08.13.08

Your obligatory Olympics reference

Posted in verbal stupidity, write tight at 9:05 am by Bill Brohaugh

I tuned out the chat-drama-chat-ohhh!-chat-chat-drama-drama-draaammmma Olympic commentary last night shortly after one of the U.S. women gymnasts flubbed a floor landing, and one commentator declared, “That is a disaster of immense proportions.” Or some such blather.

Tune-out. Not remote-control-sound-down tune-out. “Oh, just shut up,” tune-out.

The Chicago Fire was a disaster of immense proportions. Hurricane Katrina. Vesuvius. A moment of gymnastic imbalance is, well, a darn shame. But, oh well—there’s no molten lava surging across my kitchen floor.

Said commentator (I would mention him by name if he’d said anything to warrant me spending the energy looking it up) was perhaps trying to marry form and content in his commentary. China about to wrest Olympic Gold from our golden girls! Dreams about to be dashed! Oh the up-close-and-personal-agony-of-defeat-draaaammmmaaa! Had he wanted to marry form and content, he would have taken my instruction and just shut up every once in a while. The content before us was the incredible physical grace and artistry of the gymnastic routines. The form of the commentary should have aligned itself and assumed some quiet, graceful moments. But as it was, the commentator’s verbal gymnastics were themselves a disaster of immense proportions.

Brohaugh, just shut up!

And I will.

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08.11.08

Form and Content, and their cute offspring, Forment

Posted in assorted weird crap, punctuation, spelling, verbal stupidity at 6:34 pm by Bill Brohaugh

Herewith, some random-yet-numbered observations on using what’s without to express what’s within (with varying degrees of intent):

1. The Unintentional: File under “Well, they put the fish in my barrel and handed me the shotgun, so what am I supposed to do?”

I generally resist taking potshots at the stupid English exhibited in spam subject lines, but this buffoonish attempt simply taunted me too insistently:

do u want good pay job? World recognized University Dip1oma/Degree/Bacheloor for you

I’m sure lots good spelling on diplooma, two.

2. The Studiedly Intentional: File under “Comma sense”

Over at “On Commas, Again” in David Crystal’s blog, Crystal points out that he often employs commas in writing for form and not necessarily for grammar, in a great match of form and content:

Grammatically the commas are unnecessary, in these cases, but they represent the way I want the sentences to be internally heard. The issue becomes a matter of aesthetics, now, and so not everyone will like it. Indeed, a few weeks ago I got a ferocious email from someone complaining about the overuse of commas in my By Hook or By Crook. He found four in one short sentence, he said. Me, overuse commas, in a short sentence? Never, never, never, never, never.

3. The Concocted Intentional: File under “There’s a word I recently learned—just can’t think of it . . .”
Oh yeah. It’s lethologica. And it means “Forgetting the word you’re looking for.” The proverbial tip of your tongue is the land of Lethologia . . . only words you can’t think of reside there. Yes, I concocted the “I can’t think of the word lethologica” schtick as self-conscious form and content, but to swing back to #1 on the list above, here’s a fun bit of unintentional form and content: when lethologica is listed in the Dictionary of Difficult Words . . . because isn’t any lethological word at that moment a difficult word?

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07.13.08

The long and the short longer of it

Posted in verbal stupidity, word misuse, write tight, writing craft at 4:28 pm by Bill Brohaugh

Though the advice seems oxymoronic in the light of its Write Tight context, I regularly tell writers that longer can be shorter (and, yes, “more is less,” more or less). Longer phrasings and sentences can make for shorter reading—when additional length brings clarification, background or context. Here’s a couple of examples of short-as-ridiculously-long from recent radio news items I heard:

06.16.08

Pre-advance pre-payment, pre-tty please

Posted in redundancy, verbal stupidity, wordiness, write tight, writing craft at 6:54 am by Bill Brohaugh

The Write Tight editor in me likes this:

That’s from the English Fail blog, which is a funny (and distressing) collection of language use subject to ridicule. As one of the commenters noted: “Prepaying in advance seems easy enough. It’s prepaying in arrears that’s tricky.”

That very line of thinking is the foundation of the “As opposed to test” I recommend in Write Tight, and it leads to a couple of recent personal observations in my visit to Planet Redundancy, primarily on the radio:

• “He died of a sudden heart attack.” As opposed to a well-planned heart attack? Attacks of any stripe may have gradual underpinnings, but the attacks themselves occur suddenly. The word attack implies abruptness. He died of a heart attack would have been just as clear.
• “Are you struggling with too much credit card debt?” As opposed to struggling with too little credit card debt? “Are you struggling with credit card debt?” would have sufficed, as struggle clearly communicates that a problem is being fought, particularly since “credit card debt” also signals a problem.
• “Fine-toothed comb.” A very young comb, as it apparently is teething (and doing a good job of it, as well). Though at least one dictionary accepts “toothed” as an alternative, I contend that “fine-tooth” is not only shorter (yes, just slightly), but also less subject to sad “teething” jokes in blogs.
  

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