Words, words, words

[Build Your Vocabulary (Coronet Instructional Films, 1948).]

Remember: “A good working vocabulary helps you to be more explicit.” I especially like the son-father vocabulary notebooks. I could watch this stuff all day, but then I wouldn’t have time to be working on my own personal vocabulary notebook.

My favorite moment: the newspaper headline. What’s yours?

John James deBoer, identified in the opening credits as a collaborator on this film, was an important figure in the history of academic freedom at the University of Illinois.

“Are We Teaching Composition All Wrong?”

Provocative reading in The Chronicle of Higher Education : Joseph R. Teller, “Are We Teaching Composition All Wrong?” A sample:

I have tried requiring students to write only three essays developed over several drafts, each of which I comment on without a grade. I have used peer workshops to help students respond to each other’s writing. I have used portfolio systems and deferred-grading schemes. I have cajoled; I have encouraged; I have experimented with more rubrics than I can count.

Teller’s conclusion: these strategies rarely work.

One comment on this essay (quoting from and taking issue with a previous comment) signals some of the troubles that beset the world of English:

This is not an “experienced professional” in the field of writing and rhetoric: “English professor” means the person teaches in the English department, and there are many literature professors, as is Mr. Teller, who also have to teach First-year composition. Look to the professionals with credentials in rhetoric and composition to give you a “clear understanding” of the topic.

“As is Mr. Teller?”

How to improve writing (no. 68)

A passage from a piece in the October 10 New Yorker:

But, just five weeks before the election, the race remains close. There are a number of reasons for this, one of them having to do with millennial voters, a demographic that overwhelmingly supported Barack Obama and has shown some allegiance toward Clinton but not much enthusiasm for her.

The phrasing in the second sentence is ponderous: “There are a number of reasons for this,” “one of them having to do with,” “some allegiance toward Clinton but not much enthusiasm for her.” And it’s unnecessary to identify millennial voters as a demographic: the phrase “millennial voters” itself does so. A possible revision:

But with five weeks before the election, the race remains close, for several reasons. One is that millennial voters, who overwhelmingly supported Barack Obama, have shown far less enthusiasm for Clinton.

The passage shrinks from forty-eight words to thirty-one. One more:

The journalist Jonathan Rauch has noted that candidates typically have fourteen years from the time they are elected to a major public office — the Senate, a governorship — to achieve the Presidency. Beyond that, a sort of expiration date is reached, owing, at least in part, to the fact that the longer one’s résumé the more likely it is that one will be whipsawed by past positions and changing values.

Here, too, the phrasing in the second sentence is ponderous: “a sort of expiration date,” “at least in part, to the fact that.” And I’m not sure that whipsaw works. Merriam-Webster’s definition: “to beset or victimize in two opposite ways at once, by a two-phase operation, or by the collusive action of two opponents.” In the sentence above, a candidate risks being attacked not in two opposite ways but in one way, because her or his past positions are no longer acceptable. A possible revision:

The journalist Jonathan Rauch has noted that candidates typically have fourteen years from the time they are elected to a major public office — the Senate, a governorship — to achieve the Presidency. After fourteen years, it’s a greater challenge, in part because changing values will make it likely that a candidate’s past positions have become difficult to defend.

The second sentence shrinks from thirty-eight words to twenty-six.

An observation I used to share with my students, from Wilson Follett’s Modern American Usage (1966):

Wherever we can make twenty-five words do the work of fifty, we halve the area in which looseness and disorganization can flourish, and by reducing the span of attention required we increase the force of the thought.

My revisions cut by a third — not a half-price sale, but still a pretty deep discount.

I don’t read New Yorker prose (or any prose I’m not editing) looking for things to change: these passages presented themselves to me (or to my bad-sentence radar) as prose in need of repair.

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

[This post is no. 68 in a series, “How to improve writing,” dedicated to improving stray bits of public prose.]

From an old notebook

“There must be some way I can . . . Wait!”

“You must promise to stay here forever.”

“Beauty has to see that beast.”

“We need to see that rose and we need to smell it.”

“Her trees are music.”

[November 1992, while watching the Disney version of Beauty and the Beast . The first two lines are from the movie. The third and fourth are from our son Ben; the fifth from our daughter Rachel.]

Recently updated

Steve Bushakis and Donald Trump The old SNL skit is online.

Advice for creative types

Beatrice Taylor, Aunt Bee, speaks: “Nobody can create on an empty stomach.” From the Mayberry R.F.D. episode “Howard, the Poet” (first aired October 6, 1969).

I like the way everyone in Mayberry calls Aunt Bee Aunt Bee. Except, I suppose, her female friends and occasional suitors, who just call her Bee (or who call her just Bee). But do the other characters know that it’s Aunt Bee , not Aunt Bea ? And just Bee , not Bea? And if so, how? Andy would know, of course. But Emmett? Floyd? Howard? It’s not like they get to sit around and watch the credits.

Must. Eat. Lunch.

Nancy, Sluggo, God

[Zippy , October 4, 20016. If you click for a larger view, the headline in the third panel will be readable.]

Related reading
All OCA Nancy posts, Nancy and Zippy posts, Zippy posts (Pinboard)

[Please imagine the three links in the form of a Venn diagram.]

Donald Trump on PTSD

Donald Trump on PTSD:

“When you talk about the mental health problems, when people come back from war and combat, they see things that maybe a lot of the folks in this room have seen many times over. And you’re strong and you can handle it, but a lot of people can't handle it,” the Republican presidential nominee told an audience of military veterans at an event in Northern Virginia on Monday morning.

But character, or what Trump calls being “strong,” is no protection against PTSD. Jonathan Shay makes that point in Achilles in Vietnam: Combat Trauma and the Undoing of Character (1994). Shay, a psychiatrist who has spent much of his career working with veterans who live with PTSD, says that anyone can incur the bad moral luck (as Shay calls it) that culminates in PTSD:

The most ancient traditions of Western culture instruct us to base our self-respect on firmness of character. Many popular melodramas of moral courage provide satisfaction through the comforting fantasy that our own character would hold steady under the most extreme pressure of dreadful events. A permanent challenge of working with those injured by combat trauma is facing the painful awareness that in all likelihood one’s own character would not have stood firm.

It’s true that Marine Staff Sgt. Chad Robichaux, the veteran who asked Trump about programs for veterans with PTSD, said that his answer was “thoughtful and understanding.” But on Trump’s terms, Sgt. Robichaux himself must be one of those who are not “strong” and cannot “handle it.” Robichaux lives with PTSD.

One lesson of Homer’s Iliad , captured in the subtitle of Shay’s book, is that the trauma of war can destroy character. Achilles is the best of the Achaeans, concerned about the well-being of his community, singularly honorable in his treatment of the enemy. Yet his character is undone by the circumstances of war. On the subject of PTSD, as on so many other subjects, Donald Trump is a know-nothing. To tell an audience of veterans that they’re “strong” and “can handle it” denies the realities of war — as does joking about having always wanted a Purple Heart.

A related post
Cindy McCain on PTSD

Steve Bushakis and Donald Trump

A near-billion-dollar business loss equals “genius”? I’m reminded of lines from a short (but exceedingly memorable) Saturday Night Live skit. John Belushi plays Steve Bushakis, owner of a plant shop:

“Let me tell you, though, I like women. And they like me. I’ve had gonorrhea five times.”

*

October 4: The skit is online at NBC: “What Kinda Guy Watches Saturday Night ?”

xkcd : “Work”

[xkcd , October 3, 2016.]

The tooltip text in the original reads: “Despite it being imaginary, I already have SUCH a strong opinion on the cord-switch firing incident.”