confusion over squid and squib (a mistake we must have made a thousand times.)

It’s not quite clear from the Telegraph what standards the study used. Did a particular word annoy the entire British empire (such as it is), or just  the UK? Or just Oxford, or Lynne Truss, or a couple of hung-over freshmen?

Ready?

At the end of the day
Fairly unique
I personally
At this moment in time
With all due respect
Absolutely
It’s a nightmare
Shouldn’t of
24/7
It’s not rocket science

Relax, says Strong Language. There are plenty of more annoying words and phrases.

Here’s the biscuit

A certain Atlanta business writer said we may be facing a language disaster:

“I personally agree — for now. At this moment in time their list is fairly unique but at the end of the day it won’t be. Why? It’s not rocket science. Tomorrow every nitwit on the Google will be repeating these things 24/7.

“Was it irresponsible to publish it? Absolutely. With all due respect to Oxford, it’s a nightmare we don’t need. They shouldn’t of done it.”

Best quote of the campaign

“I’m, like, totally ready to lead.”
Paris Hilton

In response to the McCain ad ridiculing Obama as a celebrity — with a picture of Paris to prove it — and asking But is he ready to lead?

Say what you will about Paris. But she does not flinch.

A year in the provinces

Yesterday we completed a year without TV. How’d that happen? See Cathode rays are dark.

How did we survive? Newspapers and Netflix. Books and Billy Justice. Dinners and dogs and dumb homeowner projects.

We seem to be intact. But we’ll string up the antenna (or cable, or whatever) and climb back on the grid soon.

Laziness we’d be fired for

Lazy writing never goes out of style, but recently we’ve noticed a spike in a certain usage. Here’s a good example:

The company rushed to reopen the plant because it owned 700,000 chickens that needed to be slaughtered.

Chickenry sees its own “needs” differently. The birds consistently choose food, water, and the company of other chickens over being drawn and quartered. (Regular polling is conducted at poultry plants, and the bird vote is always loud, clear, and unanimous.)

We’re reminded of the famous defense to a murder charge: “He needed killing, Your Honor.”

Here are a few other examples.

The allegations need to be investigated.
The sandbags need to be removed.
Mortgage rates need to be lowered.

What do mortgage rates do when their “needs” aren’t met? Pout, cry, throw a tantrum, go on strike? Or just sit in quiet suffering?

With a name like that . . .

For years we’ve maintained a pointless little file of names with a certain characteristic: They reflect the owner’s occupation.

We haven’t paid much attention to it recently, but after today’s papers we knew we had to go public. These are all real names:

How could Francine Prose not write fiction?

How could Usain Bolt not run races?

How could Storm Field not forecast weather?

How could John Fund not report for the Wall Street Journal?

How could Rick Wagoner not run General Motors? (As it turns out, by presidential directive. That’s how.)

How could Igor Judge not preside over a court? (Britain’s highest one, making him Lord Judge, the Chief Justice)

How could Chris Moneymaker not win at poker?

How could Donald Trump not operate a casino?

And what finally tipped us over? Why, today’s obit:

With a name like William Headline . . .
How could he not have been a CNN bureau chief?

It’s all in the great tradition of Major Major from Catch-22.  (Ten points for his full name and rank!)

Refile under: can’t make ‘em up

IABC awards

Strong Language doesn’t get out much, and we remain a hermit despite many attempts to reform us. Coffee and a T1 line — O wilderness were paradise enow.

Then they said, “Hey, SL, why don’t you come to the IABC awards this year? They’re called Atlanta’s Got Talent — and there’s sauce bearnaise on the menu!”

It was an invite we couldn’t decline, and it was a treat. Beautiful work well recognized —  many interesting conversations — sauce worth slurping (though we did not) — and a very funny Conn-man at the podium. And mimes.

We’re a little busy at the moment — Recession on Line 3 — but we’ll offer more substantive notes presently. (We may even tackle the mime question — an antilanguage if ever there were.)

Meanwhile, kudos to the winners, thanx to Elena and all the organizers and volunteers, and backatcha to the kindly greetings of all.

Considering how light is spent

Here’s to Dr. K at Marietta Eye. Lakshmana Kooragayala has tended Strong Language’s weak eyeballs for a few years now, and both orbs are happy with the care.

Are we being overdoctored? Our insurance company protects us from that. But today, after a follow-up appointment, we walked out with a laser-repaired retina. Had we waited, nothing might have happened. On the other hand . . .

Here’s the biscuit

Where’s the language angle? Why, John Milton. He lost his sight at 44 and wrote his famous poem soon afterward. We suffered a retinal detachment at 19, when we were immortal and incapable of poetry.

SL doesn’t do a big trade in personal items, preferring to stay focused on language. Even then, we don’t try much poetry. But when John Milton opens a door for us, we go in.

If not for Dr. K, our light might soon be spent.

Anonymouse!

This week’s New Yorker reports on a conversation with a top official at a major global financial institution who asked not to be identified “because, well, he did not want to be identified.”

It’s a refreshing jab at the New York Times, which has recently put itself through contortions to justify printing comments from anonymous sources. (There’s a history, of course — Google Jayson Blair — but it’s beyond our present porpoises.)

We’ve been monitoring the situation for you (SL at its post). The Times quotes many a source who requests anonymity because:

“He is not authorized to speak on the events.”
“The meeting was not public.”
“The subject matter is sensitive.”
. . . and so on.

Where does it end?  Before long it will be “an official who asked not to be identified because he was eating a ham sandwich.”

The New Yorker approach is better, although they backslide week-to-week. Actually, we prefer the old-fashioned approach, where a rag protects its anonymous sources without justification or apology. A journalist who makes up quotes can make up a reason for anonymity. The NYT add-ons are meaningless.

How green were the Nazis?

Every year since 1978, the Diagram Prize has recognized the most unusual title of a book published in Britain. Past winners have included such greats as

Proceedings of the Second International Workshop on Nude Mice
How Green Were the Nazis?
People Who Don’t Know They’re Dead
How to Avoid Huge Ships

This year the prize also recognized the all-time best of the best. The winner was Greek Rural Postmen and Their Cancellation Numbers, a title that, according to the authors, “purely describes what’s in the book.” Good enough for us.

Unsmart marketing

Next time you drop 100,000 direct mail pieces — after you’ve applied postage — put 25k in the mail and the rest in the trash. That”s apparently how the National Center for Database Marketing operates.

We received a brochure from the NCDM inviting us to that organization’s conference in Florida. In fact we received 4 separate mailings, all on the same day, each addressed to the same name but with different executive titles.

We’re flattered, of course, to be so overestimated. But Strong Language is a one-man show.

It certainly inspires confidence in the outfit’s database marketing expertise. Join up! Maybe they can help you quadruple your direct mail budget, to zero effect.

Refile under: Can’t make it up.

Dangerous clouds

We’ve been telling you about cloud computing, whereby your work is processed in real time on remote servers. It’s off and running, and most businesses will climb aboard eventually.

But right now, if your biz is moving cloudward, or even thinking about doing so, take notice: Yesterday the cloud grew up a little.

What happened? Gmail went down, that’s all.

Larry Dignan explaines the implications over on ZD Net. Here’s a pull:

Google’s Gmail outage is the latest stumble for nascent cloud computing services, which are becoming the lifeblood for small businesses and startups. If you’re depending on these Web-based apps you need a backup plan.

We liked the term cloud computing. Still do. But as the language angle recedes we’ll have to let it go. Stay on top of the technology with the ZD blogs.

On the serial comma

SL stands with the Chicago Manual of Style on the serial comma, which is also called the Oxford comma.

You can’t go wrong with it, but you can go badly wrong without it:

I’d like to thank my parents, the pope and Mother Theresa.

Well, now. We avoid the serial comma and set off a full-bore scandal.

The serial comma is unpopular, we suspect, because commas are so overused in general. When a teacher or editor decides to take a stand, the serial comma is an easy target.

In professional work, of course, we conform to our client’s style.

But in SL’s own style (which combines the best of Chicago, AP, NYT, Strunk, White, and Huck Finn), a series takes a serial comma.

Forty-four

Surely you’ve heard this old cornball.

Three guys are stranded on a desert island for 20 years. Not only have they told all the jokes they know, but they’ve told them all so many times that by now they just refer to them by number.

So when one guy says, “Thirty one,” it sends them all into a giggling fit.

And when another guy says “Ninety-six,” they crack up over that.

Then the third guy says, “Sixty!” and nobody laughs.

“Hey!” he says. “That’s a funny joke!”

“Yeah,” says one of the others. “But you always screw it up.”

Pan man

The joys of travel caught up with us last week, and we spent an unscheduled 24 hours in Ohio. We muttered and sputtered, but we came out ahead overall — because we happened to pick up a copy of J.M Barrie’s Peter Pan at an airport shop.

We’ve long been partial to Mr. Pan, a heathen deity who shows up often in legend and literature. For one of his darker turns, read The Great God Pan, by Arthur Machen.

Barrie’s play and novel, written at the turn of the 20th century, were darker than the Disney version — no surprise there. But what stunned us was the writing: Barrie was a perfectionist, unrelenting.

That’s all we ask.

Lost in translation

Funny quiz on literary back-translations by Henry Alford in today’s NYT Book Review.

Best of show: Angry Raisins, the English version of a Japanese publisher’s attempt at The Grapes of Wrath.

Alford’s own multiple-choice offerings are worth the read.

MARS LAND GRAB!

Hydrogen signals “from the Martian earth” indicate the presence of water, says Rough Guides.

The Mars Lander uses a robotic shovel “to dig into the Martian earth,” says Design News.

