How to improve writing (no. 79)

Fresca has posted photographs of signs, some of which she thinks need rewriting. And she mentioned my posts about how to improve writing. So here goes:

A sign in a YMCA:

We serve relentlessly with our community until all can thrive in each stage of life.

That’s an ugly sentence, the kind of sentence that likely results from the work of a committee. I can imagine the suggestions, one by one: “Work? How about We serve relentlessly ?” But relentlessly is a tad aggressive, and community makes an awkward rhyme. And does one serve with a community, or does one serve a community? Thrive makes me think of plants, or infants in distress. And if all can thrive, do they thrive? And if they can or do, would the work of the Y stop? Is there an end to this relentless service? Last night I flinched at “each stage of life,” which makes me think of a Y that offers hospice care. And I cringed some more this morning when I heard Sarah Huckabee Sanders tell CNN that our president cares about Americans at all stages of life. Yes, really.

A possible revision:

We work hard to help everyone in our community live a better life.

Why does the revision sound better? Not because it is markedly shorter: the revised sentence is just two words shorter than the original. But look: there are fewer prepositional phrases in the revision. Eight of the fifteen words in the original sentence form prepositional phrases. That’s why the sentence sounds so ponderous. If my revised sentence sounds trite, it may be because so many goods and services promise to improve our lives. But I think a Y should be able to make that promise.

A second piece of signage, from a bathroom stall in an art museum:

Please be considerate

If you administer medication by syringe, please remove the syringe from our premises in a protective container. When placed in bathroom garbage, used syringes can cause puncture wounds.

Thank you.

Fresca wonders if this sign is an attempt at gentility. I think so: medication and syringe point in that direction, and from our premises is, for me, the clincher. I’ll mention that I’ve seen this sort of sign just once, in a bookstore whose customers were wont to shoot up in the bathroom. At least that was according to an employee, who may have been putting me on. (But if so, why the sign?)

A possible revision:

Be safe

Used needles are dangerous. If you use a needle here, take it with you in a protective container and dispose of it safely.

Thank you.

Used needles can cause puncture wounds wherever they might be left, and they can cause far worse than puncture wounds. No need to be genteel in asking people to take their needles with them. Safe is a much wiser word than considerate here.

In a New York (City) state of mind, I’d suggest

Don’t even THINK of leaving your needles here.

*

2:35 p.m.: “Eight of the fifteen words in the original sentence form prepositional phrases”: and eight of the twelve words in this sentence form prepositional phrases. Why doesn’t this sentence sound clunky?

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

[This post is no. 79 in a series, dedicated to improving stray bits of public prose.]

In the early morning raid

I like seeing the Special Counsel’s indictment of Roger Stone point out miscreants’ sloppiness in texting. From Stone himself: “Because of tromp I could never get away with a certain [sic] my Fifth Amendment rights but you can.” And from Person 2: “I think it[’]s on for tomorrow.”

[Post title with apologies to Gordon Lightfoot.]

Got it

After Stephen Colbert joked about Donald Trump and an EMT’s Heimlich skills, Jon Batiste commented with a couple of bars of Billy Strayhorn’s “U.M.M.G.,” whose title refers to the Upper Manhattan Medical Group. Arthur Logan, Duke Ellington’s doctor, was a member.

Someone got it.

*

And now that it’s morning, here’s the evidence. Listen at 9:28.

And here are some recordings of “U.M.M.G.”: the original Ellington band recording, a version with Dizzy Gillespie, a later version from . . . And His Mother Called Him Bill (recorded after Strayhorn’s death), and small-group recordings by Strayhorn and Joe Henderson. Despite what the Internets say, Strayhorn did not compose “U.M.M.G.” on his deathbed. The first recording is from 1956. The piece that Strayhorn wrote in the hospital in 1967 is “Blood Count.”

Notebook on a bus

[You Only Live Once (dir. Fritz Lang, 1937). Click for a larger view.]

