Design is anti-headlines

Sometimes the trend in modern design--big, bold lettering, usu.--just totally hamstrings headlines. You can't put anything sensible in them.

It's worse in tabloids, of course, which is what my newspaper of choice is.

It's SO bad that Newsday must rely on the deck to tell you what a story is about, which means that then you  have the deck AND the lead, which cover the same info. And to avoid the repeat, then they write stupid feature-y leads.

Here's a headline from a recent Newsday.

What the heck does it mean?

Guv pans cap foes

OK, "Guv," I get. I actually have no prob w/ many of the tabloid abbrevs. And "Guv" is a fine one.

"pans"--Hmm, this one slows me own on a headline. It's not that I don't know what "to pan" means, but I'm no sure which meaning is here, bcs it's normally used in reviews of movies, etc. So for a brief moment, I wonder if they're using a metaphorical application of the "to harvest gold from a stream, as a prospector" sense, the way we use "mines" to mean "reaches out for other resources."

"cap"--OK, a limit imposted--but WHAT limit? imposed on who? Or is this a verb? I guess not, bcs "pans" has the s. Hopefully it's not a plural "pans."

"foes"--OK, "cap foes"--people opposed to the cap.   Of course, we don't know which cap, so we don't know which foes.

It's just too darn much work. 

I reminds me of playing Scrabble with an 8-year-old, who can only think of three- and four-letter words. 

I wish American publication design would go back to smaller letters so we can use better words (which usu. means longer ones).

The headlines are useless as it is ("Hope and scholarship"? that doesn't tell you anything until you get to the deck, anyway: "By providing grants to Catholic elementary students, foundation has stemmed losses in schools' enrollment).

So why not eliminate them, and just rely on the deck? They'd probably have more space for news. (of course, that might be part of the problem)

Really,  we all know that term already. Kill the quotes.

Grumpy moment.

In Newsday's breathless, indignant coverage of what they characterized as the NY Mets' cowardly middle-of-the-night firing of Willie Randolph (comma after cowardly?), the Wed., June 18 installation has a sidebar (jargon, don't use it in print) titled "How Willie Managed to Get Fired." (OK, they use sentence style, so to truly quote it, I guess you'd write "How Willie managed to get fired," but I'd rather use my internal style for titles than their design idiosyncracy)

The first graph has this sentence:

. . . Randolph is called into a meeting . . . for what is characterized as a "pep" talk before facing the Yankees.

OK, why the quotes? and why the stupid placement of them?

In the first place, we all know what a pep talk is. This is not obscure jargon; there's no  need to put quotes around it.

In the second place, the phrase "what is characterized as" tells us that someone other than the reporter (but of course, the reporter doesn't tell us WHO characterized it as such) has described the encounter in a way that makes this term applicable.

     I suppose the quotation marks could be a way of telling us that this mysterious person (Randolph? gen mgr. Minaya? COO Wilpon? the PR guy?) use that actual terminology, instead of the reporter's having use his own terminology (as I did above).

BUT...

This is where I'm really crabby. The term is "pep talk."  Colloquial speakers of English don't use the word "pep" by itself, most of the time, and when you do, you're not usually combining it w/ a word that means "talk" but ISN'T "talk." What, a pep conversation? OK, OK, "pep rally," but that's not a meeting/conversation; that's a whole darn crowd, complete w/ cheerleaders.

So--comma after cowardly?

And make a guess--did the PR guy really use the term "pep talk," or did the reporter hear the description, and pick that term as recognizable to readers?

Comma After "Called"

Over at Language Log,  Roger Shuy reports on a movement to ban certain words from the courtroom in an attempt to prevent those words' pejorative natures from unfairly influencing juries.

He writes this sentence:

They call the forbidden words, "loaded terms."

I would not have put the comma there, nor would I have used quotation marks. I consider the word "called" to have alerted readers to the "word as word" nature of the term that followed. This fits the rules I was tauhjt.

And yet, when the terms are as multipart, is it confusing? I think i would buy an argument for quotes, but not for the comma. What about you?

Cool Words from the Trojan War


I used the word stentoriously in the post below. It's a fun word--it just sounds so pompous! And it has a very useful meaning & connotation.

But I wanted to be sure I spelled it right, so I went to look it up.

It's not in Merriam-Webster's Collegiate (nor on m-w.com). The adj form is: stentorian. And it's on Dictionary.com, which I will grudgingly trust. Of course, it's perfectly acceptable to adverb a word.

But I was fascinated to see its root! (It showed up in 1609, not that long ago, actually; I should go study the history of language or English lit, or something; I bet there was a time period of influx of all those Greek mythology references)


Latin, from Greek Stentōr, Stentor, a Greek herald in the Trojan War noted for his loud voice

I hadn't known about Stentor before. This is fun.