“Martian earth!” says Strong Language. “What th’??!!”

“Easy, SL,” says everybody else. “Didn’t you know that earth is another word for soil?”

“Oh, yeah?” say we. “So tell us: Did they name the earth for the planet, or the other way around? But then why didn’t they name the planet Soil, or Ground?. Or Dirt? Greetings, Dirtlings!”

But either way, when some of the stuff shows up 120 million miles away, wouldn’t you expect more than a casual mention in a couple of niche mags?

SL is as confused as the next Earthling. How much earth is there on Mars, exactly? What about those other planets — do they have some? Is there a pile on the Moon? Most important, who (or what) is behind the caper?

Meanwhile, you’re in good hands. We’ll cover this issue even if the other media won’t touch it. Because if there’s any earth up there, Earth owns it. SL at its post.

Bo Diddley knew

Bo Diddley was a founder of rock and roll, and the beat he invented drove much of the music that followed. Born Otha Ellas Bates, he passed on June 2. Read the Times obit

Where did his name come from? There are different recollections, but SL suspects a one-stringed instrument popular in Mississippi, where Bo came up, called a diddley bow.

We backed into Mr. Diddley once, literally, on a Delta flight. We begged pardon, he was gracious, and when we said “Bumpety-bump” you should have seen him grin. (It’s from Mona, his 1957 classic, the flip side of Hey, Bo Diddley.)

Bo Diddley knew something about creativity. He once said: “You cannot say what people are gonna like or not gonna like. You have to stick it out there and find out! If they taste it, and they like the way it tastes, you can bet they’ll eat some of it.”

The Subprime Primer

For a language blog, this is irresistible. Fair warning: It includes mild profanity.

The Subprime Primer

Tell about the South

Tell about the South. What’s it like there. What do they do there. Why do they live there. Why do they live at all… Shreve to Quentin in Absalom, Absalom by William Faulkner.

---

Okay, Shreve. Will do.

The Society for Technical Communication has scheduled its national conference in Atlanta next year, and to help prepare the local chapter for the coming hordes, SL is assembling a reading list. Here’s a start for Atlanta and Georgia:

Memoirs by Gen. William T. Sherman. Some Atlantans hated the man who burned the city, and others named their children for him. Unexpected bonus: Sherman, like Grant, could write.

Gone With The Wind by Margaret Mitchell. Fiction is lying — that’s its nature. But while some authors tell stories in order to reveal truth, others . . . Well, meet Mrs. Mitchell. It’s not our cup of julep — nostalgia for slavery, revulsion for democracy — but she was a better writer than she’s given credit for.

The Inman Family: An Atlanta Family from Reconstruction to World War I, by Tammy Harden Galloway. After the war, these masters without slaves landed in Atlanta and quickly created the biggest cotton brokerage in the world. And a steel mill, a railroad, an energy company, a little school on North Avenue, and not a few governors.

Atlanta and Its Environs, by Franklin Garrett. For a comprehensive history it’s all we’ve got — two volumes of vast information, though writ dense and obscured by fawning.

The Creation of Modern Georgia, by Numan Bartley. Georgia since Oglethorpe, but focused on postbellum days.

The History of Georgia, Kenneth Coleman, ed. Straight from the State. First published by Carter in 77, reblessed by same in 91, it’s still in print today. Reassures us that “not every slave was a Sambo.”

Imagineering Atlanta, by Charles Rutheiser. Is this a city or a marketing plan? Rutheiser captures the heady mix of civic boosterism brewed in Atlanta by railroaders and insurance men, politicians and publishers, advertisers and Ku Klux. (The title is especially apt: Imagineering is a Disney term.)

Mayor: Notes from the Sixties, by Ivan Allen. Atlanta in mid-century. Allen came from merchant stock, but he jumped class — he married an Inman — and led the city’s business establishment into the modern world. If you ever wondered why King’s hometown saw so few civil rights protests, Allen’s autobiography explains it.

1864: Yankees at the Gates, by Steve Marshall. A summary of Sherman’s invasion of Georgia and capture of Atlanta, including a short account of the city’s origins. Read 1864: Yankees at the Gates

Gobbledy-Google

Ever fill out ten identical medical forms, by hand, in one day? Ever ride in circles on a pharmacy-doctor-insurance carousel? Ever wonder why your doctor is asking you what prescriptions you take?

Here’s something just for you! Google Health “puts you in charge of your health information. It’s safe, secure, and free.”

Skeptical? An FAQ section explains the service further. Question 6 in particular caught our attention:

Q. If it’s free, how does Google make money off Google Health?

A. Much like other Google products we offer, Google Health is free to anyone who uses it. There are no ads in Google Health. Our primary focus is providing a good user experience and meeting our users’ needs.

Wait — did SL miss something here? Like an answer to the question? Let’s ask it another way:

Q. What’s the business model?

Sergey and Larry have one, you may be sure. Those choirboys didn’t get rich by singing for free. Or by telling the ol’ public everything all at once.

Jargonophobia

Shaun Kelly makes good points at Shoap’s STS Blog.

I’d go a bit further. You’re doing a terrible disservice to an expert audience if you abandon jargon and weigh down your writing with “clear and simple” explanations of every term a layperson wouldn’t understand.

Kudos, Mike Hughes

Question: What do you call forty technical writers guzzling chianti and chicken parm?

Answer: A fun bunch!

We had some good conversations last week at the awards banquet of the local chapter of the Society for Technical Communication.

One was with Mike Hughes, who mastered the ceremonies and presented awards. He was recently elected second VP of the national organization,

A few facts:

• Mike tells his own story at User Assistance.
• He’s on track to lead the STC in 2009, just as the organization holds its international conference in Atlanta.
• He took home an award himself for his application of the “Long Tail” theory to computer help systems.
• In the STC, Mike is campaigning for a campaign: The STC must more effectively promote the value of what we do.

Next, opinions:

• Mike’s ideas about the forward march of the STC are on target.
• He defines value a little narrowly. (Some writers, including us, focus on a long tail indeed — buyers who know that “well-written, correctly punctuated documentation” is rare and valuable.)
• On at least one occasion, Mike has worn a tuxedo (though not long-tailed) and carried it off successfully.

FULL DISCLOSURE. For several years Mike has served as an academic adviser to Holly Harkness, a technical communicator married to the author of Strong Language.

Again, big SL props to Mike. Challenging times lie ahead, and we’re looking forward to STC leadership.

The language of scandal

We don’t encourage interest in scandal. We ourselves only follow these sordid affairs so you don’t have to. SL at its post.

But in view of recent NY events, we offer a tip of the SL hat to Mandy Rice-Davies for her contribution to strong, clear language.

________________________________________

It was 1961, pre Beatles and civil rights. JFK was in full rut, and the cold war was hotting up.

And in Britain a young noble named William Astor hosted weekend parties on the grounds of his estate at Cliveden. When John Profumo, the British Secretary for War, strolled by the pool, he met a naked young woman named Christine Keeler.

It is not recorded whether this surprised him. In any case, they partied.

Moral issues were less complicated then. A Crown Minister had a right in those days to denounce vice in the morning and rent a love interest for the afternoon, without fuss. Two if he wanted.

Yet in this instance fuss was made.

Why? Because Ms. Keeler had another, shall we say . . . suitor. He was a Russian named Yevgeny Ivanov — part naval attaché, part KGB, all rascal.

(To cast the matter in current U.S. terms: Imagine Kristen had been trading not with Spitzer but with Rumsfeld — and with a Chinese spy on off-nights.)

In 1963 Ms. Keeler’s roommate, Mandy Rice-Davies, was dragged into the Old Bailey to testify to her affair with Lord Astor. For such as her, the witness stand of a British courtroom is an unfriendly place, with hyenas snarling on every side.

One such — a Crown Prosecutor — told Ms. Rice-Davies that Lord Astor’s testimony had conflicted with her own. In fact, said the wig, the noble Lord had denied ever meeting her.

The Bailey was silent. The prostitute stared back at power, and then spoke eloquently about the Majesty of Justice and the Honor of Great Men.

“Well, he would, wouldn’t he?”

Email etiquette, bub

Best practices for business email. If that’s not a dead horse, we’d like to see one.

But still, the time has come for us to lay out the rules — the SL rules.

Rule 1:
Respond to questions unless someone higher than you on the food chain (boss, client) responds first. Then do nothing.

Rule 2:
Learn to use f Few words.

More to come.

Inflammable. Irregardless.

A debate recently broke out at DontCallMeTina, a technical communications blog, over the use of “irregardless.” The blogger says the word’s not acceptable, and cites the Chicago Manual of Style for support.

But then come others who say Everybody knows what it means! Chicago is just a self-appointed gatekeeper. Go ahead and use it!

The same logic applies for words like “ain’t.” Or, more ominously, for words like “inflammable.”

Of course it means not flammable! Except it doesn’t. And pity the poor soul who thinks it does, and uses an “inflammable” liquid to douse a fire. There will be burns. And lawsuits.

Language evolves! they say.

That’s not in question. But as it evolves, writers must decide when and where to introduce less-than-standard words. SL, for our part, prizes the opinions of CMOS, AP and, yes, even Microsoft.

We prize the vernacular too. And we know a perfectly good sales pitch to teenagers might be incomprehensible to an adult. But at present we don’t think it’s a good idea to sprinkle your next Fortune 500 piece — whether it’s a newsletter or a technical manual — with “whatever.” Or “ain’t.” Or “irregardless.”

SL at its post.

Free speech 5¢ a word

A recent letter submitted to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution:

---

Editor:

I was surprised to learn in the AJC that the late Georgia State University president Noah Langdale “was pleased with GSU’s long-standing tradition of open debate and academic freedom.”

