McGrath on Pinker on Strunk and White

Charles McGrath recently reviewed Steven Pinker’s The Sense of Style: The Thinking Person’s Guide to Writing in the 21st Century. Early on, McGrath writes about the book that Pinker’s book means to replace:

Though still revered, The Elements of Style, to be honest, is a little dated now, and just plain wrong about some things. Strunk and White are famously clueless, for example, about what constitutes the passive voice.

Dated? Yes. “Temporally incorrect” is how I like to put it. And some of Strunk and White’s cautions and preferred usages baffle. But this business about “famously clueless”: like Pinker, McGrath repeats Geoffrey Pullum’s claim that Strunk and White do not understand the passive voice. As I’ve argued in a response to Pullum’s take on The Elements of Style, that claim is a misreading of the plain sense of Strunk and White’s text. Follow the link and see if you agree.

For a more thoughtful (and critical) appraisal of The Sense of Style, I’d recommend this review. Alex Sheremet patiently takes apart passages that Pinker presents as showpieces of good prose. In so doing, Sheremet makes me suspect that The Sense of Style ’s sense of style will make me slightly crazy. I am waiting for the library to make it happen.

An interested reader can find my pre-Sense of Style take on Pinker and Strunk and White in a post about a 2012 Pinker lecture. That post has had a number of visits from Harvard and environs, and I’ve wondered, of course, if one (or more) of the visitors might have been Steven Pinker. But I doubt it. Like the 2012 lecture, The Sense of Style gets the story of The Elements wrong, stating that E. B. White turned William Strunk’s “course notes“ into a book.

In 2013, this tweet made me happy. And it still does:

A good piece debunking the would-be debunkers of Strunk & White: http://t.co/cxvURa38kW How does @sapinker get away with this stuff?

— Bryan A. Garner (@BryanAGarner) June 12, 2013

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December 20, 2014: I’ve written a review of The Sense of Style.

Related reading
All Elements of Style posts (Pinboard)

David Foster Wallace’s backhand

Did David Foster Wallace hit a backhand with one hand, or two? One.

Related reading
All OCA David Foster Wallace posts (Pinboard)

Pocket notebook sightings: Dragnet

[“You have the right to remain silent”: Anthony Eisely as bad cop Chris Drucker, reading himself his rights. From the Dragnet episode “Administrative Vice: DR 29” (February 6, 1969).]

The Los Angeles Police Department notebook, as seen in the television series Dragnet, is a thing of beauty. Miranda rights are printed on the cover. I wish I could find a photograph online.

A missing notebook is the crucial element in a Dragnet episode devoted to an internal investigation. A dead man’s landlord claims to have turned over the man’s few valuables, including $1000. The cops, who wrote two receipts, say it was $200. The landlord says she threw her receipt away. The notebook with the cops’ copy is missing. The notebook slid under a car dashboard, where Joe Friday finds it and saves the day.


[Sgt. Friday finds a missing notebook. From the Dragnet episode “I.A.D.: The Receipt” (March 26, 1970).]


[Yep, $200. Such strange printing. But that is indeed Agnes Emerson’s signature. Click any image for a larger view.]

Given Jack Webb’s close connection to the LAPD, I wanted to assume that these notebooks are — or were — the real thing. The answer is were . I called the Los Angeles Police Revolver & Athletic Club’s store this morning. The two men I spoke with knew exactly what I was asking about and said that these notebooks are no longer used.

You can find these notebooks and their episodes — one, then the other — at Hulu.

More notebook sightings
Angels with Dirty Faces : Cat People : Les Dames du Bois de Boulogne : Extras : Foreign Correspondent : Journal d’un curé de campagne : The House on 92nd Street : The Lodger : Murder, Inc. : The Mystery of the Wax Museum : Naked City : The Palm Beach Story : Pickpocket : Pickup on South Street : Quai des Orfèvres : Railroaded! : Red-Headed Woman : Rififi : Route 66 : The Sopranos : Spellbound : State Fair : T-Men : Union Station : The Woman in the Window

“Think middle school report”

A choice excerpt from the document titled Investigation of Irregular Classes in the Department of African and Afro-American Studies at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill :

It was also well known that quality played little to no part in the paper class grading process. In fact, it was even the subject of jokes among the ASPSA football counselors and tutors. In one email chain, for example, Learning Specialist Amy Kleissler (“Kleissler”) and [Academic Support Program for Student-Athletes staff-member Jaimie] Lee joke about how tutor Whitney Read (“Read”) is worried that a particular football player may not have enough time to get his paper done for his paper class. Kleissler comments that “I still don’t think [Read] is absorbing what I am saying about the paper. I finally just said ‘think middle school report, not college seminar paper.’”

