HO 3-3338

[As seen in Los Angeles.]

Our fambly once saw a sign in the wilds of Pennsylvania: HO-MADE PIES. Our kids were old enough to find the naiveté amusing. As were Elaine and I.

The letters HO signified the exchange names HObart, HOmestead, HOpkins, and HOward. And HOllywood! From a contributor to the Telephone EXchange Name Project:

First heard the exchange in an old movie from the 40’s where the main character was placing a call to someone who lived in “Hollywood” and gave the exchange ‘HOllywood-4.....’ Years later, saw a sign for a liquor store that still had the number listed as such on their sign HO-4..... (HOllywood-4 .....) Still today, the numbers for Hollywood proper are “464-....” Pretty neat!

Thanks to Sean at Contrapuntalism for sharing his photograph.

[I found HObart, HOmestead, HOpkins, and HOward in AT&T/Bell’s 1955 list of recommended exchange names, available from the TENP.]

Domestic comedy

[We ordered take-out from our Thai restaurant on Monday. We are ordering again on Friday. Elaine doesn’t like it when I inquire too far in advance, like, say, mid-morning Friday, what she might want to get. Today is Wednesday.]

“Any ideas about what to get?”

“Something different from what we got Monday.”

“That was your cue to throw something at me.”

Related reading
All OCA domestic comedy posts (Pinboard)

Festival films

From May 29 to June 7, films from Cannes and other festivals Cannes, Sundance, and other film festivals will be streaming, free, at YouTube.

And then there were five

Senator Pat Roberts (R-Kansas) just referred to Drs. Fauci, Giroir, Hahn, and Redfield as “the Fab Four.” “Back in the day,” the senator added, “it was the Fab Five.”

Chutes and letters

Diane Schirf has added new (and stylin’) photographs and useful links to a post about the Cutler mailing system. Yes, “mailing system.” “Product pretentiousness,” Diane writes, ”isn’t a contemporary invention.”

You may not recognize the name Cutler. But you’ll likely recognize the “mailing system” — chutes and collection boxes — in an instant.

Help, help to

A sentence from a recent post:

[Dieter] Rams on camera is elegantly informal and always curmudgeonly — a critic of the consumer culture his designs [helped? helped to?] establish.

It’s a rare day that I don’t have a reason to open Garner’s Modern English Usage. Here’s an answer:

In most contexts, the better practice is to use a bare infinitive after help (if the choice is between a fully expressed infinitive [with to] and a bare one [without to]).

Examples follow. And finally:

The bare-infinitive form after help overtook the to-form in the late 1960s and remains more than twice as common with various verbs.

Helped to still sounds better to me. I’ll put that down to a dowdy ear. Everybody knows a turkey and some mistletoe help to make the season bright.

How to improve writing (no. 87)

  
[Mark Trail, May 12, 2020. Original panel, left, and two revisions.]

In today’s Mark Trail, some dialogue in need of improvement. The gist of things: The Crowley family and Mark are on a camping trip for “troubled children.” Eric is the Crowleys’ son. The Crowleys seem to be leaning toward adopting Kevin, a young orphan on the trip. Eric is jealous, and Kevin knows it. Kevin runs off from camp with Mark Trail’s adopted son Rusty; everyone searches for them; a forest fire happens; and Kevin saves the day by warning Mrs. Crowley and Eric that a tree is going to fall on them. This story has taken months to develop.

One problem in the original panel above: Kevin didn’t save three (or more) people — only two. Mrs. Crowley has exaggerated. A second problem: “our and Eric’s lives” is some mighty awkward syntax. My first revision aims for accurate reporting and decent syntax. My second revision aims for more schmaltz: in saving Mrs. Crowley and Eric, Kevin has indeed saved “all of us” — in other words, the whole Crowley family, including Eric. Formerly rotten Eric, I hope.

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

[This post is no. 87 in a series, dedicated to improving stray bits of public prose.]

Homemade music

[Music by Rachel, Ben, Elaine, and Michael. Production by Ben.]

It’s the Faces song “Ooh La La” (Ronnie Lane–Ronnie Wood). Enjoy.

Polls

[“Coronavirus Polling.” xkcd, May 11, 2020. Click for a larger view.]

The art of the small oily fish

Susan’s sardine drawing has prompted Fresca, l’astronave, to invite readers to draw or paint a sardine.

Here’s Fresca’s. Here’s mine. Here’s bink’s.

[The time of the coronavirus is also the time of canned fish.]