How to improve writing (no. 54)

[Mark Trail, March 9, 2015.]

It’s not the instincts that are “not far from Lost Forest”; it’s the beaver himself. And “leave the colony in order to go out” is cumbersome phrasing.


[Mark Trail revised, March 9, 2015.]

From forty syllables to thirty, from thirty-two words to twenty-three. Big savings. Fare forward, young family-man, and best of luck to you in the Trail world.

Mark Trail has provided material for two other “How to improve writing” posts, nos. 44 and 46.

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

[This post is no. 54 in a series, “How to improve writing,” dedicated to improving stray bits of public prose.]

From The Noun Project

The Noun Project aims to create “a visual language of icons anyone can understand.” Looking at the work therein offers chance after chance to think about what’s sufficient to make an intelligible image. If you want to say books, spines and a tilt, I think, will do it.

As some libraries move toward booklessness, it’s reassuring that a search at the Noun Project for library still leads to books.

A joke in the traditional manner

Here is the punchline: A Golden Retriever.

No spoilers. The setup is in the comments.

More jokes in the traditional manner
How did Bela Lugosi know what to expect?
How did Samuel Clemens do all his long-distance traveling?
What did the plumber do when embarrassed?
Which member of the orchestra was best at handling money?
Why did the doctor spend his time helping injured squirrels?
Why did Oliver Hardy attempt a solo career in movies?
Why was Santa Claus wandering the East Side of Manhattan?

[“In the traditional manner”: by or à la my dad. He must take credit for all but the doctor and Santa Claus.]

Daniel Berkeley Updike on style

Daniel Berkeley Updike (1860–1941) was a printer and historian of typography. Marianne Moore quotes him in her 1948 talk “Humility, Concentration, and Gusto,” given to the Grolier Club:

Daniel Berkeley Updike has always seemed to me a phenomenon of eloquence because of the quiet objectiveness of his writing. And what he says of printing applies equally to poetry. It is true, is it not, that “style does not depend upon decoration, but rather on proportion and simplicity”? Nor can we dignify confusion by calling it baroque. Here, I may say, I am preaching to myself, since, when I am as complete as I like to be, I seem unable to get an effect plain enough.

Here is the Updike passage from which Moore quotes, from In the Day’s Work (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1924):

Any one can place a great red decorated initial upon a page to dazzle the beholder into a momentary liking for the effect. But to produce an agreeable and pleasing page simply by proportion of margins, type, etc., is a matter which requires study, experience, and taste. It appears, therefore, that, as some of the most beautiful books are without decoration, style does not depend upon decoration, but rather on proportion and simplicity.

Updike, as I now know, printed some Grolier Club publications. And the Grolier Club is now exhibiting books printed by Aldus Manutius, one of Updike’s favorite printers. From In the Day’s Work:

The earliest printers were often learned men, and yet perhaps their contemporaries thought that they took themselves too seriously. But what they took seriously was not themselves, but their work. They were educated enough and independent enough to hold to certain ideals. If Aldus had watered down his manner of printing and continually varied his types to suit other people’s views, he would never have been heard of. None the less, the heads of contemporary Italian uncles and aunts were sadly shaken, perhaps, and friends of the family were seriously distressed. We remember the types and books of Aldus still; but the names of these “wise and prudent” are forgotten.

“Aldine” was the joking adjective that described my great friend Aldo Carrasco. As English majors and part-time residents of the Renaissance, Aldo and other friends and I knew of course about Aldus and the Aldine Press. I referred to “the Aldine approach to friendship” in a post reproducing one of Aldo’s telexes. So: Moore to Updike to Grolier to Aldus to Aldo. It sounds like a complex triple play. And Moore was a Brooklyn Dodgers fan. See? Everything connects.

[Thanks, interlibrary loan.]

Henry billboard

[Henry, March 6, 2015.]

In the Henry world, billboards are of the lattice variety. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a lattice billboard outside of the movies, where they serve as backdrops for motorcycle cops who give chase when James Cagney or Edward G. Robinson speeds past.

Lattice billboards are still available for use in model-train layouts.

Related reading
All OCA Henry posts (Pinboard)

Acción Ortográfica Quito

“Ecuador’s radical grammar pedants on a mission to correctly punctuate graffiti”: Acción Ortográfica Quito (The Guardian). It’s a group of three: Diéresis, Tilde, and Coma.

College and football

In a 2012 post I said that I thought that “medical not academic issues will doom college football.” In a 2011 comment I gave it twenty-five years. An idle prediction, of course. But reading about the life of University of North Carolina offensive lineman Ryan Hoffman in today’s New York Times offers further reason to think that college football is doomed. A sport that leads, too often, to brain damage has no place in an institution of learning. At some point the cognitive dissonance of college and football together will be too great to ignore. (Lawsuits will help.)

Carlo Rotella on Muhammad Ali, Homer, and translation

I am happy to discover that Carlo Rotella’s essay “The Greatest” is online, courtesy of the University of Chicago Press. For years I’ve been guarding a xeroxed copy of the essay’s December 1998 appearance in Harper’s, where it was presented as an excerpt from a longer essay published elsewhere. But no: these seven paragraphs appear to be the thing itself. The starting point for Rotella’s thinking is a boxer’s boast in Iliad 23: “I am the greatest.”

Related reading
All OCA Homer posts (Pinboard)

The Naked City, then and now

Scouting NY looks at filming locations for The Naked City (dir. Jules Dassin, 1948), then and now. In three parts: 1, 2, and 3.

The frightening truth that they don’t want you to know about sardines

[Field & Stream, June 1977.]

Yes, sardines are addictive. Street names: bait, Moroccan greys, Norwegian kings. I scored four cans of kings last night, on sale, two for five.

This post is for Matt Thomas, who seems to be intent on developing a sardine habit.

Related posts
Alex Katz, painter, eater Sardines for lunch, every day
City for Conquest (and sardines)
End of the U.S. sardine industry
“Get high on honey” Honey, a recreational drug
Go fish
New directions in sardines
Satan’s seafood