“Broom Clean Daily”

[While stopped at a red light.]

I like this sign, whose rules, for the most part, might apply to any workplace: “Work Safe / Hardhats Required / Broom Clean Daily / No Smoking / Fine: $250.00.”

Hi and Lois watch

[Hi and Lois, May 2, 1017.]

The lettering on the window reads correctly: no more ETATSE LAER. But that bald spot, or rather, the hair that surrounds it: yikes.

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All OCA Hi and Lois posts (Pinboard)

An Obama thought

From a New York Times editorial:

It is disheartening that a man whose historic candidacy was premised on a moral examination of politics now joins almost every modern president in cashing in. And it shows surprising tone deafness, more likely to be expected from the billionaires the Obamas have vacationed with these past months than from a president keenly attuned to the worries and resentments of the 99 percent.

If I were Barack Obama, I would have skipped the $400,000 speech and sought an opportunity to speak at an Illinois state university’s commencement. Not at the state’s flagship institution: at a second-tier (“regional”) school, any second-tier school. I would have used the occasion to speak about higher education as a public good, as something deserving of strong support from the state’s governor, legislature, and people. I would have done it for no fee. I would have paid for the cost of security myself. But I’m not Barack Obama. And neither, in some ways, is he.

Related reading
All OCA Illinois budget crisis posts (Pinboard)
Obama on the Titanic (In Springfield)

[Illinois has gone nearly two years without a full state budget.]

The “Jane Austen” fallacy

In 2013 a medical editor who calls himself mededitor coined the term “the ‘Jane Austen’ fallacy” to describe a strategy that informs some discussions of grammar and usage:

In many discussions of usage, you’ll find language experts pointing to past authors’ works as evidence that a particular point of grammar is OK because so-and-so used it. For example: singular they.

Yes, you can find instances of singular they used by Shakespeare, Austen, and many others. Likewise you’ll find idiosyncratic spellings and constructions that today would be disallowed in edited prose.

The point here is that past usage does not justify modern practice.

Exactly. As I wrote in a review of a new book about lexicography:

Yes, Shakespeare used double negatives and Austen used ain’t and the possessive it’s. But so what? Try using them in a letter of application to Merriam-Webster and see how far you get.

I wish I’d known the term “the ‘Jane Austen fallacy’” when I was writing that review.

And why is it the “Jane Austen” fallacy? I think that mededitor’s quotation marks are meant to suggest a speaker or writer invoking a name — which, now that I think of it, is a favorite strategy of childhood argument: “But Jane Austen’s going. And Bill Shakespeare’s going too!” And the parental reply: “If Jane Austen and Bill Shakespeare jumped off a bridge, would you follow?”

Related posts
Orient and orientate (Invoking W.H. Auden and others)
Pullum on Strunk and White (Invoking “classic texts”)

[I’ve italicized the two instances of they in mededitor’s prose.]

Orient and orientate

[Thinking about usage.]

Merriam-Webster’s Word of the Day today is orientate. A note on usage adapted from The Merriam-Webster Dictionary of English Usage (1989) accompanies the word. Here is today’s note:

Orientate is a synonym of “orient,” and it has attracted criticism as a consequence. “Orient,” which dates from the early 18th century, is in fact the older of the two verbs — “orientate” joined the language in the mid-19th century. Both can mean “to cause to face toward the east” and, not surprisingly, they are related to the noun Orient, meaning “the East.” Both also have broader meanings that relate to setting or determining direction or position, either literally or figuratively. Some critics dislike “orientate” because it is one syllable longer than “orient,” but you can decide for yourself how important that consideration is to you. Personal choice is the primary deciding factor, although “orientate” tends to be used more often in British English than it is in American English.

I see two problems with Merriam-Webster’s commentary:

~ Casting a preference for orient as a matter of stinginess about syllables is a little misleading. That red, for instance, has one less syllable than orange is not a reason to prefer red. A better reason to prefer orient to orientate is that orientate is, as Garner’s Modern English Usage (2016) calls it, a “needless variant,” doing work that orient already does. Add a dis- and orientate sounds even more ungainly: “I felt disorientated in my new surroundings.”

