One way to improve writing: when you’re composing a bulk e-mail, never forget that you’re composing a bulk e-mail. Here’s the start of a bulk mailing from my union:
An improvement:
Dropping Arial and boldface and the unnecessary first and would like to would also improve things. This e-mail’s first sentence might require all of six words: A Happy New Year to you. I think capitals are better with this wish.
Related reading
All How to improve writing posts (Pinboard)
[It may have been possible to address Walt Whitman as “each and every one of you.” He was large and contained multitudes. This post is no. 49 in a series, “How to improve writing,” dedicated to improving stray bits of public prose.]
Friday, January 3, 2014
How to improve writing (no. 49)
A Times Square record store
[Click for a larger sale.]
A Times Square record store, as seen in the opening montage of the Naked City episode “Turn of Events,” May 12, 1959. Colony Records? King Karol? Dunno.
Elaine and I continue to make our way through Naked City, pausing and “rewinding” at will. Great stories, great cinematography (Jack Priestly), great acting. Is that so-and-so? Yes, it is!
Related reading
All Naked City posts (Pinboard)
New York, 1964: record stores
Thursday, January 2, 2014
Two hundred blog description lines
The first words of Van Dyke Parks’s song “Orange Crate Art” — “Orange crate art was a place to start” — long appeared on this blog as what Blogger calls a blog description line. In May 2010, I found myself unexpectedly caffeine-free and made a new line, keeping the quotation marks that had surrounded Van Dyke’s words. At some point I returned to being caffeinated, mildly so. And I kept changing the line (and saving to a text file), always choosing some word or words or element of punctuation from a post then on the front page. These lines now look like bits of found language, detached from contexts, amusing, banal, evocative, opaque. I like that. Here are the first two hundred:
“Orange crate art was a place to start”And as one of these lines asks, “Now what?”
“Now caffeine-free”
“Half the pressure, twice the speed”
“It's my duty to remember”
“An informal atmosphere prevails”
“May vary daily”
“Brooklyn is not expanding”
“Checklists prevnt mistakes”
“Eleventyteen human heartstrings”
“Do your own homework”
“Closer to being Aunt Bee’s age”
“Do externals tend to distract you?”
“Mints, whiskey, a company guitar”
“Hey, whaddaya know? Keats”
“Anacin and tooth powder”
“The museum is imaginary”
“Please keep out ’til 1974”
“Please quote”
“A metaphor for analogy”
“Way too much time studying”
“Hellaciously unfun”
“But this is Monday”
“As omnipresent as phone booths”
“Simply friendly areas”
“Vertical blending”
“Nooks and crannies”
“A relatively small part of the whole”
“You’re gonna be late for bowling”
“Way before my time”
“Schooldays, schooldays, schooldays”
“I’d walk a mile for a Blackwing”
“It’s — well, exhilarating”
“No spoilers here”
“ Have fun”
“We have regional dialects”
“¡¡¡¡¡¡”
“Hello, central”
“Through the customary horn”
“Up-to-date”
“Perfectly grammatical”
“Just some of the props”
“It has a lot of cooking”
“Bienvenidos de nuevo, señores”
“Refining, blending, assembling”
“This is fun”
“Always sauce, never gravy”
“Chin up, Pluto!”
“Darn it all”
“How are you. I am all o.k.”
“Thin drawers in snowy weather”
“Viewer discretion is always advised”
“The Continental Paper Grading Co.”
“Almost certainly apocryphal”
“Waiting for my tag cloud”
“Capital letters”
“The only known copy”
“Cheap!”
“New structures all around”
“Out of red”
“There is one for every purpose”
“See how nice?”
“Definitely, emphatically, yes”
“Contains soybean, wheat”
“Uses no batteries”
“And how”
“15 times faster”
“Makes sense, really”
“Neatly folded”
“Pixels gone wrong”
“Feed your head”
“Served on a classic bun”
“Full of pep”
“Insert imprecations here”
“Graphite-grey”
“Omnivore”
“Er, no, not yet”
“Sheer racket”
“Special offers”
“Fittingly modest”
“Only more so”
“Brief intervals of concentration”
“...”
“Not exhaustive”
“Irresistible, homemade flavor”
“Vague and sophisticated”
“Not for the fainthearted”
“It’s a gathering camp”
“Thanks. Thanks!”
“Fake handwriting”
“Completely unobjectionable”
“Unduly so”
“Ain’t Maxwell House all right!”