I wonder, if we were trying to invent the word now, whose name would we use?


Oh, and I was musing on the term Trojan horse the other day, too, thinking that it's SUCH a useful term, and such an amazing, classic idea--the seemingly harmless thing you bring inside your defenses that actually carries the seed of your destruction within it.

What's your favorite word from Greek mythology?

Comma, No Comma (part 1)

In today's Wall Street Journal (June 12, 2008), a front-page story titled "On the Lam and Living Large: Comverse Ex-CEO Parties in Namibia"

The subject of the story is introduced this way:

Jacob "Kobi" Alexander, the Israeli-born, former chief executive of Comverse Technology Inc., a New York Software company, who is wanted in the U.S. on stock-options backdating charges.

The point of interest to me is that comma--the one right after "Israeli-born."

I would not have used it. ". . . the Israeli-born former chief executive of . . ."

Because, those adjective phrases are not in any way similar. They not like "short, stout," which both describe appearance. 

This sort of comma--the one between adjectives--is giving me fits lately. I feel almost as though I've lost my bearings. At work, in other publications--I see other copyeditors who have put it in between adjectives where I would never have placed it. Or I wonder where it is, in text that I *know* has been reviewed by a copyeditor.

(In fact, I'm so troubled by this, and so weirded out at seeing commas in strange places--or not seeing them where I'd want them--that I started an e-mail group w/ the people whose copyediting judgment I trust most--I call it "Comma No Comma")

What about you--comma after Israeli-born, or not?

Does slang enter the written language faster nowadays?


Today over on the fascinating blog "Separated by a Common Language," Lynneguist says this in her discussion of the origins of the word "eyeball" in the measuring/estimating sense:

But since it's slang, we'd expect that it goes back quite a bit further in the spoken language than in written sources--we just can't pinpoint when.

That got me wondering whether this is changing in our current publishing culture--as more magazines and even newspapers try to be "zippy," are we creating a much shorter "distance" between slang creation and slang documentation (first appearance in print)?

I know in my own career this is true; at the women's service magazine I worked at in 1994, we weren't particularly out in front. We used some slang, but usually not the newest. It didn't fit our tone, and probably not our readership.

At my current pub, our publishers are pressing us to be "zippier." So we make more cultural references, and use more cultural references.

And the Web is going to really change that. I use web searches even know to find out how (or even whether) a slang term is used by different groups of people. If there's a way of holding onto some of the reader-posted, non-edited/filtered material on the Web, etymologists will be able to date word origins much more accurately.

How fast does your publication adopt/accept slang terms?

(someday I'll figure out how to do a blogroll, I promise)

Look It Up

Over on Language Log, there's a post on a Cupertino error related to the word "highfalutin"--the spell checker changed it to "high flatulence," apparently bcs it was originally entered as two words.



high flatulence


I would never have thought it was one word--In fact, I'd have hyphenated it.

I think I'd only use it as an adj phrase before a noun--"that's a bunch of high-falutin' nonsense," but never "his comments are always high-falutin'."

Note the apostrophe to stand in for the g.

(falutin' apparently coming from "flute," perhaps, maybe, sez M-W)

Would *you* have automatically made it one word?

What Does "Generic" Actually Mean?

From today's Newsday, from a story titled "Smokers ignited over tax hike":

Frank Steigerwal, 60, a school custodian who lives in West Sayville, reeled when he paid $19.34 for two boxes of Mavericks and one box of Naturals at Jim's Smoke Shop in Patchogue. On Monday, those three packs would have cost $14.90. Mavericks, a generic brand, cost $5.35 a pack at Jim's.

Ummmmmm, how can you possibly have a generic brand? You can have a generic THING, but once it becomes a brand, well, it's a brand. It might be an incredibly inexpensive brand. It might be  brand that is sold at the same price as something that doesn't carry a brand name.

But if you are giving it a name that is not "Cigarette," it's a brand.

I think "generic brand" is an oxymoron--is it not?

I see from this website  

www.discountcigaretteshop.com

that people in the industry do indeed have a category called "generic brands."

And I see that the Texas Administrative Code recognizes this term:
"Cigarette Nicotine Yield Rating Reporting Requirements," Title 25, park 1, chapter 101, rule 101.5: "if the brand styles within a private label or generic cigarette brand family are identical "

How about this complete and total contradiction:

"Miami-based generic cigarette maker Trademark Holdings Corp. faced a tough choice recently: Cease production of its new and profitable Cowboys brand cigarettes -- which are packaged with the image of a cowboy astride a horse -- or shoot it out with Philip Morris U.S.A. in an intellectual property lawsuit."

http://www.law.com/jsp/article.jsp?id=1032128783264

Or this one, from May 11, 1984:

"n a re- positioning of Doral, a cigarette first introduced in 1968, Reynolds is entering the no-image, low-cost generic end of the cigarette business for the first time."

