Commercialese and its discontents

From the essay “Business English and Its Confederates”:

It is easy, far too easy, to write a letter in which occur all the well-worn terms, all the long-winded phrases, all the substitutes for thinking. Only rarely is it possible, for the circumstances usually need to be detailed, to achieve the brevity that a business acquaintance and I, fired by his example, once achieved. He sent a dated statement and the accompanying note:

“Dear Mr Partridge,
    Please!
                ”

By return of post I sent a cheque with a note:

“Dear Mr         ,
    Herewith.
        E         P        ”

By return, he wrote:

“Dear Mr Partridge,
    Thanks!
                ”

That exchange of notes was, I maintain, business-like; my note admittedly a shade less courteous than his. At the time, he was at the head, as he still is, of a very large business.

Translated into commercialese, the correspondence would have gone something like this:

“Dear Sir,
    The enclosed statement will show that this debt was incurred almost three years ago. If it is not paid immediately, we shall be forced to take action.
    Yours faithfully,
        Managing Director.”

“Dear Sir,
    I regret exceedingly that this oversight should have occurred. Herewith please find enclosed my cheque for the amount involved.
    Yours faithfully,
                ”

Some days later, the cheque having been cleared the bank:

“Dear Sir,
    Your favour of the —th received. Please find our receipt enclosed herewith.
    Now that the matter has been satisfactorily settled, we should be glad to do business with you again.
    We are, Sir,
        Yours faithfully,
                    ”

A fitting reply to that letter would be —. But no, perhaps not.

Eric Partridge, A Charm of Words (New York: Macmillan, 1960).

The guys problem

Joe Pinsker writes about the problem with — and without — the word guys:

The problem, for those who want to ditch guys, is that their language doesn’t present them with many versatile replacements; English lacks a standard gender-neutral second-person plural pronoun, like the Spanish ustedes or the German ihr. The alternatives to guys tend to have downsides of their own. Folks — inclusive and warm, but a little affected and forced. Friends — fine in social contexts, strange at work. People — too often pushy and impersonal. Team — its sense of camaraderie wears out with constant use. One might cobble together a mix of pronouns to deploy in different scenarios, but no one term can do it all.

When I was teaching, I defaulted to colleagues and students. In e-mail, for instance: “Hello EN3703 students.”

As for a standard gender-neutral second-person plural pronoun, there certainly was one when I was a kid in Brooklyn: youse.

CNN, sheesh

A couple of minutes ago: “The rails are starting to come off.”

Strange days might require that ordinary idioms go out the window, so to speak. But I think it’s more reasonable (though not safer) to say that the wheels are starting to come off.

Related reading
All OCA sheesh posts (Pinboard)

Recently updated

Mystery actors I don’t think anyone’s going to solve this one. I put the answers in a comment.

Mystery actors

[Click for a larger view.]

Do you recognize one? The other? Both? Leave your best guesses in a comment.

*

12:25 p.m.: I think everyone has given up. The answers are now in the comments.

More mystery actors (Collect them all!)
? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ?

NameChanger

NameChanger is a free app for macOS and OS X that makes renaming files easier. Go from, say, IMG_3501.JPG, IMG_3502.JPG, and so on to a more meaningful sequence. NameChanger is powerful but not especially intuitive. The app’s Help page explains the many options for renaming.

 
[NameChanger’s icon and a substitute.]

I dislike pen or pencil icons, so I used the free app LiteIcon to turn a free n into an icon.

*

August 26: As shallnot points out in a comment, batch renaming is available in the Finder. Who knew? Not me. Here’s a brief tutorial. Thanks, shallnot.

From today’s Zippy

[Zippy, August 22, 2018.]

Today’s Zippy takes the reader behind the scenes at Zippy Industries, where Lazlo Crannich, the actor who plays Zippy (and writes and draws the strip), ponders his lot in life. He regrets his cranial surgery, which has left him typecast. Behind Crannich, “today’s” strip (marked “8-22”) plays out on a monitor, panel by panel, with Zippy drinking coffee and thinking.

It appears that Zippy might be drinking Chock full o’Nuts. Because he wonders: “Is it true that Rockefeller’s money can’t buy a better cup?” Yes, that song.

Related reading
All OCA Zippy posts (Pinboard)
Zippy, Hi, Lois : Zippy and the Flagstons
Chock full o’Nuts : Chock full o’Nuts lunch hour : New York, 1964: Chock full o’Nuts

Animal crackers in the news

Nabisco’s animal crackers are now cage-free.

Domestic comedy

[Last night, talking about Andrew, watching Chris. Elaine speaking.]

“They have the same Cuomosomes.”

Related reading
All OCA domestic comedy posts (Pinboard)

[Elaine is so proud of this one that she asked me to credit her. These posts are usually without who-said-what explanations.]

“The best witches”

From a New York Times editorial: “For a witch hunt, Mr. Mueller’s investigation has already bagged a remarkable number of witches. Only the best witches, you might say.”