Punctuation in the news

Last week, Jason Kottke tracked the fate of the Oxford comma at Oxford. Oxford University Press is for the comma. But the university’s “Branding toolkit” recommends the comma’s use only when such use clarifies a sentence’s meaning. My take: using the Oxford comma makes sense. If you always include it, you simplify in a small way the work of writing, and you never run the risk of unintended ambiguity.

Also in the news: the exclamation point, in a New York Times survey of e-mail habits. I think that sparing use of the exclamation point in work-related e-mail can be a good thing. “Thanks!” seems to suggest more-deeply-felt gratitude than “Thanks.” (The sample student-to-professor e-mail in my post on how to e-mail a professor has such a “Thanks!”) Much depends upon the conventions of a workplace: in the land of the low-key and terse, “Thanks!” will likely sound bubbly and overcaffeinated; in a more spirited environment, “Thanks” might sound begrudging. And In the right (or wrong) context, any expression of gratitude is likely to sound passive-aggressive:

Thanks.

Thanks!

Thanks a lot!

Related posts
E-mail and punctuation
How to punctuate a sentence
How to punctuate more sentences

[Should you ever need to enliven a discussion of punctuation, you might turn to this Oxford-comma conversation. It can bring a classroom to life and keep it there.]

Overheard

In the supermarket, one shopper to another: “This is Jell-O weather. Do you have any Jell-O?”

[It’s 90.1°F. Feels like 100°.]

Related reading
All “Overheard” posts

John Gruber, “Credit and Attribution”

A long and thoughtful post at Daring Fireball on giving credit where credit is due. The context: All Things Digital’s use of a story from Federico Viticci’s MacStories. The moral: be generous and respectful in crediting your sources. As Gruber asks, “If he’s not worth crediting by name or publication, why is his story worth re-reporting?”

Gmail, updated

The Official Gmail Blog calls it “a much cleaner, modern look.” I agree. The Preview (Dense) theme looks especially nice, and the grey navigation bar is far better than the black bar (still present in other Google services).

Van Dyke Parks, two singles

[Imaginary liner notes for Van Dyke Parks’s new recordings.]

“Dreaming of Paris” (Parks) b/w “Wedding in Madagascar (Faranaina).” Produced by Van Dyke Parks and Matthew Cartsonis. Sleeve art by Ed Ruscha. Bananastan B4501. 2011.

“Wall Street” (Parks) b/w “Money Is King” (The Growling Tiger). Produced by Van Dyke Parks and Matthew Cartsonis. Sleeve art by Art Spiegelman. Bananastan B4500. 2011.

These releases — the first two of six 45s, with sleeve art by eminent American artists — are Van Dyke Parks’s first commercial solo recordings since the 1998 Warner album Moonlighting: Live at the Ash Grove (an excellent introduction, by the way, to The Man and His Music). Note: the first solo recordings. Since 1998, Parks has been heard on record countless times as an arranger, co-writer, and collaborating musician (with Inara George, Joanna Newsom, Ringo Starr, Rufus Wainwright, and Brian Wilson, among others). In 2010 Parks toured for the first time in Europe and North America; in 2011 he has played in Europe and Australia. He may be, as he puts it, “redundant” in the record business, but he does get around. And now he’s recording on his own terms, with vinyl available by subscription, in a project he describes as “Nouveau Niche.”

Fans of the 1995 Parks–Wilson collaboration Orange Crate Art might associate “Dreaming of Paris” with that album’s “Sail Away.” Here the escape is by plane, a first-class flight with Cabernet and crème brûlée. But things grow dark, the delights of travel interrupted by memories (or news) of assassinations and war. The song closes on an eerie note: a ghostly chorus, strings and ukuleles, a solemn bass. A strange, beautiful trip indeed.

“Wedding in Madagascar” might serve as a reminder that Parks was one of the first pop musicians to explore what has become known as “world music”: his 1972 album Discover America celebrated the music of Trinidad and Tobago (an abiding Parks interest). “Wedding in Madagascar” is a lovely arrangement of what seems to be a traditional Malagasy melody, with horns, strings, and bright electric guitars.

In 2003, an earlier version of “Wall Street” was briefly available as a free download from Parks’s website. Comparing the two recordings is instructive: the new “Wall Street” has more varied instrumentation and a far stronger sense of theater, pausing and slowing down now and then for maximal dramatic effect. “Wall Street” is a 9/11 song, beginning with the biz-talk and chatter of a workday (“Drop me off at Walk Don’t Walk”) before turning to ash, blood, and confetti, and the indelible image of a man and woman holding hands as they fall to the pavement. Yes, that happened, and this song remembers.

