Buzz-phrase generator

From Sir Ernest Gowers or a second- or third-generation reviser:


The Complete Plain Words , rev. Sidney Greenbaum and Janet Whitcut (Boston: David R. Godine, 1988). Click for a larger view.

In 2016, one word that seems needed is strategic . I think it would go best in Column 2, where would yield, say, “overall strategic flexibility,” a bloodless euphemism for cuts and layoffs. I am thinking grimly, in a dark time in Illinois.

In the late-twentieth century, I saw the lingo of “strategic planning” make its way into academic life. But really: is there any worthwhile planning that would not by definition be strategic? Aimless, purposeless planning?

Also from The Complete Plain Words
“Falling into incongruity”
Thinking and writing

NPR, sheesh

On Morning Edition earlier today: “Last night’s results means that he’s not unstoppable.” If you have Adobe Flash Player, you can listen here. The mistake comes at the 4:22 mark.

Results is a plural noun, not a collective noun like faculty or orchestra. And results is not a plural that applies a unit of measure to a whole. An example from Garner’s Modern American Usage : “Two pounds of shrimp is all I need.”

More to the point: substitute other singular verbs for means and the results are (not is ) perhaps more glaringly wrong: “The results convinces me”; “The results is not good.”

And speaking of not good: c’mon, NPR. Do better.

Related reading
All OCA NPR posts (Pinboard)

[I will soon have to revise my keyboard shortcut for GMAU . Garner’s Modern English Usage , the re-named fourth edition, will be published next month.]

Handwritten prescriptions

In New York State, March 27 will mark the end of handwritten prescriptions:

Gone will be doctors’ prescription pads and famously bad handwriting. In their place: pointing and clicking, as prescriptions are created electronically and zapped straight to pharmacies in all but the most exceptional circumstances.

The change is meant to reduce fraud and misreadings.

Related reading
All OCA handwriting posts (Pinboard)

Self-love and truth

Joseph Joubert:

Those who never back down love themselves more than they love the truth.

The Notebooks of Joseph Joubert: A Selection , trans. Paul Auster (New York: New York Review Books, 2005).

Also from Joseph Joubert
Resignation and courage : Thinking and writing

Trump tiles

From a New York Times article about Donald Trump’s butler Anthony Senecal and life at Mar-a-Lago, Trump’s estate, once the home of Marjorie Merriweather Post:

In the early years, Mr. Trump’s daughter Ivanka slept in the same children’s suite that Dina Merrill, an actress and a daughter of Mrs. Post, occupied in the 1930s. Mr. Trump liked to tell guests that the nursery rhyme-themed tiles in the room were made by a young Walt Disney.

“You don’t like that, do you?” Mr. Trump would say when he caught Mr. Senecal rolling his eyes. The house historian would protest that it was not true.

“Who cares?” Mr. Trump would respond with a laugh.

A4 Clipboard

I noticed my SYSMAX A4 Clipboard staring up at me from a horizontal storage area (the floor). It is a beautiful and sweetly incoherent thing, purchased from a United States outpost of the Korean stationery chain ArtBox. Down the right side of the clipboard, in right-justified sans serif:

Jeudi

There is only one

happiness in life,

to love and to be

loved.

LIVE THE LIFE YOU’VE IMAGINED

A4®

Mardi

The busier you are,

the more you need to take

time to do things right.

Jeudi

We need to record words

for our learning.

Vendredi

Have you given any thought

to your future? Let’s

do one thing at a time.

Samedi

Everyone is necessarily the

hero of his own life story.

SYSMAX

And that’s the end.

Thursday, Tuesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday?

The sentence “We need to record words for our learning” makes me think of Bob Perelman’s poem “China.”

Pocket notebook sighting, dig me?

Ball of Fire (dir. Howard Hawks, 1941) is a glorious piece of silliness. Eight scholars are writing an encyclopedia of the world’s knowledge. A chance conversation makes Professor Bertram Potts (Gary Cooper) realize the inadequacy of his article on slang. He resolves to update his understanding of the subject, going out into the world with a pencil and a pocket notebook. He listens to people talking — on the street, on the El, at a baseball game, pool hall, and nightclub.