“With-it”
“As is”
“With flurries”
“A mirror here and there”
“Stalwart worker”
“A well-stocked kitchen”
“Every fret works”
“Must know what he's talking about”
“Locks in flavor”
“That’ll fool ’em”
“Many things at once”
“Woke up this morning”
“Bright blue weather”
“Brown October”
“Missing the obivous”
“I go to time out for cheating. I am the 99%.”
“With oranges”
“Notary sojac”
“Remote encoding center”
“Are we there yet?”
“Another fine vaudevillian”
“Insignificant little speck on the map”
“Recreational reading”
“Set aside”
“Like living in an apartment building”
“Beauty and function and value”
“Check your local listings”
“Pedantic”
“Fine-grained choices”
“Figurative and literal”
“Activity of thought”
“The picky one”
“Sentences? Paragraphs?”
“Oh, wirra, wirra, wirra”
“Getting stuff done”
“You might like it”
“Eh wot?”
“Clunky”
“Is anything missing?”
“Sufficiently out of the mainstream”
“Semi-tedious”
“Upgrade now”
“Bird thou never wert”
“It’s the extra-dry treat”
“Random miscellaneous company”
“Still working”
“Flecked”
“Open to public”
“Like they say”
“Extracurricular”
“Highly mistaken”
“Motuweth frisas”
“‘Hep’ or ‘with it’”
“Words and phraseology”
“All that”
“No embarrassing ink spills”
“Okay”
“Not word-processing”
“Seems to make sense”
“Repeat as necessary”
“To out of up for”
“Not a trace of bitterness”
“Pocket squirrel: +1”
“Snoot”
“Forward!”
“Things ⁓ what they used to be”
“Write things down”
“Void where prohibited”
“No purchase necessary”
“Fugiad diughiuwr”
“Where things are”
“Noun phrase”
“Real time”
“The weather”
“Very important things”
“Oooh, cutdown”
“Awake”
“Distractions and such”
“The life of my mind”
“We deliver”
“Now what?”
“What a relief”
“Fun, indeed”
“Dubious company”
“Making our own pies now”
“Filmed on location”
“Not best practices”
“Quo, man, quo”
“Egregiously misclassified”
“Delicious, vitalizing”
“Spark-emitting zeal”
“Now with a smaller marquee”
“Fallible”
“Felt and tonic”
“I write everything in here”
“It’s nice to leave the shop”
“Expressing skepticism about the Beloit Mindset List
since 2010”
“Tomorrow’s spelling today”
“Obviates elaboration”
“I don’t eat light bulbs”
“What is there still to discuss?”
“Preoccupation”
“Alphabetically, it’s autumn”
“Courson Blatz”
“Today’s dizzyingly overfull, warp-speed Internet”
”Not that big of a deal”
“It’s rally, rally, rally cold”
“Surplus energy on the dancing floors”
Reading, before and after
I want my children to learn how to learn one thing after another, to accept that there is a before and an after in life. I think reading books is still one of the best ways we have of reminding us of this fact. As Goethe once remarked, “It would be a lowly art that allowed itself to be understood all at once.”A related post
Andrew Piper, Book Was There: Reading in Electronic Times (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2012).
Reading surveilled
Oscar's Day, no. 500
George Bodmer has posted the five-hundredth installment of Oscar’s Day today. Oscar’s Day began on August 21, 2012: that’s five hundred days, five hundred cartoons. In a 2012 post, I described George’s art as funny, pithy, poignant, silly, and smart. It’s still all that. Draw on, George.
[Hundredth: a great name for an Anglo-Saxon comic-strip character, no?]
Wednesday, January 1, 2014
A 2014 calendar
Once again I have put off real work by creating a yearly wall calendar. With three months to a page, it’s perfect for keeping track of time past, present, and near future. Printed four pages to one (the year on a sheet of paper), it’s helpful for keeping track of trash and recycling days. The calendar is dowdy as heck in black and red — or according to my Mac, licorice and cayenne. What a pleasant surprise that those flavors work so well together.
I have placed this calendar in a Dropbox folder for downloading. The file is a mere 35 KB. Your ISP will cheerfully cover the cost of shipping.
For heightened dowdiness, staple in the upper corners and punch a hole for hanging.
Tuesday, December 31, 2013
New Year’s Eve 1913
[“Watch Night Jollity Sane: Restaurant Managers Say That Dancing Prevented Disorder,” The New York Times, January 2, 1914.]
Monday, December 30, 2013
Another Henry gum machine
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