When I was at Georgia State in the mid-1970s, it was students, not administrators, who maintained the campus as a free-speech zone.

I never saw President Langdale personally shut down a literature table, chase away newspaper vendors, or undermine a student election campaign. But I saw his underlings do those things.

Like other campus administrations, Georgia State’s was reflexively hostile to efforts opposing “off-campus” ills like race and sex discrimination, South African apartheid, and U.S. military adventures abroad. When students and faculty members engaged in such efforts, the Langdale administration often forced them to begin by defending their right to speak.

Those “open-debate” conflicts were reported in the campus newspaper, and even broke into the AJC now and then. For the most part, I’m pleased to recall, the students won.

/s/ Steve Marshall

---

A cartoonist at UGA in Athens captured the situation at Georgia State with a drawing that showed a vendor’s sign advertising “Free Speech: 5¢ A Word!” A subhead said “A friendly administrator will help you choose the words you need.”

Smarter than a 3-year old?

This one is more articulate that a few full-grown lawyers I know.

Star Wars according to a 3-year old

To kern or to kem?

David Friedman proposes a new word in typography: keming, the result of improper kerning.

For an illustration, look closely at the headline of this post. Or check out David’s blog Ironic Sans.

Cloud drives MS v Yahoo

We explained the cloud before. Were you paying attention?

The cloud means software applications that run not on your own computer but on a distant one, connected to yours by the Internet. Google offers plenty such, and hopes the cloud will become a universal cloud.

Microsoft used to ridicule that idea: We don’t need no stinking clouds! MS, of course, has built its fortune on software for individual boxes. Hundreds of millions at present, and MS would like to serve many more fine customers. Read our post on cloud computing.

But watching all those clouds made Mr. Gates and Mr. Ballmer hungry, and they decided to eat Yahoo.

No predictions are offered. But the cloud is with us to stay.

Read the NY Times article.

Mourn the martini?

The word may not be dying, but its meaning is.

SL doesn’t get out much, but we graced a couple of parties last Yule, and to toast each occasion we ordered a martini.

Our first barman winked, which probably meant either Fine choice, sir! or I know that drink! Then he grabbed a rocks glass and into it poured an inch of liquid from the olive bin.

We were startled, but we suppressed a choke. Um, we said gently, could we get one without the juice? We finally worked the man down to gin on the rocks (he could not be trusted with Vermouth).

Another night, another publican, another try:

Not a dry one, you know? Put a little Vermouth in there if you would. She did, and liberally. But shame on us for not watching more closely. Back at table we discovered she had poured sweet Vermouth. You can go a lifetime without that, we assure you. SL at its post.

We are not a curmudgeon. We loathe Andy Rooney. But yet we require a martini now and then, and we expect a bartender to know the genuine article. Yes, even after a decade of chocolate, fruit, shrimp, sherbet, olive juice and other perversions. Possibly two decades (possibly we missed one).

The drink is clean and classic, so pay attention:

Gin and dry vermouth four to one, ice cold, straight up, olive.

You might wish to say it aloud. And one more thing: There’s no such thing as a vodka martini.

Can you say “very best”?

When you’ve got the best product, what should you do?

---

Purely by luck, we recently moved close to world-beating pizza.

Credentials statement: We’re not complete novices. We lived in Newark, where they still call it pizza pie. We worked in Manhattan and ate many a lunch on Carmine Street. We know the difference between Ray’s, Famous Ray’s, and Original Ray’s.

Tonight we called in an order to our local joint and happened to reach the owner. We chatted and happened to mention that his pizza was the best in town. He said Thank you, and we said You gotta capitalize on that, and he said, Okay, tell me how.

It’s an interesting question, and not just for a pizza parlor.

When you really are significantly better than your competition — the top, the tip, the championship — how do you turn that to profit?

So long, Netscape

Netscape Navigator got the axe yesterday.

You can still download it, presumably forever. But AOL, the browser’s latest owner, announced it will no longer provide support or security patches after February.

It was a good run.

SL came up through Mosaic, Netscape’s predecessor. (After Tandy, Commodore, Microsoft DOS and Compuserve, a Web browser running on a Windows PC was a Big Deal.)

Netscape Navigator fought a good fight. The browser innovated so often it was said to run on “Internet time,” and its market share reached 70 percent.

Last week that stood at less than a point. Microsoft’s Internet Explorer, meanwhile, had 78.

No one should forget the small but valiant part that Microsoft technical writers played in the victory: Shameless in Seattle.

Can Netflix live at the PO?

There’s trouble in DVD Land.

Consumers have recently enjoyed a “competition window,” during which Netflix innovation forced a measure of civility upon Blockbuster.

It was no small thing — the Giant gave up a big piece of its model, which was to build a business on late fees. (Talk about innovation — evil geniuses worked overtime on that one.)

But the window may be closing. Why? Netflix is in trouble with the PO. Turns out the Netflix return packaging jams the postal gears.

Merely a logistical hiccup, you say?

Those paper-thin red wrappers are close to the heart of the model. That’s why postal grumbles give Netflix investors big jitters.

Will the Netflix kingdom be lost for want of a horseshoe nail? Probably not. But however the mess finally monetizes, it helps the Giant.

SL suggests watching Blockbuster closely. A backslide on the late fees is unlikely, but they may have other innovations up their sleeve. Or bankruptcy.

BTW, don’t miss the great short story Why I Live at the PO, by Eudora Welty.

Google: Get onto my cloud!

Get ready for the cloud. Cloud computing, that is.

You’re on the cloud when you run applications on a remote server, rather than on your own computer. That’s what you’re doing when you use Web mail, or post to a blog, or run a payroll on NetSuite.

But what if you could dispense with Word, Excel, and a few other stalwarts? What if all you needed was a browser and a pipe to write your next letter or pixelate your dog pictures?

What else could you do on the cloud? Plenty, says Google CEO Eric Schmidt. He predicts computer users will perform 90 percent of their work on remote servers in the next decades.

Preposterous, says Microsoft. We don’t need no stinking clouds. MS earns its bread (or exacts its tribute) by the software installed on half a billion individual boxes.

And the Google choirboys are like, Well, dude (they like calling Gates dude), the cloud will free up all those schmucks from the head-banging insanity of “personal computing” and instead let them concentrate on what they’re doing.

That’s because the mechanics will take place on a faraway disk drive — remote and invisible to a user whose eyes glaze over at the word “interface.” That drive will work better than your miserable one. Why? Because an army of engineers will watch  it nonstop and fix problems. Can you do that on your machine? Do you want to?

The cloud, says Google, means fast, trouble-free, transparent computing. And they’re building data centers to prove it. (Did you like the War Room in Dr. Strangelove? You should see a data center.)

And Microsoft is like Dream on, kids.

And Google is like Ever hear of economies of scale?

Microsoft gets defensive. Nobody ever got fired for recommending Microsoft!

Meanwhile MS hedges its bets, with heavy investment in its own industrial-strength data centers. If clouds are gathering, you can bet Mr. Gates wants some.

Stay tuned.

Yumberry and Glowkitty

Gifting issues this year? Can’t find the right thing for Strong Language? Here are two suggestions:

Glowkitties

Seoul, South Korea. Dec. 13. The government today announced a successful cat-cloning experiment that many scientists believe holds promise for prevention and treatment of human genetic diseases.

In a side effect, the cloned cats glow in the dark.

True? GoogleNews “korea cats glow” and see.

Any glowkitties received at SL will be forwarded interoffice to Abby, our grammar hound.

Yumberries

Believe it: China has twice as many acres in yang-mei berries as the U.S. does in apples.

Charles Stenftenagel, a garden supplies importer from Indiana, named the little gems for the western market.

Fruit vendors like it. Quoth Terry Xanthos, president of Frützzo: “Yumberry is the best name in the history of fruit.”

Read the Times article.

____________________________________________________________

Which all goes to prove that, when it comes to language, there’s never a slow news day.

Cathode rays are dark

We’re not watching TV these days.

If you think it’s because of the writers’ strike . . . you’re wrong. We detest most of their inane product and we shun it year-round.

There are a few exceptions, e.g. The Sopranos. (Of course, in a showdown with The Man, we naturally solidarize with the poor writers (Don’t see a triple entendre every day, do you?).)

Yup, that closing puntuation is correct. Poor Lynn Truss.

Our TV-starved diet, however, has a different driver: We moved recently, and we haven’t gotten around to hooking up the beast. This denial-of-service is of our own making.

We confess to a weakness, probably inherited, for a highball and a half-hour of network news. But when it comes to television, it turns out no news is good news.

You can spend 30 minutes with ABC World News Tonight, but for a far better return, spend it with the NYT or WSJ. To see why, compare a network newscast transcript to a serious newspaper. The half-hour TV “news” takes about 5 or 10 minutes to read.

The downside is missing out on some graphics and video, but you can find anything important online.

Here’s one more upside: the sudden and complete absence from your life of ABC’s Martha Raddatz, the Most Concerned Person on Earth.

In any case, Holly wired the tube to the DVD player. Had I tried it, there would have been bumps and profanity (which is usually weak language). But the Hollster made it look easy.

There’s trouble in DVD Land, by the way.

Anyway, we’ll climb back on the TV grid eventually. We’re not anti-medium. Plus we like a little Entertainment Tonight now and then (the most watched entertainment news show in the world!).

Still, we can’t help recalling a comment by Bob Keeshan, better known as Captain Kangaroo: “One of the big secrets of finding time is to not watch television.”

Red Green

When it comes to Red Green, we don’t find much middle ground.

Some people change channels quickly. Others stare transfixed, as at a train wreck.