It’s in the nightclub that Potts meets Sugarpuss O’Shea (Barbara Stanwyck), singer of the killer diller tune “Drum Boogie.” O’Shea soon moves in with the scholars. Yes, it’s a variation on Snow White.


[Snow White, her prince, and the seven dwarfs. Clockwise from the lower left: Tully Marshall, Henry Travers, Richard Haydn, S. Z. Sakall, Aubrey Mather, Oscar Homolka, Leonid Kinskey.]

Charles Brackett and Billy Wilder’s screenplay has some hilarious O’Shea-Potts exchanges about grammar and usage:

“I came on account of you.”

“Me?”

“And not on account of you needed some slang. On account of because I wanted to see you again.”

“Miss O’Shea, the construction ‘on account of because’ outrages every grammatical law.”

“So what? I came on account of because I couldn’t stop thinking about you after you left my dressing room. On account of because I thought you were big, and cute, and pretty.”

She calls Potts “a regular yum-yum type.” And later:

“Say, I found out what’s wrong with ‘on account of because.’ It’s saying the same thing twice. You know, like calling somebody a rich millionaire. You call it a pleo-, no, play-”

“A pleonasm?”

“Yes. Is that how you pronounce it?”

“That’s it. Who told you that?”

“This room’s full of books about grammar. I read for a couple of hours.”

And:

“I thought I was married to my books. The only thing I thought I could care for deeply was a correctly constructed sentence. The subject, predicate, adverbial clause, each its proper place. And then —”

The December 15, 1941 issue of Life had an article about Ball of Fire with a list of slang expressions used in the film. Dig it, or them:



The model for Sugarpuss O’Shea is one of my favorite singers, Anita O’Day. (O’Day, O’Shea: dig?) Here is an O’Day performance of “Drum Boogie” with Gene Krupa. And here is the movie version, with Martha Tilton dubbing the vocal. That’s Roy Eldridge in the trumpet section. Write these names down in your pocket notebook.

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

Bernie Sanders downstate

Senator Bernie Sanders spoke at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, today. Elaine and I got on line at nine this morning. We were standing for the next seven and a half hours or so, with brief interludes of walking and sitting. Worth it? Yes.

ABC’s Chicago affiliate WLS estimated the (overflow) crowd at 4,800. ABC’s downstate affiliate WICS reported an estimate from fire officials of 20,000 showing up, most of whom could not get inside. Either way, yuge. It was a wonderful and wonderfully varied crowd. We spent much time talking with our neighbors in line, mostly U of I students. The kids are alright.

A great many introducers preceded Senator Sanders. The standouts: Ben Jealous and Tulsi Gabbard. Cabinet appointment, anyone?

[Yikes: As I wrote in 2022, Tulsi Gabbard is the Sarah Palin of Christopher Hitchenses.]

My favorite Sanders line, which I transcribed word for word: “Now I have been criticized for saying this, so let me say it again.” Say what again? That health care is a right of all people.

I took many photographs. The accidental one above is my favorite. But here’s grainy proof that we were there, or at least that Bernie Sanders was there.

Muriel and Victor redux

[Henry , July 1, 2015; March 12, 2016.]

A blog post can make things available for easy recall: better memory through outsourcing. I noticed dowdy Muriel and dowdy Vic last July and engaged in a brief reverie about their names, one of which is also the name of a cigar and the title of a Tom Waits song.

I am glad to see that Muriel has come around, and I think it’s sweet that she calls Victor by his full name. Perhaps those names had meaning for Carl Anderson, Henry ’s maker.

All OCA Henry posts (Pinboard)

Off the rails

From the local news: “Former president Clinton has been on the road since January, going around the country railing for his wife.”

The word needed: rallying . To rail is “to revile or scold in harsh, insolent, or abusive language” (Merriam-Webster).