I mean, jeez, they're repositioning an existing brand, and *calling* it a generic?

The NYTimes recognizes the term. There's a reference in a law journal to a "branded 'generic' cigarette."

This term is all over the place--it's making my head hurt. I'm glad I don't smoke.

What's with this? is there some basic standard that all these companies are following, and that is what makes it generic? But even then, if they put ANY sort of name on it, isn't it no longer a generic?

We ought not to let them get away with this.

How do you pronounce a FONT?

From May 30's New York Times, p. B1, Clyde Habermans' NYC column, "Another Book Deal Loosens Another Tongue:

"....Which of the following guests on "Today" would you say was the reason that so many people summoned so much screaming energy at an hour when most New Yorkers had yet to hae their first cup of coffee?

(A) Sarah Jessica Parker, or as she is usually known in newspaper columns, Sarah Jessica Parker? Further identification seems unnecessary unless you have been in a trance for weeks...."  

Totally a visual gag (an d a fun one)--you can't pronounce typeface anymore than you can truly pronounce spelling. 

Well, I guess could pronounce those three bolded words more stentoriously.  (isn't that a cool word? more on it later)

Fun with Words

My son is 10; on a recent subway trip something got me remembering (and reciting) an old goofy rhyme my dad used to say, to my son's delight.

It goes:

One bright stormy day in the middle of the night, 

two dead boys got up to fight.

Back to back, they faced each other,

drew their swords and shot each other.

A faraway policeman saw this noise,

came and killed those two dead boys.

And if you don't believe this lie, 

go ask the blind man--he saw it too.

It was fun to listen to him saying, "how could he kill those dead boys, if they're already dead?" "how can they shoot each other with their swords" "the blind man couldn't see anything!"

I found a version of this one (probably the unadulterated-by-my-dad-and-my-memory version) via google: "One Fine Day" research from The British Columbia Folklore Society

My dad had a ton of these, which amused us all no end as kids. Obviously--I'm over 45, and I'm *still* reciting them. I'll post some of the others later.

What's your favorite word nonsense?

more "you can't pronounce spelling"

Maybe, really, "you can't pronounce punctuation"?

JD, on his blog The Engine Room, linked to a great Peanuts cartoon.

I'd repost here, but I don't have time, and besides, he's the one who found it.

Go look.

Then come back here and tell me--how would YOU pronounce the ditto mark?

Phrases stuck in my head

I think I'm an obsessive personality. I get stuff stuck in my head. (In music, they call those "earworms," and I get them a lot; but what do they call it if it's a phrase you've read? An eyeworm? A brainworm?)

At work, I'll hit some phrase, and then it'll be stuck. (I was editing a recipe once, and the recipe editor had rearranged the herbs used. Normally, they were listed in order of amount, largest to smallest; if the same size, then put as a group in alpha order; she cheated and made them say "1/2 teaspoon each dried parsley, sage, rosemary and basil.")

We have a deck that says: "A loaf of bread, a jug of wine, and thou" (which of course continues: "beside me in the wilderness").

SO now I have this, from a greeting card I saw probably 25 years ago, stuck in my head:

"A loaf of bread, a jug of wine, and thou, beside me in the wilderness...

making those crazy wine sandwiches!"

maybe if I give it to you, I'll get rid of it?

What's stuck in your head?

even more on "you can't pronounce spelling"

My DD, Grace, is 14--well, not just yet, but for some reason in the past few years, I keep rounding up with her. She's in 8th grade.

She read part of the Odyssey in her text book. And last night she said, "Do you know what Odysseus told the Cyclops his name was?"

"Nobody," I answered.

"Yeah," she said, "only he spelled it n o h b o h and then a capital D." (or something like that, she started spelling out each letter) "And the Cyclops was so stupid he didn't realize..."

"Wait," I said. "In the first place, you can't hear spelling, so when Odysseus said his name, he wouldn't have been able to say it so it sounded spelled that way. And in the second place, well, the story was written in Greek! And in the third place, the Cyclops was REALLY stupid, because he heard 'nobody' and thought it was a name, not a word!"

Oh.

I need to dig out her textbook and see what it really said; I'll update later.