And still others become him.

YouTube videos

Red’s official site

Pressing 0 over and over

To give up, press 2 now.

You’re deep into a push-button conversation with an “automated telephone response system.”

You had hoped to reach someone at a phone company, airline, library, bank. Instead, welcome to Crazytown. The Mad Hatter is in charge, and he has plenty of your time.

Surely everyone with a phone has a visceral interest in this topic. Luckily, we’ve scouted the terrain for you — SL at its post — and we’ve learned a thing or two about the language of automated response. We’ll investigate this strange tongue from time to time.

First, a low-tech tip

If you’ve ever just given up and punched O twenty times — fifty times — ONE MILLION TIMES — it turns out you’re onto something.

That’s right. You thought you’d been defeated, but the fact is that many advanced automated systems can recognize anger. More accurately, they recognize a long string of zeroes in quick succession, and they flag this pattern as anger — because someone, somewhere has correctly identified it as a reliable indicator of customer rage.

Many customer service departments know about this finding, but they don’t advertise it. Instead, they say Please pay attention because our menu has changed. And SL makes no guarantees — on any given system, you can press a thousand zeroes to no effect. A million.

But the technology is in place, and some systems move you faster if you convey your disenchantment in zeroes.

Some people might say it’s “the only language they understand,” while others might call that cynical. SL stands above.

Still, we are empiricists, and we must report that on occasion we have spoken this language and been fully understood.

Now what we REALLY need is a new button: Cancel my service, refund my money, and don’t make a peep.

Shameless in Seattle

It’s hard to believe that Netscape Navigator once dominated the browser wars. At one point its market share reached 70 percent and more.

There was a brutal struggle — and now IE’s share is 78 percent, NN’s less than a point.

In the epic battle, Microsoft’s tech writers and editors made a contribution that should not be forgotten:

Avoid the term navigate to refer to moving from site to
site . . . on the Internet. Instead use explore.
— Microsoft Manual of Style

 

* * *

 

 

 

 

STRONG OR WEAK? Promoting a brand as a reference standard

The SL verdict: Strong if they get away with it. (Now it looks like they have: see So Long, Netscape.) The Microsoft Marketing Guide Manual of Style may be ordered from the Ministry of Truth, Redmond, WA.

Slap the pigeons

“Work your pigeons” is an old saw in sales — a cynical way of saying “Go back to your best customers.” Actually, if you treat your customers intelligently, they’ll welcome your return. Can we learn from Apple?

* * *

Who bought the first iPhones?

Why, the loyal core of the Apple, naturally. The crazy-in-love, camp-at-the-store foamers who built the company — perhaps you know some.

That population deserves study, but not today. Instead let us examine Mr. Jobs’s own opinion of his loyalists, his Branded Best. First he touched them hard for the iPhone — $400 per each — and then he slashed prices a few weeks later.

At first they thought it was just bad luck, like the weather. (Wusht I’d planted later.) But some began to suspect a Jobs job.  (Come on, Apple — tell us the trigger for the cut. How many had to pop four before you announced the fire sale?)

Marketers have played high-low for centuries, or tried to. How maddening it is: If you lower your price, you’ll give up the premiums some buyers are willing to pay. That’s where we got coupons and bargain basements, clearance sales and automotive trim lines.

Many vendors go low routinely — “Three months of Cable for $3!” — but they leave out those who have already forked over their money. All Apple did was take high-low to a new and more transparent level.

Work your pigeons, then slap ‘em. Most will come wobbling back.

 

 

(Never suspect Strong Language of anti-Apple bias. We’ve wrestled Satan Microsoft for 33 years. Nuff said.)

 

Jobs jobs

Welcome to our new series: Apple Computer’s contribution to the language of business.

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What’s an iBrick?

It’s a dead iPhone. Specifically, an iPhone to which Apple has sent a special “software update” — which has killed the phone, giving it the approximate value of a brick.

Some iPhone users, you see, had gotten a bit too familiar with the thing. They were tinkering with it, and using it for all sorts of mischief — phone calls, music downloads, other acts of terror.

It was time for a Jobs job: They bricked ’em. There were tears, anger, and threats of lawsuits.

Apple’s more interesting PR disaster, in SL’s view, was the way it used the iPhone release to punk-slap its best customers.

Stupid me

Certified true story:

Yesterday a mortgage broker told me I was “stupid as [expletive]” for not coming back to him one last time for a lower quote.

Hanging up, I felt like you feel when you almost get hit by a bus. How close had I come? How close to actually doing business with the man?

Profanity is weak indeed. But even without it — my goodness!

 

* * *

STRONG OR WEAK?

Calling the buyer stupid when you lose a sale.

The SL verdict: You know.

Farewell ye firewall?

Computing without firewalls — you heard it here first.

AT&T Labs is developing alternatives to the old “walled garden” of IT security, including new looks at encryption, powerful vetting software, even (gasp!) the widsom of users.

Customer demand for the change comes not from IT, but from the business side.

The reason is open standards — companies are finding value and efficiency when they bring customers, suppliers, and partners onto the same transparent platform.

In a related trend, more IT is migrating from corporate intranets to the Internet. BP just moved out 20k employees. (Business without intranets? You didn’t hear it from us.)

Some garden walls will remain — don’t expect www.MyNuclearPlant.com — but many more walls may soon come tumbling down.

Mort Gagor

Quick: Who gives a mortgage to whom?

If you said a bank gives mortgages to borrowers, the man on the street agrees with you. But you’re both wrong.

A mortgage is a claim — a lien — against property. You give it to a lender against your house and yard, which are yours, more or less, for one reason: Said lender has given the seller of the property a large check.

You have given the lender two things in return. One is your promise to pay them the amount of the check, plus interest. The other, in case you fail on your promise, is _____.

If you said a mortgage, you’re right! You are the mortgagor. The bank is the mortgagee.

If we had paid more attention in French class, this would be intuitive. But we didn’t and it isn’t. It makes no difference. Here comes Carving Closing Day.

.

Who’s right, who’s not

SL doesn’t do a big recommendation business, but we do occasionally call attention to error.

The Word Detective offers an explanation of mortgage that misses on a few cylinders. It refers to the lender as the mortgagor, which is wrong. It also claims “the ‘homeowner’ doesn’t really own the house. The mortgage company owns it.”

You can debate philosophy and metaphor, but in terms of law and contract, the homeowner owns the home. He doesn’t need a landlord’s permission to raise corn.

What the mortgage company owns is something more valuable. And that is ______.

If you said the mortgage — right again!

.

Through the looking glass

I knew I could never learn the language of home buying — when I realized that the buyer’s agent is listed on the contract as selling agent.

Can the truth be libelous?

A tempest has erupted in one of my favorite teapots.

Here’s the deal: One company is stiffed by another, and a principal at the stiffee proposes to “let the word out” that the stiffer is experiencing financial difficulties.

And all the people cry: No! They’re courting a libel suit!

Possibly, says Strong Language. But how about “letting the word out” that this customer didn’t pay a vendor? There’s one absolute defense against libel: Truth. If it’s true, it’s never libelous, by definition. That’s been upheld in courts forever.

Then comes Joe Riden, who responds:

Sorry, SL, this is absolutely the wrong idea. Attacking someone’s reputation is not allowed. Truth is NOT protection against charges of libel. Libel is making a written attempt to harm or destroy someone’s reputation . . . the more truthful your statements, the greater your liability.

Well, Mr. Riden would be correct — if we lived in the UK. But in American law, libel has 3 elements: falseness, negligence, and harm. FindLaw offers a concise summary of libel.

No true statement is ever libelous, and that fact has been upheld repeatedly by US courts.

A true statement can violate other laws. When a hospital said I was out cold and on my back within its walls, that may have violated HIIPA. When somone said Valerie Wilson was a spy, that may have violated the National Secrets Act. But neither statement could ever be libelous, precisely because both were true.

To sum up

Truth is not illegal, nor is it capable of libel.

Splenda is or Splenda ain’t?

Splenda blindsided the faux sugar industry and left it hopping mad.

Here’s what you need to know:

1. Sugar! There’s nothing sweeter than pure white cane.
2. Of the artificials, Splenda tastes closest to cane.
3. In a deft marketing gambit, Splenda has staked two claims at once: It’s sugar, and it’s not sugar.

It’s sugar in almost every way. It’s derived from sugar, behaves much like sugar, has a chemical compound formula almost identical to sugar. (Remember dextrose, fructose, sucrose, glucose, etc.? All that ose.)

It’s not sugar. Period. No calories, no effect on blood sugar.

BOOM! No wonder consumers went wild. They were lapping it up, eating it raw by the bucket. Some were using funnels. Never underestimate the sweet tooth.

The makers of Blue and Pink, naturally, felt otherwise. (Splenda is the yellow one). Not fair! they cried. Splenda can’t have it both ways!

They have made appropriate complaints.

Meanwhile, Splenda marches on, and the people want more, and we may see over-the-counter intravenous delivery systems by early 09.

 

 

The language of home buying

We’re noticing some interesting usages in this market. Here’s a sampling.

Selling agent. (n) The real estate agent representing the buyer.

Don’t believe it? Read a contract.

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Affordable. (adj) A measure of home price.

The developers promised council that thirty percent of the homes in their proposed project will be affordable.

Does that mean 70 percent will be unaffordable? Of course not — because affordable has a slightly different meaning in the real estate business. Basically it means lower-priced than some on the block. (If you want more meat: An affordable home in a given subdivision is one that’s reasonably available to a buyer whose income is less than average incomes in the subdivision, usually by a proportion fixed by law, contract or industry convention.)

