How to improve writing (no. 99)

Talking Points Memo makes it way too easy:

In your opinion, are Republican candidates in midterm elections who have received former President Trump’s endorsement more likely or less likely to win their primary races than Republican candidates who did not?

☐ More likely
☐ Less likely
☐ Just as likely
☐ I’m not sure
☐ Other / No opinion

Richard Lanham’s paramedic method for revising prose can work wonders with this question. Lanham details the method in his Revising Prose (2007). A page from the Purdue Online Writing Lab summarizes it. What the paramedic method might help a writer notice in TPM’s question: the slow windup (“in your opinion,” not needed when the question is prefaced by the header “What do you think?”), the ungainly repetition of the preposition in, the use of a form of to be (are ) as the main verb, the lack of agency (who does what?). Better:

Will Donald Trump’s endorsement help or hurt a Republican candidate in a midterm primary race?

☐ Help
☐ Hurt
☐ Neither
☐ Undecided

From thirty-two words to fifteen. I’ve changed the answers to fit the new question and have removed the mysterious “Other / No opinion.”

I have no idea whether Trump**’s endorsement will help or hurt Mary (“Hitler was right on one thing”) Miller.

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

[I’m keen on Revising Prose, hugely helpful for teaching writing but ridiculously expensive. The publisher, Pearson, does itself no favor by setting a high price ($66.65!) for a cheaply made, poorly designed, 166-page paperback. Why Trump** ? Two asterisks for two impeachments. This post is no. 99 in a series dedicated to improving stray bits of public prose.]

Today’s Saturday Stumper

Today’s Newsday  Saturday Stumper, by “Anna Stiga,” Stan Again, Stan Newman, the puzzle’s editor, is a good one. Not much trickiness, but a reasonable degree of difficulty (twenty minutes’ worth for me). Some clues I especially liked:

1-A, six letters, “Today, for the first time.” I hadn’t thought about how strange it looks.

12-D, nine letters, “Word from the Latin for ‘attendant.’” Huh.

18-A, eight letters, “Woman with a unisex nickname.” Okay, but if I were a woman and bore this cool name, I’d never use a nickname.

30-D, eight letters, “Surprising to see.” Surprising, to me anyway, to see this word in a puzzle.

32-D, nine letters, “Some show stoppers.” POWERCUTS?

48-D, five letters, “Zorro’s secret identity.” He makes the sign of the Z, as I know from a childhood spent in front of the television. But I did not know this answer. I made a good guess.

60-A, six letters, “Much of the OED.” Yes.

61-A, six letters, “More than ready.” Will I never get out of high school?

The two clues that gave me fits: 42-A, six letters, “Roof in your head.” and 47-D, five letters, “Kitchen covering.” The former taught me what a 42-A is. The latter is my favorite clue in the puzzle.

No spoilers; the answers are in the comments.

New Year’s Eve 1921

[“Drys Usher In 1922 with Many Raids.” The New York Times, January 1, 1922. Click for a larger view.]

Here’s to a new and improved year, with less disease, more sanity, and better prospects for democracy. Happy New Year to all.

[“A certain high sign”: the OED dates high sign to 1888. Am I the only one who had no idea that it wasn’t just an Our Gang thing?]

Last call

A 2022 calendar in Gill Sans, three months per page, with minimal holiday markings (MLK Day, St. Patrick’s Day, Halloween, Thanksgiving, Christmas). It’s a PDF, free, right here for downloading. I’ve been making calendars since 2009 with the Mac app Pages (using tables) and Gill Sans.

[Looming.]

A fish-dish fish dish

[Maine Sardine Recipes (Augusta, Maine: Maine Sardine Council, 1975). Click either image for a larger view.]

A kind reader with great research skills left a comment on this post with a link to the pamphlet Maine Sardine Recipes. The pamphlet led me in turn to the website of the Penobscot Maritime Museum and a page about its Maine Sardine Council collection. The sardine industry is long gone from Maine, which once billed itself as “Vacationland & Sardineland,” as that page will attest.

Related reading
All OCA sardine posts (Pinboard)

Critter

[Click for a larger view.]

Beaver? Walrus? I’m not sure. But when I picked up this sweet potato last night, I knew it was also something — or somene — else.

[Thanks to the Mac app Acorn, whose Blur Brush and Vignette Effect helped me dispose of a kitchen table.]

Sardine art

Behold: images from a facsimile edition of Glynn Boyd-Harte’s Les Sardines à l’huille, described by the publisher as “one of the outstanding auto-lithographed books of the 20th century.”

Thanks, Fresca.

Related reading
All OCA sardine posts (Pinboard)

[Autolithography : “lithography in which an artist draws directly on the printing surface.”]

Recently updated

Words of the year Now with one from The Economist.

How to improve writing (no. 98)

As I wrote in no. 75, “Every time I look at Josh Marshall’s Talking Points Memo, I end up rewriting one or more sentences.” Even the polls need rewriting. To wit:

Hypothetically speaking, would you be in support of or not in support of an exception to the Senate’s filibuster rule with regard to legislation involving voting rights?

☐ Would support
☐ Would not support
☐ I’m not sure
☐ Other / No opinion

Do you support an exception to the Senate’s filibuster rule in order to pass voting-rights legislation?

☐ Yes
☐ No
☐ Undecided
☐ No opinion

From thirty-eight words to twenty-two. Which question would you prefer to read and answer?

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

[This post is no. 98 in a series dedicated to improving stray bits of public prose.]

The best book of the past 125 years

Readers of The New York Times have spoken. Kinda predictably. Yep, the best. Whatever you say.

A related post
NYT “Best Book”

[At least they didn’t pick Harry Potter.]