~ The advice to “decide for yourself” between orient and orientate is, to my mind, wildly unhelpful. On what basis will you decide? What if you hold the mistaken belief that longer words make you sound more intelligent? To think of “personal choice” as “the primary deciding factor” seems to miss the point that your language is for another, for some listener or reader who will be weighing what you say or write. Will orientate strike that listener or reader as intelligent and sophisticated, or as merely pompous? Will it inspire respect for what you say, or will it leave your audience wondering why you can’t just say or write orient?

The Merriam-Webster Dictionary of Usage supplements its discussion with sample sentences from writers “who obviously saw nothing wrong with orientate”: W.H. Auden, Aldous Huxley, Margaret Mead, Robert Morley, and others. Yes, and one of those writers (Morley) also saw nothing wrong with using the word Chinamen. In 2017, what Merriam-Webster fails to point out is that in British English, as in American English, orient is far more common than orientate. Here’s just one Google ngram to help make the point. Choosing orientate on either side of the Atlantic might mark a speaker or writer as something of an outlier.

NPR, sheesh

“I’m, like, a huge narcissist, so, like, let me get out there, basically.”

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Thirty-two questions

In The New York Times, Gail Collins presents “The Trump 100-Day Quiz," parts one and two.

On Duke Ellington’s birthday

Here’s a wonderful scene from the first part of Richard O. Boyer’s three-part profile “The Hot Bach” (The New Yorker, June 24, 1944). It is night. Duke Ellington and Billy Strayhorn (aka Sweepea, or more usually Swee’ Pea) are composing on a train:

“I got a wonderful part here,” Duke said to him. “Listen to this.” In a functional, squeaky voice that tried for exposition and not for beauty, Duke chanted, “Dah dee dah dah dah, deedle dee deedle dee boom, bah bah bah, boom, boom!” He laughed, frankly pleased by what he had produced, and said, “Boy, that son of a bitch has got a million twists.”

Strayhorn, still swaying sleepily in the aisle, pulled himself together in an attempt to offer an intelligent observation. Finally he said drowsily, “It's so simple, that's why.”

Duke laughed again and said, “I really sent myself on that. Would you like to see the first eight bars?”

“Ah yes! Ah yes!” Strayhorn said resignedly, and took the manuscript. He looked at it blankly. Duke misinterpreted Sweepea's expression as one of severity.

“Don't look at it that way, Sweepea,” he said. “It's not like that.”

“Why don't you reverse this figure?” asked Strayhorn sleepily. “Like this.” He sang shakily, “Dah dee dah dah dah, dah dee dah dah dah, boomty boomty boomty, boom!”

“Why not dah dee dah dah dah, deedle dee deedle dee dee, boom bah bah bah, boom?” Duke said.

“Dah dee dah dah dah!” sang Strayhorn stubbornly.

“Deedle dee deedle dee dee!” Duke answered.

“Dah dee dah dah dah!” Strayhorn insisted.

Duke did not reply; he just leaned eagerly forward and, pointing to a spot on the manuscript with his pencil, said, “Here's where the long piano part comes in. Here's where I pick up the first theme and restate it and then begin the major theme. Dah dee dah, deedle dee deedle dee, boom!”

The train lurched suddenly. Sweepea collapsed into a seat and closed his eyes. “Ah yes!” he said weakly. “Ah yes!”

Duke Ellington was born on April 29, 1899.

Related reading
All OCA Ellington posts (Pinboard)

[Boyer’s profile is reprinted in The Duke Ellington Reader, ed. Mark Tucker (New York: Oxford University Press, 1993).]

Recently updated

Mystery actor Now with an identification.

Library savings

Our public library has added a nice detail to the receipt that accompanies borrowed materials: “You just saved $47.00 by using your library. You have saved $47.00 since April 14, 2017.” Common practice maybe, but it’s new to me.

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All OCA library posts (Pinboard)