---

Fool. (n) The seller, according to everyone who stands to be paid out of the deal.

The man is mad not to accept your offer. It is the opinion of agents, lenders, Bob Bernanke — everyone.

We buyers are hopeful, but we are not so certain. In a down market the fool has already gotten us to bid up faster than he comes down. Shouldn’t things be going in the other direction?

Even if we walk, and the seller receives no more offers like ours, and ends up selling for less — does that qualify him as a full-fledged fool? Like the tulip fools of Holland?

A small voice murmurs. If the seller is a fool for rejecting your offer, it must be sweet indeed. Thus are you not fools in equal or greater proportion for offering such a deal?

Long ago the small voice studied logic, and sums.

Yet on we trudge.

________________________________________________

Between the lines. It’s also important to appreciate what’s not being said. Consider the listings, for example. Picture windows and sunroom, said one seller. Left unmentioned was the striking view, a six-story power line pylon. Wouldn’t you think the seller would want to capitalize on that? Like having the Eiffel Tower in your back yard!

More TK, as we approach Carving Closing Day.

Joybubbles has gone

Joybubbles died on August 8, a legendary figure. He was one of the first “phone freaks,” a blind man who learned to whistle telephone tones and thus place a call anywhere in the world for free.

Joybubbles was a hacker. He came into the world as Joe Engressia, when the phone system was “the world’s biggest, most complex, most interesting computer,” notes Douglas Martin in the Times.

Joybubbles (he changed his name in 1991) was pretty interesting, too.

More on Joybubbles:
NYTimes Obit
DontCallMeTina

31 treats for youse

LANGUAGE WARNING: STRONG DOSE AHEAD
When SL cleans out the files — take cover.
____________________________________________

“Daddy, are you lost?” I asked tenderly. “Shut up,” he explained.
. . . . . . . .Ring Lardner, The Young Immigrants, 1920

Everywhere I go, I’m asked if the universities stifle writers. My opinion is that they don’t stifle enough. There’s many a best-seller that could have been prevented by a good teacher.
. . . . . . . .Flannery O’Connor

Most editors are failed writers. But so are most writers.
. . . . . . . .William Faulkner

Give me the coroner and I’ll rule the county.
. . . . . . . .Al Capone, on the relative importance of officeholders

It gives me a headache merely to know of it.
. . . . . . . .William James, on the new Metaphysical Club of Boston

What is the question to which Segway is the answer?
. . . . . . . .Herman Leonard, Harvard University

Kids used to cry when I pitched. You play off that fear. You let one go every now and then, throw it to the backstop.
. . . . . . . .Matt Mantei, Arizona Diamondbacks

I always thought the Yankees had a good deal to do with it.
. . . . . . . .CSA General George Pickett, when asked why the South
. . . . . . . .lost at Gettysburg

What have you got?
. . . . . . . .Johnny (Marlon Brando), The Wild One, 1954
. . . . . . . .Replying to the question “What are you rebelling against?”

Uneventful.
. . . . . . . .Captain John Smith of the Titanic at a pre-launch press
. . . . . . . .conference, describing his career so far

Funding eduction through ignorance
. . . . . . . Rejected slogan for The Georgia Lottery

The supreme misfortune is when theory outstrips performance.
. . . . . . . .Leonardo da Vinci

The tiger didn’t go crazy. The tiger went tiger.
. . . . . . . .Chris Rock, on the 2003 tiger win in Las Vegas

The pig carries the picture, not you. If it flops, it’s his fault.
. . . . . . . .Advice received by actor James Cromwell about the advantages
. . . . . . . .of the farmer role in Babe *. .

Let’s you and him fight!
. . . . . . . .Origin unknown; ascribed to Mark Twain. Tom Wolfe used it to
. . . . . . . .good effect in A Man in Full.

I knew her before she was a virgin.
. . . . . . . .Oscar Levant, about Doris Day

A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen, and philosophers, and divines.
. . . . . . . .Ralph Waldo Emerson

Change was for weaklings.
. . . . . . . .Evan Connell, Mrs. Bridge

____________________________________________

I hope to have God on my side, but I must have Kentucky.
. . . . . . . .Abraham Lincoln, August 1861, overturning a military
. . . . . . . .emancipation

Emancipation is the demand of civilization. That is a principle; everything else is an intrigue.
. . . . . . . .Ralph Waldo Emerson, April 1862

Lincoln was the greatest American writer. He used language to drive
action — and he knew that cannon trumped canon. Good thing, huh? SL

____________________________________________

There were seven Democrats in Hinsdale County and you ate five.
. . . . . . . Judge Melville Gerry sentencing Alferd Packer to hang,
. . . . . . . Colorado, 1873 **
. . . . . . . .
I’d enjoy to.
. . . . . . . .A mobster, Ball of Fire

Ocian! Ocian in view!
. . . . . . . .William Clark, 1805, near the mouth of the Columbia

We’re just jamming. That’s all. You can leave if you want to.
. . . . . . . .Jimi Hendrix, 1969, Woodstock

Truth is the most valuable thing we have — let us economize it.
. . . . . . . .Mark Twain, Pudd’n’head Wilson’s New Calendar

Harness yon braying jackass!
. . . . . . . .A traveling Shakespearean, ad lib, after his line“My kingdom for
. . . . . . . .a horse!” drew a laugh in Cordele, Georgia

The unshakeable resolution of a coward who will stop at nothing.
. . . . . . . .Gustave Flaubert, Madame Bovary

One cannot study Reconstruction without first frankly facing the facts of universal lying.
. . . . . . . .W.E.B. DuBois, Black Reconstruction in America

The soul is healed by being with children.
. . . . . . . .Fyodor Dostoevsky

I got to light out for the Territory ahead of the rest, because Aunt Sally she’s going to adopt me and sivilize me and I can’t stand it. I been there before.
. . . . . . . .Mark Twain, Huckleberry Finn

We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars.
. . . . . . . .Oscar Wilde

One of the big secrets of finding time is not to watch television.
. . . . . . . .Bob Keeshan, aka Captain Kangaroo

Adam was not alone in the Garden of Eden, however, and does not deserve all the credit; much is due to Eve, the first woman, and Satan, the first consultant.
. . . . . . . .Mark Twain

They hang the man and flog the woman
That steal the goose from off the common,
But let the greater villain loose
Who steal the common from the goose.
. . . . . . . .Comment on the British Enclosure Laws, 1764
. . . . . . . .Author unknown

____________________________________________

* An actor with range: Cromwell also played LAPD
Captain Dudley Smith in LA Confidential.

** And a tip o’ the hat to my hosts at Boulder’s finest
table — the Alferd Packer Grill at the CU student center.

Powerhouse!

Your time upon this earth is short. Read Eudora Welty.
____________________________________________

Powerhouse is playing!

He’s here on tour from the city — “Powerhouse and His Keyboard” — “Powerhouse and His Tasmanians”— think of the things he calls himself!

There’s no one in the world like him. You can’t tell what he is. “Negro man”? — he looks more Asiatic, monkey, Jewish, Babylonian, Peruvian, fanatic, devil. He has pale gray eyes, heavy lids, maybe horny like a lizard’s, but big glowing eyes when they’re open. He has African feet of the greatest size, stomping, both together, on each side of the pedals. He’s not coal black — beverage colored—looks like a preacher when his mouth is going every minute: like a monkey’s when it looks for something. Improvising, coming on a light and childish melody — smooch — he loves it with his mouth.

This is a white dance. Powerhouse is not a show-off like the Harlem boys, not drunk, not crazy — he’s in a trance; he’s a person of joy, a fanatic.

He listens as much as he performs, a look of hideous, powerful rapture on his face. When he plays he beats down piano and seat and wears them away. He is in motion every moment — what could be more obscene?

There he is with his great head, fat stomach, and little round piston legs, and long yellow-sectioned strong big fingers, at rest about the size of bananas. Of course you know how he sounds — you’ve heard him on records — but still you need to see him. He’s going all the time, like skating around the skating rink or rowing a boat. It makes everybody crowd around, here in this shadowless steel-trussed hall with the rose-like posters of Nelson Eddy and the testimonial for the mind-reading horse in handwriting magnified five hundred times.

Then all quietly he lays his finger on a key with the promise and serenity of a sibyl touching the book.

 

The Atlantic Monthly, June 1941

Of course I YouTube

There’s much to be said about this medium, but we haven’t had time to write it up.

We generally agree with Virginia Heffernan’s take on the awards.

StrongLanguage favors HappySlip, Daxflame, LisaNova and — yes, we admit it — Brookers. And for an astonishing nature video with a language aspect, don’t miss Battle at Kruger.

No substitute for experience?

Today we heard a veteran writer say I can write press releases with my eyes closed.

We suspect she does.

Better writing on the Web

Next on the Web: better writing?
Whitney Quesenbery thinks so
By Steve Marshall

 

The Wild Wild Web — they called it that long before Napster, Phisher, and Denial-of-Service rode into town.

But the Net’s a pretty forgiving place, if you think about it. Where else can so many outrageous and outraged characters shout wildly into the night? That kind of thing got you dead, in Deadwood.

Does the Web forgive poor writing?

“Of course it does,” says Whitney Quesenbery. “All media forgive some weaknesses and punish others.”

Quesenbery was a pioneer in the theory and practice of Web usability, and she’s now a widely-consulted authority. www.wqusability.com

But SL wanted to know: Has the Web been more forgiving of lousy prose than other media? Yes, says Quesenbery — so far.

She remembers old debates about the uniqueness of the Web. She and others stressed the new medium’s continuity with the old, while a new generation of tech-wise young bloods said it was fundamentally new.

