Marking time on words
50 years of Strunk & White
The elements of style (3rd edition, 1979) lurks on the shelf near my dictionaries and style guides. Some of its specific advice on grammar is weird, so it’s not a useful reference book. But as an argument for clarity in writing it’s wonderful.
White’s reworking of William Strunk’s original little book appeared in 1959, and was a publishing hit. Its anniversary has been marked by a new commemorative edition, and a flurry of comment.
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David Malouf at West End Library
My local public library opened in 1929, and today we marked it’s 80th birthday with a talk by David Malouf, and a birthday cake.
»more»Apronman, bagman, chair bodger
An old favourite among my browser bookmarks: A list of occupations, compiled and published on the web by the late John J Lacombe II. It’s a collection of (mostly archaic) occupations, each briefly explained.
»more»Understanding sarcasm
Yesterday I was talking to Lucy, my nine year old daughter, about irony and sarcasm and the difference between them. We looked up both words in the Collins Cobuild Dictionary:
Irony is a subtle form of humour which involves saying things that you do not mean.
Sarcasm is speech or writing which actually means the opposite of what you mean to say. Sarcasm is usually intended to mock or insult someone.
I mostly avoid sarcasm but I have a fondness for irony — a fondness that people of some other nationalities seem to lack. The dictionary can mark out a border between irony and sarcasm, with mockery and insult kept on one side. But there is contested territory where irony and sarcasm meet. Mockery and insult are feelings, not measurable commodities.
Today, I read that a research team from Haifa University has located the parts of the brain that comprehend sarcasm, according to a BBC News report.
»more»Oondooroo
This post commemorates a visit Thom Blake and I made to Oondooroo, a pastoral homestead outside Winton that has a remarkable collection of stone buildings. (Writing about this event is really just a pretext for linking to Thom’s website, and sooling the googlebots on to it).
»more»Knocking off time
In a post to the oldtools mailing list, Jeff Gorman explained the origin of ‘knocking off time’:
In case you might just want to know, the expression derives from coalmining when at the end of the shift, the miner inverts his pick and thumps the shaft end on the ground to release the head.»more»
Celebrating the Illustrated Burra Charter
In this, my three-hundredth posting to Marking time, I want to record that The Illustrated Burra Charter: Good Practice for Heritage Places has been launched.
Writing this book has been a long project for Meredith Walker and me. I have already mentioned it here a few times - at first draft, final draft, proofing, and printing stages. This is a project that seemed like it would never end. But now it has.
»more»Dewey’s birthday
According to a mention in Garrison Keillor’s writer’s almanac, today is the birthday of Melvil Dewey.
This prompted me to look at the middens of paper around me, and think about Dewey’s invention of the vertical filing cabinet. Thinking turned into procrastination. Instead of putting those papers into those filing cabinets, I turned to Google. I found this book review: The social life of paper. Also see the short biographical entries in the Columbia encyclopedia and Wikipedia.
Checking the proofs
At last. The book should be on the press this week.
»more»Placeholder
Actually posted on 7 February 2005.
Until I posted this, there was nothing here for the month of July 2004. That was the month I came back from a New Zealand sabbatical and I was a bit busy. But having a missing month in the monthly archive just looked odd, and I had to fix it. So, here is a dose of lorem ipsum.
»more»Ulysses in daily doses
Today is the centenary of Bloomsday, the day on which everything in James Joyce’s Ulysses took place.
I used to think Ulysses was unapproachable, until I bought myself the Naxos audio book. For long driving trips I load the four disks into the CD magazine, and switch on as soon as I get onto the highway. Jim Norton reads most of the text, with Marcella Riordan as Molly. It’s like having them in the car with me, telling me the story. It’s wonderful, and I’m not the only one who thinks so.
»more»Dub dub dub
I heard this today on Radio New Zealand — Linda Clark interviewed a guest, then announced his web address: Dub-dub-dub wildlands dot cc, instead of the usual clumsy dubya-dubya-dubya…
»more»Engravings on wood
At a second-hand bookshop in Whangarei I bought a copy of E Mervyn Taylor’s Engravings on wood (Wellington: Mermaid Press, 1957). This book displays a body of work influenced by the natural environment of New Zealand, and embedded in the European tradition of printing from engraved end-grain wood blocks. The native birds, plants (like the toi toi), landscapes and people of New Zealand were his subjects, and he engraved them with freshness.
I had not heard of him before, but this says more about my poor knowledge of New Zealand’s cultural history than it does about the artist. I know now that Mervyn Taylor (1906-1964) was a well-known and well-regarded artist.
»more»Dan Price’s moonlight chronicles
The Morning News has a delightful interview with Dan Price, artist, writer and publisher of The moonlight chronicles.
After working as a photojournalist for 10 years I sold all my cameras and began documenting my own little life instead of everyone else’s. Using a pen and paper I was able to document what I was seeing without a machine between me and the subject. If you draw lots you can become very addicted to that peaceful state of being. It’s definitely my drug of choice!»more»
Stop verbing those nouns
Kick me in the shins if I ever write anything as obscure as the following — it’s the abstract for a new book published by IBM, entitled ‘Architecting Portal Solutions’:
»more»Hanlon’s razor
From the Jargon lexicon: Hanlon’s Razor /prov./ A corollary of Finagle’s Law, similar to Occam’s Razor, that reads “Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity.” The full entry offers some notes on the origins of the term.
