Subject-verb disagreement in the New York Times

In Garrison Keillor’s review of Deborah Solomon’s Norman Rockwell biography:

It took him seven months to paint his “Four Freedoms” pictures — a Lincolnesque workingman standing up and speaking at a town meeting, a cluster of profiles of persons in prayer, a mother and father watching over two sleeping children, a family gathered around the Thanksgiving table — which appeared in The Post and drew sacks of fan mail and was used by the Treasury to sell war bonds.

Anyone can slip up in this way, yes. But such a slip shouldn’t get by the Times.

*

10:10 p.m.: The more I look at this sentence, the more I think about (1) the great distance between pictures and which, and (2) the awkward series appeared, drew, and was were used. (And I’m not sure that paintings should be drawing anything.) How about two sentences, with minor adjustments?

It took him seven months to paint his “Four Freedoms” for The Post — a Lincolnesque workingman standing up and speaking at a town meeting, a cluster of profiles of persons in prayer, a mother and father watching over two sleeping children, a family gathered around the Thanksgiving table. The paintings became wildly popular, and the Treasury used them to sell war bonds.

Or:

It took him seven months to paint his “Four Freedoms” for The Post — a Lincolnesque workingman standing up and speaking at a town meeting, a cluster of profiles of persons in prayer, a mother and father watching over two sleeping children, a family gathered around the Thanksgiving table. The paintings became so popular that the Treasury used them to sell war bonds.

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All How to improve writing posts (Pinboard)

[This post is no. 48 in a series, “How to improve writing,” dedicated to improving stray bits of public prose. I’ve added italics to the magazine title.]

Domestic comedy

“We have all the superfoods: avocados . . . pistachios . . . grilled cheese . . . .”

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Bureaucratese

The recorded voice on the other end of the line sounded genuinely human. Until I heard these words: “. . . and a product specialist will assist you momentarily.”

What would be a better way to say that?

Sixteen stars and counting

It’s the Flag of Equal Marriage, now with Hawaii and Mexico. Illinois and Utah soon to follow.

On “native advertising”

From Counternotions, a commentary on “the race to the bottom of the advertising barrel”: You Might Also Like.

As an update to this piece points out, The New York Times has announced that will soon plunge into so-called “native advertising.” “Native advertising” is advertising designed to look like editorial content. Plunge is right.

[Found via Marco.org.]

Google crossword

The latest Google Doodle, by Merl Reagle, marks the birth of the crossword puzzle, one hundred years ago today. It’s an easy puzzle, but the clues are clever enough to 4-Down. That is, AMUSE.

Domestic comedy

“I’m too tired for idioms.”

”Suit yourself.”

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OED birthday words

Behold the Oxford English Dictionary birthday word generator. Choose a year (like, say, the year you were born) and get a word that entered the language in that year.

I get nit-pick: “to criticize (a thing) in an overzealous or pedantic fashion; to find fault with.” Hmm.

First citation: “His decisions in the main were so well conceived and executed that it would be quibbling to ‘nit-pick’ those few instances where his judgment was fallible.” Hmm.

For anyone who has access to the dictionary online, the OED has a more personalized generator. There I get repo, as word almost exactly as old as I am: “The repurchase agreement is also called a ‘repo’ or a ‘buy-back.’” I like nit-pick better.

Why are barns painted red?

The industrial designer Henry Dreyfuss said that this question was a frequent one after talks and panel discussions:

Since this question is so often asked, I have done some checking, for I have always been fascinated by the simple beauty of these red barns. They were built, as almost everything should be, from the inside out. A farmer needed a place to keep his livestock and store his feed and tools. So building took shape around these needs — four walls and a roof. Simple doors and windows were placed where they were needed, not to achieve exterior symmetry. This is functional architecture at its finest. But why are these barns painted red? Out of curiosity, I queried people who might know — artists, educators, architects, museum researchers, businessmen, designers, and farmers. Some of the answers that flowed in follow:

Architect Eero Saarinen expressed the belief that the tradition of painting barns red originated in Finland and Sweden because red — “red earth” — was the only available paint. Financier Harry B. Lake and Faber Birren, the color expert, stated that barns were painted red, originally in New England, because the color absorbed the solar heat and insured a warmer barn for the livestock during the winter. Grandma Moses agrees that the practice started in New England but she believes that red barn paint originally was made by mixing linseed oil with a certain kind of clay which resembled decayed iron ore. The result, an inexpensive and lasting paint, was found to have no lead properties which could be poisonous to cows. Francis Henry Taylor, of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, dug up the fact that most paint preservatives are reddish, making it easiest to use them in red paint without destroying the color. On the other hand, William W. Wurster, dean of the School of Architecture at the University of California, said that the color red has no special durability factor since it is the oil that is important. Architect W. K. Harrison replied, ”Red paint is cheap, covers well, and does not show dirt.” This view was echoed by Advertising Man Leo Burnett and Scenic Designer Joe Mielziner, who added that red lead was the best protection against the weather. Industrial Designer Harold Van Doren stated that he didn’t know why, but he knew how farmers got their barns painted red — it was done free by the Mail Pouch Tobacco Company in return for advertising privileges. Similarly, Architect Ralph Walker expressed the opinion that barns were painted red to give a background to ads for Carter’s Little Liver Pills. William Otto, executive of the Pittsburgh Plate Glass Company, which manufactures paint as well as glass, so that the red paint used on barns in bygone days derived from Venetian red — an economical, durable paintmaker’s pigment still utilized in low-cost barn paints. He pointed out that it is an earth color, as opposed to chemically derived colors, and has more permanency than the chemical varieties. Industrial Designer Egmont Arens stated that the prosperity of farms in Iowa used to be judged by the color of their barns — white in good times and red in hard times. Business Counselor Sheldon Coons suggested that the reason was that red stood out so well against snow on Christmas cards.

I prefer to believe that farmers of an earlier day felt, as we do today, that when the landscape is blanketed with snow, red barns give a feeling of warmth and security. And so a tradition grew.

Designing for People (1955)

A search engine will return many results for why are barns painted red. Here is one that is especially interesting.

A related post
Dreyfuss on survival forms


[A thin line of Pantone Barn Red, code 18-1531 TCX. Click for the whole barn.]

Henry Dreyfuss on survival forms

The industrial designer Henry Dreyfuss:

By embodying a familiar pattern in an otherwise wholly new and possibly radical form, we can make the unusual acceptable to many people who would otherwise reject it.

A simple, practical example of this may be found in the unnecessary numerals that today adorn the faces of most clocks and watches. I call these numerals unnecessary because children as a rule learn to tell time before they can distinguish one number from another. They do this by memorizing the positions of the hands on the clock dial, and it doesn’t make any difference whether the numerals are Arabic or Roman or are represented by dots. Yet it has been demonstrated over and over again that popular-priced clocks and watches without numerals on their faces simply don’t sell in quantity. Unnecessary or not, the numbers constitute a survival form that most people demand. Things like electric toasters, coffeemakers, typewriters, and fountain pens often bear survival forms that manufacturers think are necessary or desirable. The chrome band on the base of a typewriter is, for instance, a modern version of an older molding, and the stylized decoration on the side of an electric toaster is a modern replacement for the rosebud or fleur-de-lis that appeared on some household article Grandfather used.

The purist is likely to throw up his hands at the thought of such a restriction and accuse the designer of artistic blasphemy. True, we are straying from the path of utter purity when we consider anything but pure form, proportion, line, and color, but we have larger horizons than the purist need consider. Ours is the ever-changing battleground of the department store rather than the Elysian fields of the museum.

Designing for People (1955)

The “survival form” seems to be more or less synonymous with the skeuomorph, and I would imagine that Dreyfuss’s reasoning here was of great interest to Apple in its work on iOS. I have no strong feelings about survival forms or skeuomorphs in general: they can be beautiful, charming, and witty (the now-gone microphone for iOS’s Voice Memos) or absurd (see below). The individual instance is all.


[The pebbled leather and ragged paper of the original iOS Notes, as seen on my first-generation iPad.]