Nancy, meta and dowdy

[Nancy, March 5, 2019.]

From today’s Nancy, an Olivia Jaimes panel for the ages. Another kid has been giving Nancy drawing tips: “If you mess up a character’s eyes, just add sunglasses.” “If you mess up their mouth, just make it bigger.” “Worst comes to worst, you can just scribble it all out and add a label.” Thus this fourth panel.

What I really like is the dotted line — très dowdy.

Related reading
All OCA Nancy posts (Pinboard)

[Just to be clear: “for the ages” is praise, not sarcasm. I like this stuff.]

HTML Scratchpad

HTML Scratchpad is a webpage for messing around with HTML. Before I cottoned to MarsEdit, I used HTML Scratchpad to check whether YouTube videos will play when embedded in Blogger. Not all of them will, and Blogger’s Preview is useless for finding out before posting. But HTML Scratchpad works: copy and paste the code and press Run. Then click to play, or not play.

“After you,” “Go ahead”

Say you’re in line at a grocery checkout and someone comes up behind with just one or two items. Courteous shopper that you are, you want to let that person go first. Is there much difference between saying “After you” and and saying “Go ahead”? Is one more appropriate than the other?

Or say you’re holding a door open for someone entering or leaving the store. Courteous as ever, you want to let that person go first. Again, is there much difference between “After you” and “Go ahead”? Is one more appropriate than the other?

I hear each expression as an invitation: please, feel free to go first. To my ear, “After you” sounds more formal, which might make it less suited for everyday use in the folksy midwest. But I’m curious to know what other people think.

Benjamin and Newman

Watching The Graduate (dir. Mike Nichols, 1967) Saturday night, I wondered: could Mrs. Robinson’s icy “Hello, Benjamin” be the inspiration for Jerry Seinfeld’s “Hello, Newman”?

I don’t expect to have the answer to that question anytime soon.

*

The “Hello, Benjamin” I have in mind comes in at the 1:11 mark. As I just discovered, Safari in iOS doesn’t jump ahead to that spot as it should.

The last Automat

[Zippy, March 4, 2019.]

The Automat appears again and again in Zippy. Here, type automat into the search box and you’ll see. Today’s strip repurposes art from a 2014 visit to the Dingburg Automat.

I have a vague memory of sitting in an Automat with a friend in the 1980s. And I have a vague nostalgia for the Automat. The Automat appears in a handful of OCA posts.

How to improve writing (no. 80)

Here’s a sentence that gave both members of our household pause. From Jeffrey Toobin’s “May Days,” a New Yorker “Talk of the Town” item (March 4):

Virtually everything that Trump tells McCabe he disputes, starting with the claim that he received “hundreds” of messages from F.B.I. employees supporting his decision to fire Comey.

I’d call it a garden-path sentence. I first read everything as the sentence’s subject, with Trump both telling and disputing. So I expected that the sentence would run along these lines:

Virtually everything that Trump tells McCabe he disputes is contradicted by, &c.

But I was led down a garden path. The sentence’s subject turns out to be its first he, and that’s McCabe. Which creates a second problem, because the sentence’s second he refers to Trump.

How to improve this sentence? Make the subject clear by putting it first. That keeps the reader off the garden path. It’s helpful too to remove the easily misread hes. My revision:

McCabe disputes virtually everything that Trump tells him, starting with the president’s claim that “hundreds” of messages from F.B.I. employees supported his decision to fire Comey.

The condensed language of newspaper headlines often leads to garden-path sentences (for instance, and for instance). It’s surprising to find such a sentence in The New Yorker.

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

[This post is no. 80 in a series, dedicated to improving stray bits of public prose.]

Today’s Saturday Stumper

Today’s Newsday Saturday Stumper, by Lester Ruff, has some surprisingly easy clues. I started solving with one: 32-Across, seven letters, “Users of Breathe Right strips.” NICEGUYS? No, that’s eight letters. Then I noticed 11-Down, ten letters, “Novel inspired by Cain and Abel.” And 12-Down, ten letters, “Wharton work.” And I was on my way.

I always like smart clues for little words. For instance, 51-Across, three letters, “Day preceder or follower.” And 53-Down, four letters, “Service members.” That’s right next to 52-Down, four letters, “Service members.” Nice work, Mr. Ruff.

A meta clue, 28-Down, ten letters, “Stumpery clue for ‘rise.’”

And one clue I’d question: 15-Down, six letters, “Mitigates.” That works only if the answer is an archaic meaning.

No spoilers: the answers are in the comments.

Introvert sticklers

Psychology Today reports on a study suggesting that “introverts [are] more likely to be annoyed by typos and grammatical mistakes than extroverts.” A sentence from PT :

First, let’s take a closer look at the study, then we’ll explore why introverts might be the ultimate grammar sticklers.

Uh-oh, comma splice, which I’ve marked in red. Better:

First, let’s take a closer look at the study; then we’ll explore why introverts might be the ultimate grammar sticklers.

Better still:

Let’s look at the study and see why introverts might be grammar sticklers.

There’s little need for “first” and “then” when the two matters are so closely related. And if the article has presented only a brief statement about the study, there’s little difference between a look and a closer look. I object to “explore” as slightly pompous, and to “the ultimate” as hype. But then I’m a modest introvert. Or stickler. Or both.

The study involved a mere eighty participants. This post makes eighty-one.

Related reading
All OCA grammar and introversion posts (Pinboard)

Synopses

A girl from the wrong side of the tracks returns from the dead to open up new frontiers for Colonial America.

A brother-and-sister musical team terrorizes a young girl and her grandfather.

An innocent cowboy transforms the lives of the elderly women trapped in a haunted mansion.

A widow dreaming of a singing career turns to an acupuncturist to find her grandmother.

The elements of the single-sentence synopses of movie listings cry out to be recombined on a remote island. As above. Anyone can play.

[See also Clark Coolidge and Ron Padgett’s Supernatural Overtones (Great Barrington, MA: The Figures, 1990).]

Pocket notebook sighting: The Big Clock

[Lloyd Corrigan, Frank Orth, a pocket notebook, and Luis Van Rooten. The Big Clock (dir. John Farrow, 1948). Click for a larger view.]

I blame Bresson. It was Journal d’un curé de campagne that got me started noticing notebooks in movies. And now it’s automatic.

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 : You Only Live Once