Denis O’Donovan’s library
In 1874 Denis O’Donovan became Queensland Parliamentary Librarian. He was an unlikely arrival in the colonial frontier town of Brisbane — capital of the state of Queensland, separated from New South Wales 15 years before. O’Donovan was a cultivated man, educated in Ireland and France.
»more»Digital Gutenberg bibles II
My post about digital Gutenberg bibles has a sequel. Another Gutenberg bible has been digitised. [via kottke.org]
»more»The month of May
Lest the month go by without leaving anything in the archive, I should explain myself. Meredith Walker and I have handed over the last draft of the new Illustrated Burra Charter book. The project-with-no-end will soon be finished.
»more»Being Googled
I can’t explain it — it’s just a funny feeling that I’m being Googled — caption to a cartoon in the New Yorker of two men talking over drinks.
Doggerel
Outside of a dog, a book is man’s best friend.
Inside of a dog, it’s too dark to read.
— Groucho Marx
Haircut blogs and other inventions
Pseudodictionary.com collects new words and credits their inventors. So we know who to thank for the useful term haircut blog. That reminds me…
Driving Allen Ginsberg
Elsa Dorfman's fond stories and pictures of Allen Ginsberg reminded me of the time the Beat Poet came to Brisbane.
»more»Irony recognition
From a UK think-tank: We are a charitable institution, founded in 1996, devoted to ensuring that standards of English comprehension are maximised throughout the World Wide Web. Our research revealed what many had previously suspected, and reported informally — certain web users were incapable of recognising, let alone using, irony or sarcasm. This was news to me, but I am pleased to know they have a solution. It’s a web browser plug-in that uses new algorithms to alert users to irony, sarcasm, satire and parody. Downloads are free, but donations to support the research are invited.
Pebbledash people
The BBC’s E-cyclopedia: the words behind the headlines explains a new British use of pebbledash as a term indicating suburbia. Pebbledash people is spin doctor's shorthand for a social group.
Thought to be Tories' paradigm target voter, numbering 2.5 million in 178 target seats. Derives from “pebbledash subtopia”, one of 52 postcode categories employed by market research specialists Experian. Average household income: £25,000; likely to read Daily Mail; not very neighbourly; keen on DIY.»more»
Engaging self obsession
Michael Barrish writes: Google changed my life. This says something about my life. I find this blogger’s self obsession engaging. He carries a bag everywhere, he says. He describes its contents in forensic detail:
»more»New word: NARU
I have spotted this new word on websites and news groups. It appears as NARU, but I predict it will shift to the lower case naru as it slides from acronym to ordinary word.
»more»Australian word map
Word Map is an interactive website mapping Australian regionalisms — words, phrases or expressions used by particular language groups. Add your regionalism or search to see what others have contributed.
Digital Gutenberg bibles
In March 2000, ten researchers and technical experts from Keio University in Tokyo and from NTT spent two weeks in The British Library creating digital images of the two [Gutenberg] Bibles and the other related items.»more»
Writing by numbers: 100
The idea behind 100 words is simple: Write 100 words, no more, no less, every day.
»more»Ftrain spotting
Ftrain is listed in my bookmarks under the heading blogs. But it’s not the usual daily stream of jottings and outbound links. Paul Ford writes short pieces of fiction and non-fiction, each richly linked to other pieces on the site. You can follow connections up and down a hierarchy of subjects, sideways to related pieces, or back and forth chronologically. Ftrain is built on a database of content, and (I guess) some nifty programming that maintains the pages.
»more»Writing by numbers: 500
The Hoopla 500 is an experiment in text. Each entry is approximately 500 words in length, and topically can cover anything from absolute fiction to painfully detailed truth. It is not a diary, a weblog, an art project, a zine or a venue for storytelling. It [is] defined most precisely as itself: the Hoopla500. Sometimes it may be pretentious, others self effacing, but the goal is simply that it will be. In other words, its existence is the sole justification and explanation of its purpose.»more»That, and I like doing it. [Statement by the author, Leslie Harpold]
Ratbag
Any person whose eccentricity I find appealing I am apt to call a ratbag. To me, it’s a word that implies fondness, an Australian idiom it seems. The British dictionaries either don’t know the word, or don’t see any positive connotation in it, and my old Websters doesn’t know the word at all. Here’s what I found:
»more»Recipe for boredom
See this piece by Laura Calder: Recipe for boredom: why must the modern cookbook be such a flavorless affair? She quotes from Elizabeth David, Sir Hugh Platt, George Augustus Sala and Hannah Wooley to show the literary delights of the recipe, now lost. Like Hannah Wooley’s recipe from The Compleat Gentlewoman, published in 1711:
»more»Letterpress
I’m reading Counterpunch: making type in the sixteenth century, designing typefaces now by Fred Smeijers. Fred is a digital type designer who has gone back to the roots of printed type. He has studied early type-makers’ tools in museums, and taught himself to make type punches used for making moulds for casting type for hand setting. A fascinating book.
»more»Omit unnecessary words
An unusual weblog, Textism looks good and reads well. Such economy. Just three words today — sometimes it snows — linked to wordless photographs. It’s been snowing in Pompignan. I want to go there.
Mark time
Wait idly for something to occur, as in ‘We were just marking time until we received our instructions’. This idiom alludes to the literal meaning of marching in place to the time, or beat, of music. [Early 1800s].
— from The American heritage dictionary of idioms by Christine Ammer.