The soul of a new medium

Quesenbery’s views have mellowed: Both sides were right, she now thinks. The Internet lets content managers act and change early, quickly, and often. They may not put napkin notes online, but plenty of first drafts go up. Quesenbery quotes Voltaire — the perfect is the enemy of the good — and notes that on the Web, the converse is also true. The good, or the good enough, often wins out.

That’s why the medium is a forgiving one. You just don’t have that flexibility after 50,000 copies have rolled off your printing presses.

---

The perfect is the enemy of the good — and vice versa.

---

Will this situation change? It is changing, Quesenbery says, driven by market demand. Users want usability,

Webbed evolution

For most companies, stage One was simply Get Online! No one knew what the new terrain would be, but everyone knew they had to be there. The first corporate Web sites sounded like a puzzled Fonz on Happy Days: “Hey! Yo! Anybody!”

Stage Two was Lights, Camera, Action. Techs harnessed HTML to huge troves of data, while designers called forth bling — animation, audio, video. The Web became interactive in fact.

Stage Three was the Struggle for Usability. Shiny trinkets were no longer enough, as users wanted a good reason to fire up the box. They demanded tangible, time-saving benefits, and a smooth ride to boot.

Easy reading, said Hawthorne, is damn hard writing. So is a pleasant Internet experience — but the usability crowd has shown that it’s possible.

Usability rules

“For a while it didn’t really matter how bad your content was,” Quesenbery says. “Nobody would ever find it anyway.”

But now the basic principles of site navigation are well established. (That doesn’t mean they’re universally applied, any more than the principles of marketing, customer service, or business ethics.)

---

Poor writing didn’t matter. No one could find it anyway.

---

For a Web site to be effective it must solve problems, not create them. It must remove anxieties so users take action — they click Buy Now, they take the next step in manual, they provide information. Sites that succeed, Quesenbery thinks, will be those that take the struggle for usability to a deeper level: to within the page.

In other words, to the text.

She sees a trend among her larger clients toward producing copy that’s clearer, more precise, and more targeted. And she sees it across the board, in marketing as well as corporate communications and technical projects.

The democratization of content

A higher premium on content? To professional writers, that’s trumpet music — their skills will be valued! But it’s more complicated than that.

The Web, Quesenbery explains, has spread the ability to create content far and wide — like Gutenberg did 550 years ago. “Gutenberg is famous for his bible,” she says, “but what changed the world was his broadside.” With Gutenberg’s press, anyone who could buy ink and paper could publish.

---

The Gutenberg broadside changed the world.

---

If Gutenberg made it possible to publish, the Web made it free. This economy allows businesses to put out more information than ever, while intensifying demands of production, quality, compliance, marketing, public relations, and so on require them to.

Writing is in the job description

Yet companies don’t necessarily call on professional writers to write all this content. They often reach out to new sources within their ranks. Today, at every level, employees are being asked to write for Web sites, blogs, Intranets, content management systems. You were hired as a tax lawyer? Now you’ve got a Web page to maintain. Administrative assistant? We’ll give you six.

Along with this trend a need arises: to train a broader pool of employees in the fundamentals of written communication.

Quesenbery sees these two broad trends — market demand for usability and the commoditization of writing — intersecting to bring better writing to the Web.

This is different from the higher-level content that companies publish, on the Web or anywhere else. Industry leaders won’t hand over their mission-critical writing to amateurs, whether it’s for purposes of marketing, internal communications, IT, compliance, or investor relations. Microsoft will still rely on skilled writers, not programmers, for its style guides. And high-quality magazines and newspapers will continue to demand the best.

But if Whitney Quesenbery is right, we should see an overall improvement in business Web copy. Don’t expect Dickens quality. Instead, expect modest improvements throughout: better grammar and punctuation, clearer sentences, less blow and more go.

This development — and the notion that everyone can learn to write a little better — is sure to please many who value language.

Find out more about Web usability and Whitney Quesenbery’s work at www.wqusability.com.

First published May 2006.

 

Judge Grammar?

“You are not a we. You are an I.”

This from DC judge Judith Bartnoff to plaintiff Roy Pearson, who is suing a laundry for $54 million over a pair of pants and false advertising.

Actually, Pearson is a judge himself — an administrative law judge* — and he also styles himself a “private attorney general” fighting for the citizenry.

But the DC district judge says Pearson speaks only for himself.

That may be true. Still SL must defend the poor fellow’s right to refer to himself any way he wishes, even — especially — in a court of law. After all, our name is all we have, that and a few pronouns. We say let Mr. Pearson call himself WE and set the word in 60-point Roman bold, should he so choose.

Surely there are bigger problems in Judge Bartnoff’s courtroom. For example, the elephant sitting in the middle of it: Why is this trial happening at all? We can only wonder which judge is crazier — or more abusive to the laundry owners.

As always, we hold no brief. For the tort reform crowd it’s all good, but for the plaintiff bar . . . otherwise.

______________________________________________________________

* What is an administrative law judge?

After a bit of research (SL at its post), we can report two things:

1. It outranks Judge Wapner but not a real judge.
2. The job often requires pants, though ALJ Pearson has not made that assertion.

The Sopranos’ perfect pitch

Goodbye, North Jersey.

The Sopranos is by far the best drama we’ve ever seen on television. (The New Yorker editor called it “the highest achievement” in the history of the medium, but we don’t watch enough to know that.)

We’re perfectly happy Mr. Chase did not choose a cartoon finish. Angry fans felt otherwise, crashing HBO.com with complaints. Where’s the closure? they raged. One sobbed “I’ve wasted ten years of my life!”

.

Well, it takes all kinds.

Meanwhile the show refutes one argument forever, which is the argument against TV itself. Condemnation of the medium seems pretty foolish, after The Sopranos.

But we faced resistance.

“Don’t you like it mainly because you lived there?” they asked.

We certainly loved it for that. The many sidewalk scenes at Satriale’s were played and filmed in Harrison, a few blocks from our place in the Ironbound. Another scene was shot in our local fish store on Market Street, between the banks of snappers and octopii. Over all loomed Newark Cathedral and the Pulaski Skyway — the Notre Dame and Eiffel Tower of our Jersey years.

But what clinched it for us was The Sopranos’ perfect pitch in language. Three great moments:

#1: When they mimic reruns of The Godfather.

#2: When Ralphie stirs the pasta sauce and calls it — not marinara or bolognese, but gravy.

#3: When Paulie, alarmed at rumors of municipal reform, asks Tony, “What about our thing?” (Normal voice, slight emphasis on our.)

Paulie doesn’t say The Mafia (clashing cymbals) or The Family (dum-de-dum-dum) or Organized Crime. He just asks about “our thing.” A casual shorthand expression, as it was in Italy: La cosa nostra.

It’s how real people talk.

Real people, bestial killers

Portrayals of real people were critical to The Sopranos’ success. What made them real? Their hopes, fears and mundane lives, conveyed mainly though language.

Hopes, fears, mundanity: In the right hands, it’s a powerful combination. It made millions of people feel sympathy, if only for a moment, for bestial killers like Tony Soprano and Chris Moltisanti.

And Paulie Walnuts and Bobby and Furio and Uncle June and Silvio and Pussy and Ralphie (my vote for most bestial) and Phil and Richie and Eugene and Patsy and Vito and Carmine and Benny and Little Carmine and Little Paulie and Johnny Sack and Larry and Gigi and Matt and Sean and Philly Spoons and Mikie and Chuckie and that guy from Down Neck and those guys from Brooklyn and all those other guys too.

With a very few exceptions — random victims, fawning civilians, clueless kids — virtually all the male characters on the show were violent sociopaths. And while their female soulmates didn’t personally whack people, they were in pretty deep. As Carmela told Dr. Melfi, she knew that behind Tony’s every gift “was a guy with a broken arm or worse.”

Melfi, of course, stands alone.

Literally

Stuck with a weak metaphor? Pump that sissy up!

Just stick “literally” in front of it. Watch:

“Literally on his own back, (Mayor Allen) carried the city’s white establishment into a more enlightened day.” That’s how author Gary Pomerantz describes a famous chapter in the history of my hometown.

We have one little problem: By definition, metaphors are figurative. And that’ s the opposite of literal, literally.

We can’t help wondering . . . did the mayor carry all those fellows in a single load, or one by one? Did he wear one of those weightlifter belts?

BTW, the story of Atlanta’s business leadership in the face of the civil rights movement is well told by Ivan Allen himself in his book Mayor: Notes on the Sixties.

 

* * *

Saying literally when you mean the opposite: strong or weak?

The SL verdict: Weak disguised as strong.

 

Captcha? Wha’wuzzat?

Captcha is fairly new word. It refers to a graphical representation of type that Web sites use for security.

After you type your user name and password, some sites ask you to identify a phrase in a box. The type is easily recognized by a human being, but not by a machine. So you get into the site, but automated trolls don’t.

Now comes word on the street: It’s over. You’ll continue to see captchas, but the tide has turned.

Why? Because the captcha race is burning itself out. As machines get better at reading them, designers must produce more and more intricate images — and before you know it, they’re turning out captchas that humans can’t decipher. Defeating the porpoise, as we say.

So long, captcha. We hardly knew ye.

Added June 08: Microsoft captcha hacked

Google “hostile to privacy”

“Don’t be evil,” say the choirboys at Google.

Well, maybe a little evil. Check out the new report by Privacy International, which assesses the privacy commitment of 23 top Internet service companies.

See Between the Lines for a good summary. You can also view the report and the rankings. Turns out there’s plenty of evil to go around.

