How to improve writing (no. 18 in a series)

A "blow out clearance"? A "sales event"? Dig the hyperbole and redundancy of this Wal-Mart sign:

  BLOW OUT
   APPAREL
CLEARANCE
     SALES
    EVENT

I wonder whether the sign's portrait-orientation led the author to pile up words to fill the space. Better:

   APPAREL
CLEARANCE
     SALE

Plain old clothing would be a better choice of course, but I'll stick by the dowdy word apparel, which no one outside of retail seems to use. (When did you last go apparel shopping?)

All "How to improve writing" posts (via Pinboard)

Yes, we can

Barack Obama, a few minutes ago:

When I hear that we'll never overcome the racial divide in our politics, I think about that Republican woman who used to work for Strom Thurmond, who's now devoted to educating inner-city children and who went out onto the streets of South Carolina and knocked on doors for this campaign. Don't tell me we can't change.

WriteRoom

[Click to enlarge and read.]

Smultron (by Peter Borg)
TextWrangler (Bare Bones Software)
WriteRoom (Hog Bay Software)

Related posts
Blockwriter
Dark Room
Jedi Concentrate
My version of Amish computing
Word 2007

Garry Wills on "plural presidency"

One problem with the George W. Bush administration is that it has brought a kind of plural presidency in through the back door. Vice President Dick Cheney has run his own executive department, with its own intelligence and military operations, not open to scrutiny, as he hides behind the putative president. . . .

And at a time when we should be trying to return to the single-executive system the Constitution prescribes, it does not seem to be a good idea to put another co-president in the White House.

Read the rest:

Two Presidents Are Worse Than One (New York Times)

Saturday night syndrome

Before there was Saturday Night Fever, there was Saturday night syndrome. Eric Partridge's New Partridge Dictionary of Slang and Unconventional English (2005) gives four meanings, all originating in the United States:

1 tachycardiac fibrillation

2 prolonged local pressure on a limb with resulting prolonged ischemia (inadequate blood supply)

3 the stress and fear suffered by preachers who wait until Saturday night to write their Sunday sermon

4 the tendency of a restaurant kitchen to fail to live up to its highest potential on the busiest night of the week, Saturday night

A usage example from the painter Larry Rivers' autobiography describes no. 1 as the result of "all-night dancing, carousing, and strenuous sexual activity." I remember reading somewhere, years ago, that smoking is also a factor. No. 2 results from passing out with an arm or leg hanging over a chair or the edge of a bed. The OED defines no. 2 as Saturday night palsy and Saturday night paralysis (while making no mention of Saturday night syndrome).

I foresee no Saturday night syndromes in my Saturday night, which I will probably spend reading Madame Bovary while Elaine is at an orchestra rehearsal.

$$$ = Macs

I love working on my MacBook. I love its simplicity and complexity — the greatest operating system around if you want a computer that "just works," but an endless array of nuances and shortcuts and tricks if you want to delve. (I like to delve.)

I realized how Mac-centric I've become when I heard the news about the proposed "stimulus package" in the works for American taxpayers. ("Stimulus pacakage": what an odd, vaguely indecent term for free money.) I immediately thought of the dollar amounts in terms of Macs:

$600 = a Mac mini!

$1200 = a MacBook! (And a copy of iWork '08.)

I wonder how many other Mac users are thinking about these numbers in these ways.

"It's time to turn the page."

This 1940 slogan seems oddly relevant now.

Outsider outsider artist

"That's the insider art fair, OK?"

Not from The Onion, the story of an outsider artist unable to break into New York's Outsider Art Fair:

Artist Ross Brodar Is Out in the Cold at Outsiders' Fair (Wall Street Journal)

Hemming and hawing

I spent some time yesterday hemming and hawing. At least I thought I did. I've always understood hem and haw as a reference to vacillation, to going back and forth in one's head — to buy or not to buy, to go or not to go. But whence this odd expression? I guessed at an explanation: to haw might mean to unstitch. Hemming and hawing might thus be endless doing and undoing, as if one were hemming a garment and taking out the stitches. I didn't hem and haw before deciding that here was a pretty plausible explanation. But as you may already know (or else are about to learn), hem and haw has nothing to do with vacillation or sewing. World Wide Words explains:

In Britain, we know it as hum and haw. Either way the phrase contains a pair of words that are imitative. A close relative of the first of these is ahem, indicating a gentle clearing of the throat designed to attract attention; hem more often represents the slight clearing of the throat of a hesitating or nonplussed speaker. Haw is very much the same kind of word. . . . In the British version of the phrase, hum is another word for a low inarticulate murmur. Either way, the two words together illustrate very well the hesitation and indecisiveness to which the phrases refer. There are other versions and both are closely related to um and er.

The OED confirms that the words are imitative and suggest hesitation in speech, not inner debate. I wonder whether my — er — misunderstanding of these words is a common one. Anyone?

Robert Frost's handwriting

On National Handwriting Day, the transcription of Robert Frost's notebooks is in dispute.

In these sample passages, I can see fairly obvious misreadings. I wonder though what might happen after reading page after page after page of Frost's handwriting. Still, a pretty embarrassing situation for Harvard University Press.

Related posts
Frost and Sandburg
The kitchen shink