How to improve writing (no. 106)

I was going to quote a sentence from The New York Times this morning until I realized how awful it was:

The Republicans who blocked Representative Kevin McCarthy of California from becoming speaker on Tuesday include some of the most hard-right lawmakers in the House; most denied the 2020 election, are members of the Freedom Caucus, or both.

The lack of parallelism in the sentence almost — almost — passes by unnoticed. But once you notice it, it’s, uh, noticeable: there’s no pair of elements for both to tie together. Here’s a simpler sentence to illustrate the problem, about members of an imaginary musical group:

Most studied piano, are guitarists, or both.

A possible revision:

Most are proponents of the “Big Lie” or members of the Freedom Caucus or both.

Elaine thinks that including numbers would help:

Nineteen of the twenty are members of the Freedom Caucus. Twelve are election deniers. Eleven are both.

Both revisions improve on the original.

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

[In news coverage, the Times typically uses quotation marks with Big Lie. This post is no. 106 in a series dedicated to improving stray bits of public prose.]

Getting things done

The Republican House majority got something accomplished yesterday. From the January 3 installment of Heather Cox Richardson’s Letters from an American :

The first thing they did was to remove the metal detectors that were installed after the January 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol. The removal was one of the things Republican leader Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) promised far-right Republicans in hopes of winning their votes to elect him speaker. The House has not yet voted on the rules package that ends “Democrat fines for failure of Members to comply with unscientific mask mandates and security screenings before entering the House floor,” but the metal detectors are gone, just three days before the second anniversary of the January 6 attack.

So far, the removal of those metal detectors is the only concrete outcome of McCarthy’s attempt to woo the extremist members of his conference.

The New York Times looks at those extremist members and finds that most are proponents of the Big Lie or members of the (so-called) Freedom Caucus or both. Illinois’s own Mary Miller is, of course, both.

[I watched a lot of news yesterday without learning about the metal detectors. One more reason to read Letters from an American.]

“Eccentric adventures”

Steve Young, devotee of industrial-musicals, in the documentary Bathtubs Over Broadway (dir. Dava Whisenant, 2018):

“Life can be so rich and wonderful when we step off the logical path and embark on eccentric adventures.”

EXchange names on screen

From Mr. District Attorney (dir. Robert B. Sinclair, 1947). The movie is a bit ’phone-crazy. Click any image for a larger view.

[B.: Berotti (Steven Geary), no first name. His MA: MAdison, I presume.]

The next three screenshots show a clever trick. How can Marcia Manning (Marguerite Chapman) let District Attorney Craig Warren (Adolphe Menjou) know that B. is hiding in the next room? By making a phony call to spell out B-E-R-O-T-T-I.


It’s a good thing Marcia wasn’t trying to spell L-E-D-D-Y, which could have been mistaken for J-E-F-F-Y.

More telephone EXchange names on screen
Act of Violence : The Amazing Dr. Clitterhouse : Armored Car Robbery : Baby Face : Black Angel : Black Widow : Blast of Silence : The Blue Dahlia : Blue Gardenia : Boardwalk Empire : Born Yesterday : The Brasher Doubloon : The Brothers Rico : The Case Against Brooklyn : Chinatown : Craig’s Wife : Danger Zone : The Dark Corner : The Dark Corner (again) : Dark Passage : Deception : Deux hommes dans Manhattan : Dial Red 0 : Dick Tracy’s Deception : Down Three Dark Streets : Dream House : East Side, West Side : Escape in the Fog : Fallen Angel : Framed : Hollywood Story : Kiss of Death : The Little Giant : Loophole : The Man Who Cheated Himself : Modern Marvels : Murder by Contract : Murder, My Sweet : My Week with Marilyn : Naked City (1) : Naked City (2) : Naked City (3) : Naked City (4) : Naked City (5) : Naked City (6) : Naked City (7) : Naked City (8) : Naked City (9) : Nightfall : Nightmare Alley : Nocturne : Old Acquaintance : Out of the Past : Perry Mason : Pitfall : The Public Enemy : Railroaded! : Red Light : She Played with Fire : Side Street : The Slender Thread : Slightly Scarlet : Stage Fright : Sweet Smell of Success (1) : Sweet Smell of Success (2) : Tension : Till the End of Time : This Gun for Hire : The Unfaithful : Vice Squad : Whatever Happened to Baby Jane?

Recently updated

Updating Now with more lies from George Santos.

Look closely

[Click for a larger view.]

We heard it before we saw it. And then we watched for several minutes. Elaine thinks that our quiet words of encouragement made a difference.

[If you’re stumped, keep looking. And then, if you’re still stumped, there’s an explanation in the comments.]

On the conjunction train

From YouTube user blakrootz: “‘Conjunction Junction’ Model Train.” Just wonderful, and if I were teaching a writing class, I would be hard put not to find three minutes to share it.

Thanks to Jim at 30 Squares for sharing it with me.

[All seven coordinating conjunctions? The FANBOYS. For, and, nor, but, or, yet, so.]

Recently updated

A Bronx candy store Now with a court case and the meaning of “light lunch.”

Public Domain Day

Today is Public Domain Day (Duke University School of Law). Featuring Louis Armstrong, Willa Cather, George and Ira Gershwin, Frank Kafka, Fritz Lang, Marcel Proust, and Bessie Smith, and many more.

While at the DUSL site, take a look at Theft: A History of Music, by Keith Aoki, James Boyle, and Jennifer Jenkins.

A Bronx candy store

[983 Mace Avenue, The Bronx, c. 1939–1941. From the NYC Municipal Archives Collections. Click for a much larger view.]

A reader who likes looking in the archives spotted this Bronx candy store. The same reader found a Board of Education photograph of the store’s interior, identified as “PS 89, Bronx: surroundings.” It would seem that the BOE wanted photographs of locations near the school. This candy store was right across the street from P.S. 89. Here is retail density at its finest — not to mention a sweet setup for schoolkids. Do click for a larger view. You won’t regret it.

[983 Mace Avenue interior. Photograph by A. J. Hickey, March 31, 1939. From the NYC Municipal Archives Collections. I hope the photographer bought something.]

An sidenote: the meaning of “light lunch” was at issue in a 1924 New York court case. At issue: whether a candy-store chain was doing the business of a restaurant in offering “light lunch”:


The court’s answer: yes, they were doing the business of a restaurant, and no, candy stores can’t do that. (Don’t tell no. 983.)

No. 983 is now a three-family behemoth. P.S. 89 still stands.

Thanks to the reader who found this store, outside and in-, and the court case.

Related reading
More OCA posts with photographs from the NYC Municipal Archives : All-Nite Service density : Harvey’s Hardware density : May Drug Co. density : Whelan’s Drug Store : Woolworth’s density