Numerous companies have “serious lapses” or worse in their respect for privacy, including Microsoft, AOL, Yahoo, Facebook, and YouTube. Google shows up in the last category: Hostile to privacy.

The powers that be yanked Admiral Poindexter, but his project is alive and well. This crowd wants your soul on a spreadsheet.

Do colleges stifle writers?

Flannery O’Connor set the gold standard in American literature. And she said:

“Everywhere I go, I’m asked if the universities stifle writers. My opinion is that they don’t stifle enough. There’s many a best-seller that could have been prevented by a good teacher.”

Read the current crop of “Southern writers,” and then read Flannery. You’ll never go back.

Introducing le book

When new technology baffles, call the help desk.

Introducing le book [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aX0-nqRmto]

The right to request

Do you need permission to ask?

Google shows 1.2 million hits for “the right to request.” That’s a lot of rights! One or another institution graciously permits you to request:

• correction of an error in your doctor’s record. (Displayed in most medical offices.)
• correction of an error in your school’s record. (Thank Congress.)
• access to federal records. (Congress.)
• a paper ballot in a California election. (State law.)
• limits on an insurance company’s sharing of your health information. (Assurant Health.)
• a million dollars from Strong Language. (Ask away.)
• and many other things.

What do these “rights” have in common? They’re meaningless, that’s what. And these outfits know it — Assurant declares in the next breath that it has no obligation to meet your request.

“The right to request ______” is a phrase by which some organizations give an appearance of commitment to their customers or constituents. But it actually commits the organization to nothing.

 

* * *

The right to request: strong or weak?

The SL verdict: Extremely weak.

Never

Jim Clark died last week.

From 1955 to 1966 he was sheriff of Dallas County, Alabama, whose seat is Selma.

He was a man of extreme violence, and his NYT obituary vividly illustrates what the civil rights movement overcame.

Clark wore a button on his chest that said Never. Now that’s strong language, like it or not — clear, direct, and to the point.

It was one side’s entire case in the “debate” on integration — the one-word slogan of American apartheid.

After Jim Clark was turned out of office, he moved into home sales, drug smuggling and federal prison.

Never was trampled by marching feet, and the South was integrated. There are stronger things than words.

*   *   *

Never: strong or weak?

The SL verdict: Not as strong as they thought.

What’s writing worth?

How much should I pay (or charge) for writing?

Strong Language has heard many versions of that question, including

• How do you set your pricing?
• How does X thousand a year sound?
• Here’s what we can pay — yes or no?

We’ve taken a few swings at the pricing ball. We’ve dived for low pitches, swung for the fences, left money on the table, taken home tidy sums, earned our keep, and lost our shirt. Our experience was not for nothing, because nowadays we (and our clients) find the sweet spot more often.

But we’re not giving away our own wisdom today. Instead we’ll just pass on a nugget.

If your job requires excellence — in precision tools, fast freight, C-level editorial or anything else — you can be sure that someone downstream (your employer or your customer) understands Mr. Ruskin’s words.

There is hardly anything in the world that some man cannot make a little worse and sell a little cheaper. People who consider price only are this man’s lawful prey.

It is unwise to pay too much, but it is even worse to pay too little. If you pay too much, you lose some money, that is all. If you pay too little, however, you will sometimes lose everything, as the thing you bought cannot do the intended job.

The law of economy forbids to obtain something of high value for little money. If you accept the lowest bid, you must add something for the risk taken by you. And if you do so, you have enough money to pay for something of higher value.

John Ruskin (1819-1900)

Merck bows to science

Merck’s TV ads for Vytorin have recently undergone a small but important revision.

Their message is that high cholesterol comes from two sources — food choices and inherited genetic makeup — and Vytorin treats it all.

Here’s how one ad explained matters:

You get high cholesterol “not just from crab cakes, but from your crabby Aunt Betty.”

No, SL explained.

No one inherits genetic traits from an aunt — not any, not ever.* We suggested Merck stop broadcasting its ignorance of basic biology. And now it has.

Surely others pointed out the mistake, but Strong Language may have been the first. We happened to see the first ad right after a visit to the Museum of Natural History in New York — a visit that had confirmed our little notions of science. Wepromptly alerted Merck and the world.

Strong Language  . . . at its post.

* Not unless there’s more going on, in which case counseling may be more effective than pills.

KrugerSnäack

A wild free-for-all in the bush involving lions, buffalo and a crocodile. Battle at Kruger

But what’s the relevance for a blog about language? Surely none of these species can write!

Answer: You’re right. Only the pale hairless ones have language, and they can only be heard, not seen. The audio on Battle at Kruger is worth a listen.

Most of the humans appear to have a buffalo bias, but two of the females aren’t buying:

[4:23] While the lions disassemble the calf, a lovely lilting laugh rises in the background. It’s a laugh you might have heard in the old days, over gimlets beside a Jo’burg pool. Before all that Mandela business.

[5:20] In their first attack the buffalo almost catch a lion (whose jaws still drip with blood). Listen for another female voice, low and earnest, urging the baby-killer to escape: “Run . . . Run. . . .”

These two, at least, identify with carnivorous mammals over herbivores or reptiles.

Poooor Snäack

And just because the rest of the vid is so astonishing, don’t fail to appreciate the beauty of Lion Queen’s initial run to isolate the buffalo calf.

The calf’s name, SL has learned, was Snäack. Watch Ms. Lion catch the little rascal from behind — she grabs his shoulders, rolls herself into the drink, and brings Snäack along, resembling nothing so much as Lawrence Taylor engaging a rookie quarterback.

Whew! Be glad you entered the food chain when and where you did.

The humans, in SL’s view, are overly optimistic about Snäack’s future. This kid wasn’t just up to his ass in alligators — he had croc on one end and lion on the other. Now that’s an issue, and statistically it’s one that very few calves survive.

Sure, let the humans cheer when the calf stands up. But Strong Language will never raise false hopes. We’re telling the kids Snäack went to a nice farm on the veldt.

Eats, Shoots & Leaves Us Cold

The Contrarian reviews Eats, Shoots & Leaves by Lynne Truss

To begin with, this little book on punctuation has a few little punctuation errors. And they’re none too subtle.

Lynne Truss is confused about commas, both American and British, as well as about the wee distinction between restrictive and nonrestrictive clauses.

But the Contrarian had a graver problem with this book: Which author is he to believe?

Is it the literal Ms. Truss? A misplaced apostrophe in a store window sends her into shock, anger, and despair, and she urges her fellow “sticklers” to deface the property.

Or is it the winking, nudging Ms. Truss? She has a life beyond commas, thank you, and she doesn’t really endorse vandalism. She’s feigning anger to make a point.

The Contrarian has read her have-it-both-ways book. He’s read Frank McCourt’s gushing preface, which reveals Frankie’s own difficulties with punctuation. The Contrarian is aware, furthermore, that the New Yorker’s reviewer suspected a hoax.

But after watching this worm for a while, the Contrarian has decided to swallow. He believes Ms. Truss #1. He thinks she really is one of Those People.

Civilization’s thin line

They march through life with their briefs in a bunch, furious at the latest outrage by the unwashed against — whatever. Table manners, the carpets, monarchy, subject-verb agreement.

Against these ruffians, Lynn Truss rises to defend punctuation marks.

She loves the little abstractions. The Contrarian judges that passing weird — but he believes her, and easily, because her book is one long anthropomorphization of the marks.

---

Stolid little apostrophes with mummies and daddies

---

Really — it never ends.

The bang is cheerful, the pos a brave and “stolid little chap.” Well-trained colons “waltz in together” with Policeman Semicolon. Other species play too: A comma can be a “friendly little tadpoley dot” or a darting herder that “woofs” at words.

This goo finally explodes all over the kitchen in a passage that casts periods as daddies, commas as mummies, and semicolons and other marks as children. Ghastly.

Yes, the Contrarian has known the smiling e, the clever f, the stolid B, the no-nonsense period. But that was in second grade, when he was littler and less contrarian. Nowadays the cartoon gets a bit tedious, especially at feature length.

Credit where it’s due

Still, give Lynn Truss credit where it’s due. She quotes a few gems to illustrate the use and misuse of punctuation marks, and often explains these correctly. She reports the opinions of others, some interesting and some less so. Chekhov found catharsis in an exclamation point; Gertrude Stein thought question marks “revolting.” The Contrarian thought that . . . rather odd.

---

Gertrude Stein thought question marks “revolting.” The Contrarian thought that odd.

---

The book provides thumbnail histories of the marks, which may be accurate. Ms. Truss also misquotes G.B. Shaw and repeatedly misstates the best-known difference between British and American English, which involves the placement of closing quotes relative to different punctuation.

To keep things lively, she issues opinions without bothering to explain, must less justify. Italics “are a confession of stylistic failure.” Did you know that? The Contrarian didn’t know that. He still doesn’t.

The author also ventures far, far afield, to explain how new technology has altered the act of reading. To illustrate, she contrasts reading in print to reading on screen — for which, she says, “your eyes remain static” while content scrolls past. No, they don’t. No, it doesn’t.

Ms. Truss also confuses reading with scanning, which are wholly different functions whether performed online or on paper.

But hey, other than that . . .

This author is angry, sir!

Sure, she’s confused about a few things — Who the hell isn’t? — but at least she’s willing to STAND UP against the ninnies who would disrespect Our Culture and Its Punctuation Rules.

At bottom, the entire enterprise seems just another way of fetishizing language. Rare book buyers do it; so did William F. Buckley, by equating vocabulary with exoticism. (Found a word you didn’t know — whee!)

The Contrarian is more charitable than you may think. He can overlook these things. He can even overlook other things, like Ms. Truss’s boast that a certain presidential twin had “raved” over the work.