More "you can't pronounce spelling"

From "Dinosaur Comics," Jan. 03, 2006, by Ryan North

(and thanks to Dan, at Our Bold Hero, and his "Language Is the People's" Web log)

It doesn't have to be a prefix

Don't just stick a hyphen between "mini" and the word that follows.

"Mini" is a great prefix (in which case it's set solid or attached with a hyphen). 

But it is ALSO an adjective, all on its own. (In an adjectival state, it stands alone).

And sometimes the adjective is what's needed! ("Big dreams and mini budgets," for example)

Dolls wear mini skirts.

Tarts wear miniskirts. 

Soccer moms drive minivans.

Their sons drive mini vans.

Peter Callahan makes mini treats. (Tiny little cheeseburger, etc.) Not mini-treats

I have learned something new!

"Daup" is not a word.

Don't ask me why; I always thought one "dauped" canvas (you know, before painting on it, or after stretching it across a wooden airframe).

Nope, it's "dope."  

And interesting to me is that "dope" meant "a goopy stuff you use to coat other stuff" long before it meant drugs. And in fact, it makes sense that illegal drugs would be called "dope"--since illega. drugs are a goopy stuff you use to coat other stuff.

You learn something new every day.

Is there a word you always believed existed?

Verb of the Month

When I was at InformationWeek, we used to joke about "the search for the perfect verb" when writing headlines (and news stories).

Verbs are everything. But finding an interesting one that wasn't too weird was hard.

Today's Wall Street Journal, above the logo:

                 "Aid Delays Augur Deeper Suffering"

How's THAT for a verb?

More on the link between spelling and pronunciation.

From Mark Liberman over at Language Log, some musings on "eye dialect" (neat term, that)

Language Log » Eye-dialect in the newspapers

Eye dialect being, the use of spellings to indicate a spoken dialect and pronunciation.

In its simplest, it's things like spellin' instead of spelling.

At it's most extreme, was as "wuz" in order to indicate that the speaker is stupid (OK, maybe not stupid, but rough and unlettered)--even though, well, even the most erudite of folks pronounces was as "wuz."

More nuances and expertise in Mr. Liberman's post, and in the comments.

More on "you can't pronounce spelling"--sort of, "you can't pronounce capitalization."

I'm head over heels for Terry Pratchett these days, and in his book "Thud," there is this exchange:

"You know, the dwarfs were listening for something underground? You wondered if someone was trapped right? But is there . . . I don't know . . . something dwarf-made that talks?"

Carrott's brow wrinkled.

"You're not talking about a cube, are you, sir?"

"I don't know. Am I? You tell me!"

"The deep-downers have some in their mine, sir,bu I'm sure there's none buried here. They're generally found in hard rocks. Anyway, you wouldn't listen for one. I've never heard of them talking when they are found. Some dwarfs have spent years learning how to use just one of them!"

"Good! Now: What Is A Cube?" said Vimes, glancing at his in tray. [leaving stuff out here] "It's, um . . . It's lik ea book, sir. Which talks. A bit like your Gooseberry, I suppose. Most of them container interpretatiosn of dwarf lore by ancient lawmasters. it's very old . . . magic, I suppose."

"Suppose?" said Vimes.

[I'm getting there--here is the pertinent part]

"Well, technomantic Devices look like things that are built, you know, out of--"

"Captain, you've lost me again. What are Devices, and why do you pronounce the capital D?"

Right there.

The capitals in "What Is A Cube" are there to indicate that Vimes stressed each word, probably pausing before each one of them--sort of a version of what I see lately: What. Is. A. Cube.

I suppose, Carrot would stress the word Device, and perhaps pausing slightly.

But it's an interesting idea--that you could pronounce a capital letter.

More on Pratchett's "Thudd"--there's a scene at the end where a dwarf interprets an old dwarfish recording (recorded on the cube or Device mentioned above) for modern English (Discwordish? Ankh-Morporkian?) speakers, and Pratchett represents the speech w/ "antique" spelling: 

"Whoever is speaking a just said: 'Art thys thyng workyng?' "

The voice spoke again. As the cracked, old syllables unrolled, Bashfullsson went on: " 'The first thyng Tak did, he wroten hymself; the second thyng Tak did, he wroten teh Laws; the thyrd thyng Tak did, he wroten the World, the fourth thyng Tak did, he wroten ay cave; the fyfth thyng Tak did...."

Pratchett uses this spelling device for a couple of paragraphs, during the introduction part of the recording, and then switches into modern spelling.

But it made me wonder, how is "thyng" pronounced differently from  "thing."

And it's a sign of my enjoyment of Pratchett's world and writing and humor that it doesn't bother me to have him do this.

If it were another writer, it would probably annoy me immensely.