Joan Taylor, née Graham (Sylvia Sidney) sets up housekeeping: “Lights, five dollars. Water, two dollars. Gas” — and then we cut to husband Eddie Taylor (Henry Fonda), stopping to fill up his truck.

More notebook sightings
Angels with Dirty Faces : Ball of Fire : Cat People : City Girl : Les Dames du Bois de Boulogne : Dead End : Dragnet : Extras : Eyes in the Night : Foreign Correspondent : Fury : Homicide : The Honeymooners : The House on 92nd Street : Journal d’un curé de campagne : Kid Glove Killer : The Last Laugh : Le Million : The Lodger : Ministry of Fear : Mr. Holmes : Murder at the Vanities : Murder by Contract : Murder, Inc. : The Mystery of the Wax Museum : Naked City : The Naked Edge : The Palm Beach Story : Perry Mason : Pickpocket : Pickup on South Street : Pushover : Quai des Orfèvres : The Racket : Railroaded! : Red-Headed Woman : Rififi : La roue : Route 66 : The Sopranos : Spellbound : Stage Fright : State Fair : A Stranger in Town : Time Table : T-Men : 20th Century Women : Union Station : Walk East on Beacon! : Where the Sidewalk Ends : The Woman in the Window

[Dammit: I remembered the bus as a train. Post title now corrected.]

A “spectacular building,”a “beautiful room”

Yesterday afternoon: “If we can handle Iraq, we can handle the middle of Washington and a very, very spectacular building and a beautiful room that we should be in, and that’s where it’s been for a very long time.”

But last night in a tweet: “there is no venue that can compete with the history, tradition and importance of the House Chamber.”

Is it reasonable to wonder whether someone helped with the name of the beautiful room?

Public Official A

A new podcast series from WBEZ, Chicago: Public Official A, the rise and fall of the now-imprisoned Rod Blagojevich, former governor of Illinois.

Blagojevich has been the object of infrequent but spirited mockery in these pages. Don’t miss Blagojevich taking the yearly ethics test for state employees!

It’s National Handwriting Day

[It’s National Handwriting Day. Click for a larger view.]

Yes, and for the third time, or fourth, if you count the post title, “It’s National Handwriting Day.” I’ve done my bit, in SchoolHouse Cursive B.

But handwriting need not mean cursive. Only paper, pen, pencil — or other tools. I thought about that last night while waiting at a railroad crossing and looking at the freight cars’ graffiti. That too is handwriting.

Defunding public higher education

The American Federation of Teachers examines the result of cuts to higher education in Illinois (41% since FY 2000): layoffs, program elimination, increased tuition, lower enrollments. The state’s recent manufactured budget crisis has greatly intensified the damage. As The Daily Show suggested in 2016, the message to young people is “Get the fuck out of Illinois.”

Manufactured budget crises can produce deep and lasting damage. Sometimes that seems to be the point.

⌘-V

In setting up my new Mac, I had to remember an improvement I haven’t thought about since 2011 (the last time I set up a new Mac): change Command-V, ⌘-V, to “Paste and Match Style.” The change greatly simplifies to work of copying and pasting.

And here’s how to type ⌘, ⌥, and other symbols available from Emoji & Symbols. It’s telling, I think, that Apple makes silly emoji front and center but hides the basic stuff of the Mac keyboard from view.

[Is it ⌘V or ⌘-V? Mojave menus say ⌘V. But Apple’s December 2018 page about keyboard shortcuts uses hyphens.]

Giuliani interviewed

This New Yorker interview with Rudy Giuliani is worth reading.

This bit leaves me speechless. Giuliani is speaking about Martin Luther King Jr.:

“Oh, my goodness, yes, he was a great hero of mine. I believe he taught me, like he did all of us, how bad segregation was. Those of us in the North wouldn’t have known that without him.”

A related post
Fools (Giuliani, not a Shakespearean one)