But in Eats, Shoots & Leaves he encountered two deal breakers.

Deal breaker #1: The broad target

Ms. Truss’s choice of prey is shopkeepers, followed by teenage cell phone users. What sport!

Hardware merchants provide us with sharp tools and sturdy twine, not grammar lessons. That’s their offer — take it or leave it. And teenagers are an alien life form, not carbon-based. Their tongues and IM tappings are not susceptible of adult comprehension, much less influence.

While she’s at it, here’s another rich vein Ms. Truss might consider. A town near the Contrarian’s home requires that all signage include “clear English translation.” The sticklers who enforce this law (and presumably the punctuation rules that are so necessary to clarity) carry not markers but badges and guns.

Surely Lynn Truss knows that there are people in this world who live by the pen. They stake their claims not in twine or hormonal angst, but in effective use of the English language. And some of them are pompous pedants indeed, ripe for the skewer.

But they fight back. So Ms. Truss prefers to lecture truants and harried merchants. It’s nice work if you can get it.

Deal breaker #2: Like a wee mousie

Deal breaker number two takes us back to the start: those little punctuation errors.

So small are they, so very wee — even full-grown punctuation is by nature wee — that they might be excused in an advertisement for penny nails.

But in a guide to punctuation they stand tall and grim.

Please note that no cri is issued here for “punctuation vigilantes” to enter bookstores and manually correct Ms. Truss’s errors. With that crowd the Contrarian has no truck.

Instead, he has simply amended a rule. It had served well, over many decades, in this form:

12(a) For guidance on punctuation, don’t consult retailers or children.

Rule 12(a) is amended to add: or Lynn Truss.

Can Buckley say non sequitur?

Non sequitur is Latin for “it does not follow.”

If you’d like to see a beauty, from an avowed expert on logic and language, read William F. Buckley’s Feb. 4 letter to the New York Times.

Buckley accuses a book review of calling for censorship. But it never happened — Buckley made it up out of whole cloth. There is no call for censorship in Alan Wolfe’s Jan. 21 review of Dinesh D’Souza’s The Enemy at Home.

Strong Language holds no brief for any of this crowd; our point here concerns only language and logic. The exchange is public record, including Wolfe’s final paragraph that Buckley claims is “startling” and censorious. (Sadly the NYT offers a free link to one but not the other, so I cannot link to either.)

“They’re trying to suppress our right to speak!”

It’s an old trick: When opponents challenge your positions, call them censors.

Who’s high at the High?

Can an art museum have attention deficit disorder? The one in my town does. Here’s how it presents:

1. The High announces a film series called “From Royalty to Revolution,” promising to portray “the social inequities leading up to the French Revolution.” First up: Les Miserables, a story set several decades after the Revolution. (Yes, yes, SL knows there were several revolutions in France. But “the French Revolution” is the universal name for the one that opened in 1789.)
   
2. The High presents a major exhibition on Renzo Piano’s architecture. But the scale models — astonishing in both concept and detail — are explained in tiny type, mounted low. Some were literally at knee level. Not surprisingly, few visitors choose to kneel and squint.
3. In its mounting and lighting of an Andrew Wyeth painting, the High lops off the top. SL pretends to no expertise, of course, but we think it’s an important painting and an important top.

What Andrew Wyeth painted

What High Museum visitors saw

Granted, the last example doesn’t involve language. Even SL can’t write some convoluted explanation about how it does. So it’s not really justified in a blog on language, is it?

And maybe none of this matters at all. Hillside, hilltop, eighteenth century, nineteenth century — what’s the difference? It was back there somewhere.

Still, one wishes the hometown art museum — whose reason for being is to present art — would pay more attention to how it presents art.

What we have here in Atlanta is un musée confus.

To the Honolulu librarians

Way back ante-Webbum, they saved many a day.

Today you can look up pretty much anything with a few key strokes. But not so long ago, you couldn’t — and desperate writers turned to libraries.

They did this even up to the turn of the century!

Every serious researcher knew a few reference librarians. If you needed an answer quickly, these miracle workers could track it down and get it to you. They were information masters long before the Information Age. (They still are — may their tribe increase.)

But what about late at night? Like when you were pondering weak and weary over forgotten lore, and needed to ID an annoying blackbird. Or settle a bar bet.

You’d dial 1-808-555-1212 and ask long-distance information the number for the Honolulu Public Library — or for Hamilton, the legendary stacks of the University of Hawaii.

In short order, you’d reach a friendly, professional voice — a reference librarian, way out there at AT&T’s western reaches, late in the Pacific afternoon. In a few moments your quest would be over. You’d claim victory, collect your due, and call for the publican.

Of course, the Internet has not only made information more accessible — it has spread it wide and deep, in great quantities. There was plenty back then, but there wasn’t as much clutter.

Good thing. I don’t think I could ask a Honolulu reference librarian to work out a Bacon number.

When “Eat” means “Don’t eat”

Feed a cold, starve a fever. That prescription has been around a long time — and its misinterpretation has wasted a lot of chicken soup.

Because the original meaning, as Hippocrates explained 25 centuries ago, was this: “If you eat when you have a cold, you’ll catch a fever, and then you’ll have to fast.”

In other words: If you feed a cold, you’ll pay the price.

It’s like Drive fast, get a ticket. Or Skip class, serve detention. These are not encouragements to high speed or truancy, but warnings against such behaviors.

The good physician’s advice has come down all wrong.

The Qantas gripe sheet

After every flight, Qantas pilots fill out a form called a gripe sheet to report problems they encountered with the aircraft. Then ground mechanics address the problems and record their actions.

Is it a hoax? Some comments on the Qantas Gripe Sheet have been credited to mechanics at other airlines, too. But Qantas pilots and others confirm that the content is genuine — perhaps a collection of tarmac wisdom from different sources.

P = The problem logged by the pilot.
S = The mechanic’s solution.

____________________________________________________________

P: Left inside main tyre almost needs replacement.
S: Almost replaced left inside main tyre.

P: Test flight OK, except auto-land very rough.
S: Auto-land not installed on this aircraft.

P: Something loose in cockpit.
S: Something tightened in cockpit.

P: Dead bugs on windshield.
S: Live bugs on back-order.

P: Autopilot in altitude-hold mode produces sharp descent.
S: Cannot reproduce problem on ground.

P: Evidence of leak on right main landing gear.
S: Evidence removed.

P: DME volume unbelievably loud.
S: DME volume set to more believable level.

P: Friction locks cause throttle levers to stick.
S: That’s what they’re there for.

P: IFF inoperative.
S: IFF always inoperative in OFF mode.

P: Suspected crack in windshield.
S: Suspect you’re right.

P: Number 3 engine missing.
S: Engine found on right wing after brief search.

P: Aircraft handles funny.
S: Aircraft warned to straighten up, fly right, and be serious.

P: Target radar hums.
S: Reprogrammed target radar with lyrics.

P: Mouse in cockpit.
S: Cat installed.

End Qantas Gripe Sheet
End Quantas Gripe Sheet

End Quantas Gripe Sheet<font color=”black”

Even smaller than a dot

If you track language foibles, the New York Times offers happy hunting. A recent letter makes the point, and makes it with style, that a single wordspace matters.

Ego and Superego
February 4, 2007

In his review of Peter H. Stone’s “Heist” (Jan. 14), Norman J. Ornstein submits that Jack Abramoff had “an outsize ego in a town of superegos.” I believe he means “super egos,” as the superegos (conscience) of Abramoff and his ilk are undersize, if they exist at all.

Fred Shectman
Pittsboro, N.C.

Well put.

The art of the interview I

Strong Language offers occasional pointers to writers. Here’s a series on how to make business interviews efficient and productive.

Part I: Logistics

“The kingdom was lost, and all for the want of a horseshoe nail.”

First get an appointment, not an interview.

Make contact immediately by voice, email, or both. Don’t seek the interview, but rather a time for the interview. If this seems obvious, wait till you reach a friendly, articulate, enthusiastic subject who wants to talk right now.

Don’t be tempted. She’ll be there next week — and the exchange will be far more productive when you’re comfortable, prepared, and free of schedule worries. Very little good business writing ever came from an interview conducted on the fly.

You might be making that first contact before you’ve even begun your research. If you jump in to an interview now, maybe you can wing it — or look foolish.

Don’t be this guy!

At the Atlanta premiere of Gone With The Wind, a reporter asked Vivien Leigh what role she had played in the film. She declined further conversation with “this ignoramus.”

Schedule the interview far enough out to accommodate your own schedule, and any prep work you’ll need to do.

In these initial calls or emails, take care to give your subject the basics — topic, scope, audience, length, and your contact information. Let her know if your client has given you relevant documents. (Why? So the subject won’t waste time preparing to over that material in the interview.) And if you can, forward a piece that’s similar to the one you’re writing.

A couple of phone calls or emails are usually enough to establish a connection. Don’t expect this to be effortless. Your contact — one hopes — is busy and fully engaged in her own organization, which is doing land-office business.

To fix a time

Professional standards require two things from your subject: a return call and a time for an interview. (Robert’s highest rule — the only motion that yields to none — is To fix a time.)

If you can’t get a time for the interview, or at least a return call or email after a few tries — down, boy. It’s time to stop. Don’t make yourself an annoyance. Report to your client or boss, log your time, and move on to other work pending a resolution.

Jimmy Olsen tailed subjects through dark streets. But this isn’t cub reporting. Your customer has decided that an employee will be interviewed, and your customer will decide how to implement that decision.

What if your foot-dragging subject is the decision-maker? Proceed in exactly the same way.

Coming: Redundant recording

A part of all we have met

Los Tres