The report in full is available as a PDF. The Chronicle of Higher Education has extensive coverage of the report’s findings: Key Players in Academic Fraud at UNC, Three Key Findings in Chapel Hill’s Academic-Fraud Investigation, Widespread Nature of Chapel Hill’s Academic Fraud Is Laid Bare.

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January 1, 2015: heads are rolling: Professor Among 4 Fired in UNC Academic Fraud (The New York Times). Jaimie Lee is among those gone.

[The first brackets are mine.]

For Canada

Life in North America feels more dangerous today. Stay safe, Canada.

A postcard from my future self

Something interesting on my front step this morning — a postcard from my future self.

Oct. 24

Hello Michael,

Thanks for putting in the time grading all those essays last Thursday and Friday. You could have spaced them out over many more days, but you didn’t. And thanks to you, the past six days have been grading-free. Way to go.

See you soon,

F.

Writing to one’s future self may seem to you (as it does to me) awfully corny. Getting a note from one’s future self is another story. I find that thinking about my future self can be helpful in getting work done, again and again. FS FTW.

A related post
Procrastination

Helvetica, eww

I updated my Mac to Yosemite today and found myself disappointed with its system font, Helvetica Neue. Eww. The font may look good with a Retina display — I wouldn’t know. On my MacBook Pro, it looks plug ugly. The smaller it is, the worse it looks.

The good news is that it’s ridiculously easy to switch back to the familiar and highly readable Lucida Grande. GitHub has a page with the necessary download. Thank you, schreibenstein, whoever you are. Another GitHub page has files for Fira Sans. Thank you, Jens Kutilek.

Yosemite’s new Finder icon makes the old one look downright dignified. Not an improvement. And the greyish menus make OS X 10.10 feel more like 10.4 (Tiger). Yosemite’s bright blue folder icons make me think of Breaking Bad, but these days everything makes me think of Breaking Bad. Elaine and I are blasting our way through its six seasons.

What I like about Yosemite: things look (mostly) brighter, cleaner. Coming out of sleep, the computer seems to connect to wireless more quickly. And the redesigned Spotlight is very fast. Bravo for that.

Related reading
Apple Yosemite Finder Icon Sucks (Wallydavid)
Helvetica sucks (Erik Spiekermann)
How to not send Spotlight data to Apple (Cult of Mac)
Why Apple’s New Font Won’t Work On Your Desktop (Tobias Frere-Jones)

Walser walking

Speaking to the superintendent or inspector of taxes, the story’s narrator defends his habit of walking:

“Without walking and the contemplation of nature which is connected with it, without this equally delicious and instructive, equally refreshing and constantly admonishing search, I deem myself lost, and indeed am lost. With the utmost attention and love the man who walks must study and observe every smallest living thing, be it a child, a dog, a fly, a butterfly, a sparrow, a worm, a flower, a man, a house, a tree, a hedge, a snail, a mouse, a cloud, a hill, a leaf, or no more than a paltry discarded scrap of paper on which, perhaps, a dear good child at school has written his first clumsy letters.

“The highest and lowest, most serious as well as most hilarious things are to him equally beloved, beautiful, and valuable.”

Robert Walser, The Walk, trans. Christopher Middleton with Susan Bernofsky (New York: New Directions, 2012).

Robert Walser loved to walk. He died while walking on December 25, 1956.

Other Walser posts
Microscripts : “The most unimportant things” : On automobiles : On reading : On stationery stores : On staying small : On youth

Glen Campbell’s last song

“I’m still here but yet I’m gone”: Glen Campbell’s “I’m Not Gonna Miss You” is a powerful song. To my mind it belongs in the company of the Beach Boys’ “’Til I Die” and Johnny Cash’s recording of Trent Reznor’s “Hurt”: existential statements, all.

Water towers of New York

The photographer Ronnie Farley on New York water towers: “They’re the only natural looking thing in the skyline.” There’s a story at WNYC’s Studio 360. And here’s a portfolio of Farley‘s water-tower photographs. Of the two water-tank manufacturers mentioned in the WNYC story, one has a website (with vertigo-inducing photographs); the other has a website coming soon.

[No hampers around these water towers.]