Dial D for Dreyfuss

At Cooper Hewitt’s Object of the Day, Ellen Lupton writes about Henry Dreyfuss’s Model 302 and Model 500 telephones. Bonus: Henry Dreyfuss’s account of his undercover work as an telephone repairman’s helper.

A related post
Thrift-store telephone (A model 500)

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November 10: Cooper Hewitt has revised the post to make clear that an actor is reading Dreyfuss’s words.

“Footpads and knaves”

From Patrick Leigh Fermor’s A Time of Gifts: On Foot to Constantinople: From the Hook of Holland to the Middle Danube (1977), the first of three volumes recounting the writer’s 1933–1934 walk across Europe. In Vienna, Leigh Fermor meets up with a man named Konrad, a pastor’s son whose command of English comes largely from reading Shakespeare:

“We must beware,“ he said. “Among good and luckless men there is no lack of base ones, footpads and knaves who never shrink from purloining. Some love to filch.”

Related posts
From A Time of Gifts : Leigh Fermor’s Brueghel : Leigh Fermor’s eye : One word from A Time of Gifts

[In a month I’ve traveled only forty pages. Too much else to do.]

Fountain Pen Day

Never heard of it before today: Fountain Pen Day.

My favorite OCA pen post: Five pens.

[In my pocket this first Friday of November, a Lamy Safari.]

How to improve writing (no. 51)

I noticed this sentence while browsing:

Thus, in order to understand why Apple has been so successful in previous partnerships — and, looking forward, to better estimate the chances of Apple Pay becoming widespread — it is essential to understand how the company acquires and uses leverage.

Twenty-seven of the sentence’s thirty-nine words precede its subject (it ): that’s a case of what Richard Lanham calls the “slow windup,” the ponderous start. Reading the sentence aloud is a good way to hear the problem. Other problems:

Needless words. Successful partnerships must already exist, so there’s no need for previous. “Looking forward” is unnecessary, as there is no place else to look if one is gauging prospects for success. I see little difference between estimating and better estimating: one would want one’s estimates to be good ones.

Lifelessness. “It is essential to understand” is boilerplate term-paper language, lacking in agency. Here again, Richard Lanham is helpful: “Find the action,” he suggests. Who does (or did, or will do) what? The fix here: a transitive verb in the active voice.

My revised sentence:

To understand Apple’s success in partnerships and to estimate the chances for Apple Pay’s success, we must understand how Apple gains and uses leverage.

Twenty-four words, fifteen of them preceding the subject. I’ve condensed and rewritten in several other ways, which I’ll leave to speak for themselves.

Revising this sentence took perhaps a minute. Explaining in this post, revising my sentences while doing so, much longer.

Related reading
All OCA How to improve writing posts (Pinboard)

[Richard Lanham’s Revising Prose (2007) is an immensely helpful, absurdly expensive book. (Blame the textbook publisher Pearson Longman). A presentation of the book’s core, the Paramedic Method of revision, may be found at Purdue OWL. This post is no. 51 in a series, “How to improve writing,” dedicated to improving stray bits of public prose.]

Ticonderoga, Ticonderoga, Ticonderoga

[From the Dick Van Dyke Show episode “When a Bowling Pin Talks, Listen,” May 8, 1963. Click for a larger view.]

Sally Rogers (Rose Marie) is struggling to come up with a comedy bit. The Dixon Ticonderogas aren’t helping. The pencil stage right? Perhaps a Mirado or Velvet.

Other Ticonderoga posts
Is there a pencil in The House (FBI Ticonderogas)
Musical-comedy pencils (Judy Holliday, sharpening)
Pnin’s pencil sharpener (“ticonderoga-ticonderoga”)

To adjective, to adverb, to verb

Today’s xkcd: Language Nerd.

November 5

I think my state just moved to Wisconsin.

John King, fast talker

Five minutes of election-night coverage on CNN and I reached my limit: John King’s never-stop-to-take-a-breath delivery is unnerving. No more coffee for him.

A Yosemite bug

I called Apple with a problem, and it turns out that I had discovered a Yosemite bug. Call it sempervirens. Here’s how to rediscover it:

Go to System Preferences and click on General.

Click on Highlight color and choose Other.

Whatever custom color you choose, the result will be a pale green.


[Sempervirens.]

When I called Apple, I spoke with two tech-support people. The first went through these steps on her Mac, confirmed the problem, and transferred my call to a higher-level person, who filed the bug. Will it be fixed in OS X 10.10.1? I hope so.

I like Yosemite more and more. Or perhaps I should say that I like a slightly modified Yosemite more and more. Changing the system font back to Lucida Grande and darkening the Dock background with cDock makes the new design more attractive.

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November 18: I just updated to 10.10.1. The bug’s still there.

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May 4, 2015: Fixed in 10.10.3. Custom color works in some places and not others. Still broken.

Nathan Heller on Steven Pinker

Nathan Heller writing about Steven Pinker’s The Sense of Style :

It is difficult to shake the suspicion that Pinker’s list of “screwball” rules simply seeks to justify bad habits that certain people would rather not be bothered to unlearn. “Fewer” versus “less”? Do whatever sounds good, Pinker says, but maybe favor “fewer,” if you can, but not because “less” is wrong. Good luck!

I opened The Sense of Style in a bookstore this weekend and landed at the discussion of between you and I. Two pages to argue that it’s not really a mistake, followed by the observation that writers are “well advised” to avoid it. Good luck!

Related posts
McGrath on Pinker on Strunk and White
Pinker on Strunk and White