“Money Is King” picks up where “Wall Street” ends, with an A major chord. Adding a dense and varied string arrangement to a melody by the Growling Tiger (Trinidadian calypsonian Neville Marcano), Parks tells some transcultural truths about the lives of the rich and the poor. The rich man?

He can commit murder and get off free,
And live in the governor’s company.

What about the poor?

But if you are poor, the people tell you “Shoo!”
And a dog is better than you.

These singles return the listener to a last-century experience: listening to a song, studying the sleeve art, and getting up to flip the record. Here is true high-fidelity: the superior sound of music on vinyl, and the work of a musician following his own idiosyncratic path.

[The recordings are available from Bananastan and iTunes. Vinyl, to my ears, offers far better listening. Idiosyncratic Path is the title of a 1995 VDP compilation album. These imaginary liner notes now appear on the Bananastan Records website, on the front page and on a page about the first two releases. I’m honored to have my writing be part of the project.]

USPS, Pioneers of Industrial Design

One of twelve new Forever Stamps from the United States Postal Service: “Pioneers of Industrial Design.” Here’s a press release with details. And here’s a PDF with biographies of the designers.

[Elaine, I think we need to replace all our stamps.]

Principal borrows from DFW’s commencement speech

In the news:

The principal of a middle school geared toward writers tried to pass off much of a well-known graduation speech as his work, parents and students told the Daily News.

They say Joseph Anderson, who heads the Clinton School for Writers and Artists in Manhattan, recited — without attribution — portions of an address penned by the late writer David Foster Wallace at Friday’s eighth-grade commencement. . . .

Anderson said it was an “oversight” not to identify Wallace as the author of the “anecdote.”

“I thought I had stated in my commencement speech that I was sharing a story I had read. . . . It was not my intention to mislead my school community,” he said.

Says graduating eighth-grader Marcus Cook, “We’re a school for writers and artists. It”s kind of ironic that he can’t write it. If you do that in college and high school, you can get kicked out.”

The Daily News article doesn’t say which part or parts of DFW’s speech Principal Anderson borrowed.

June 30, 11:12 a.m.: A Daily News editorial says that Anderson borrowed this passage:

Twenty years after my own graduation, I have come gradually to understand that the liberal arts cliché about teaching you how to think is actually shorthand for a much deeper, more serious idea: learning how to think really means learning how to exercise some control over how and what you think.

Not clear though whether this passage is all that Anderson borrowed.

Related reading
David Foster Wallace, Kenyon College 2005 commencement address

Google navigation bar (again)

For the second time this year, Google has changed its navigation bar, this time to black. The new bar appears to be part the move to the Facebookish Google+. If you, like me, find the black bar a distraction, there are Greasemonkey scripts to help:

Disable Google Black Bar, by Keith Dsouza. This script removes the black bar from google.com but leaves the bar as is elsewhere.

Google Light Navbar, by akira@Taiwan. I prefer this script, which brings back the white bar on all Google pages — which is to say, the bar that doesn’t look like a bar, because it’s indistinguishable from the white background.

These scripts require Greasemonkey, a Firefox extension. Greasemonkey will work in other browsers too.

Thank you, Keith and akira@Taiwan, for creating these scripts.

11:22 a.m.: One more: Google Bar Classic, by Olmer. Also brings back the white (non-existent) bar. Thanks, Olmer.

2:28 p.m.: Google Bar Classic seems to break Google Reader — no longer possible to send or share items.

July 1, 8:25 p.m.: Google Bar Classic has been updated: problem solved.

A related post
Google navigation bar

Two goose books

In 1994, George Bodmer made a picture book for his daughter. And now she has made one for him. And you can read them both:

Jane the Goose-Girl and George the Goose-Guy

Everyone should be so lucky to have such a father or daughter, or both.

[When you get to page seven, click on “Older Posts” to read the rest. Or just click on June 2011 to see all pages.]

Fred Steiner (1923–2011)

Fred Steiner, who wrote the theme music for Perry Mason (and much else) has died.

The Perry Mason theme sent my brother and me into a frenzy in early childhood. The four-note phrases became a lyric: “The mum - my PRAYERS! The mum - my PRAYERS!” (Repeat until delirious.) The theme’s title, as I just learned, is “Park Avenue Beat,” which doesn’t seem to have anything to do with mummies.

(Via Sounds & Fury via Musical Assumptions.)