Analog rising

“Sales of stationery and cards are actually up among younger and youngish people”: so says Marketplace Morning Report, in a brief item on young people and greeting cards. With this comment: “I love my friends’ handwriting, because it’s personal.”

The story begins at the 5:26 mark.

Related reading
All OCA stationery posts (Pinboard)

Five cyber freedoms

From Print Mag, and in the form of posters, five cyber freedoms: freedom from election tampering, freedom from identity theft, freedom from hacking and malware, freedom from online scams, and freedom from misinformation.

I think the poster about online scams is esp. striking. Which reminds me — wait, that’ll be another post.

Valentine’s Day

[“Heart Amulet.” From Egypt, Upper Egypt, Thebes, Deir el-Bahri, ca. 1070–945 B.C. Lapis Lazuli. 3/8″. Metropolitan Museum of Art. From the online collection. Click for a larger view and you’ll see what the red is.]

More about amulets and the heart, or ib, at this museum page.

iOS autocorrect and alcohol

John Gruber suggested last year that iOS 13 autocorrect is drunk:

One thing I and others have noticed is that when you type a dictionary word correctly — meaning you hit the exact right keys on the on-screen keyboard — iOS 13 autocorrect will replace it with a different dictionary word that makes no contextual sense. Even beyond dictionary words, I’m seeing really strange corrections. Two nights ago I typed “Dobbs”, including the Shift key for the “D”, and iOS 13.1 autocorrected it to “adobe”, with a lowercase “a”.

Last night I typed toast on my iPhone (letter by letter) and found the word changed to toaste. (What?) I typed have twice, letter by letter, and each time found it changed to gave. I said to Elaine, “It changes random words — words that are correctly smelled.”

That was no autocorrection. That was domestic comedy.

The problems arise with both letter-by-letter typing and iOS 13’s Slide to Type option. I can’t decide which form of text entry is more prone to error. Incidentally: on an iOS 13 device, the keyboard settings offer Slide to Type. In Apple’s online documentation the feature is called QuickPath. The only “QuickPath” on my phone is an entry in the Apple Dictionary.

I gave my phone a sobriety test this morning, entering the name of my favorite Scotch with Slide to Type. I went from letter to letter six times, with absolute accuracy. The results:

Lemonier
Lemonier
Glamorous
Fleming’s
Glamorous
Lemonade

The name I was trying to enter: Glenmorangie. I think that John Gruber is correct: autocorrect is drunk, and it’s only 8:17 in the morning. And it’s gonna stay drunk all day.

Is there one in Hawkins?

Aldi Breakfast Best Homestyle Waffles are better than Eggo Homestyle Waffles. More delicate, not so wooden. Aldi waffles cost less too.

Is there an Aldi in Hawkins?

Oxford and its comma

“Beadnell comma doesn’t have the same ring to it as Oxford comma”: CMOS Shop Talk, from The Chicago Manual of Style, presents the history of the Oxford comma.

Related reading
All OCA comma and punctuation posts (Pinboard)

Campaign typography

George Butterick (as in Butterick’s Practical Typography) considers the campaign logos of Democratic presidential candidates: “A Special Listicle for America”: “Over­all best in show: I am sur­prised to say it’s Joe Biden.”

Elsewhere, Print Mag invites your participation in a game of logo brackets.

Joseph Shabalala (1941–2020)

Joseph Shabalala, founder of Ladysmith Black Mambazo, has died at the age of seventy-eight. The New York Times has an obituary.

Here’s a song written by Joseph Shabalala, performed by Ladysmith Black Mambazo, “Hamba Dompasi (No More Passbook).” The Zulu lyrics may be found in the liner notes for the album Journey of Dreams (1988), along with a summary and sample lines in English: “This song hails the abolishment of the abhorrent pass laws in South Africa while at the same time detailing the beauty of the land.”

The requirement that black people in white areas carry a passbook ended in 1986. I remember playing this song and teaching the play Sizwe Bansi Is Dead (Athol Fugard, John Kani, Winston Ntshona) when apartheid was still the order of things in South Africa.

Nancy, champeen

[Nancy, May 8, 1950.]

In today’s yesterday’s Nancy, Nancy seeks employment advertising a “store.” The final panel (what Ernie Bushmiller called “the snapper”) reveals a pawnshop. Three bubbles, three balls. Memorable.

But what got me here is a word. Yesterday, grand. Today, champeen. The ghosts of my grandparents are speaking through Nancy.

I can find little background on champeen. Nothing in the OED, nothing in Webster’s Third, nothing in Green’s Dictionary of Slang. Eric Partridge’s Dictionary of Slang and Unconventional English identifies champeen an Australian variant of champion, in use before 1915. The Champeen is the title of a 1923 Our Gang short. Did the word come back to the States with soldiers from the Great War? No. Looking in the New York Times via ProQuest, I found this bit in a column titled “Nuggets” (June 29, 1899):

The Pug — I know I ain’t been able to git a battle on fer eight months, but you bet I’ll be champeen yet.

The Backer — Yes, if this keeps up, you will be the champion long-wait fighter of the world.

An earlier article about a teachers’ strike refers to a children’s song, “The School’s Champeen” (December 22, 1892). And that’s as early as I can find in the Times

Google’s Ngram Viewer shows champeen first turning up in American English in 1886. All but one of the pre-1892 appearances of champeen in Google Books have it as a variant of champagne or as a surname. The exception: an 1889 appearance in a grotesque parody of African-American speech: “de champeen livin’ skellington in de kentry.”

Long story short: champeen was in use in the States well before 1915. You’d have to be a champeen searcher to come up with more than that.

Related reading
All OCA Nancy posts (Pinboard)

Homer, revised

I’ve thought about this possibility for several days. How best to end infighting among Democratic candidates? Have Athena step in, raising a shout that stops “all fighters in their tracks”:


Homer, Odyssey 24, trans. Robert Fitzgerald (1961), revised by me.

Come together, Democrats, “or Zeus who views the wide world may be angry.”

Related reading
All OCA Homer posts (Pinboard)