to the nines

Posted on September 9, 2015 | 5 comments

Today has been the ninth day of the ninth month. Three squared squared. If it weren’t for the generally inopportune timing (beginning of academic year, just after Labour Day, weather rather variable), I’d say it’s a good day to have a formal dress event. You know, so you could dress up to the nines.

Why to the nines, now? Where, in fact, are the nines?

Some people (notably Walter Skeat, first editor of the Oxford Etymological Dictionary, as Michael Quinion tells us) have suggested that it comes from Middle English to then eyen – at that time eyen was a normal plural for eyes. So if you can be armed to the teeth, you can be dressed to the eyes. The problem is just three things: first, there are no known printed usages of the phrase to the nines before the 1700s (several centuries too late); second, people who are dressed to the nines often have a hat, which is above the eyes; third, the first known usages don’t refer to dressing.

The first citation in the Oxford English Dictionary is from 1719: “How to the nines they did content me.” Two more early usages are from Robert Burns in the 1790s: “’Twad please me to the Nine”; “Thou paints auld nature to the nines.” In fact, we don’t see the phrase dressed to the nines in print as such until 1837, and even a century later to the nines (or sometimes to the nine) is seen with other things to mean ‘the utmost degree’.

Which is to say, the whole nine yards. Which used to be the whole six yards, but then, you know, inflation. Well, nine is more ultimate than six, isn’t it? So to a lesser degree is seven, as in seventh heaven, but that rhymes, so there’s no reason to go to ninth heaven. (Meanwhile, the third degree is a reference to a specific Masonic examination, so it has never advanced. Well, not never – you can find Google hits for the ninth degree.)

That’s actually as much as we know for sure about the origin of to the nines: it uses the highest single-digit number as an expressive. Perhaps it has something to do with the fact that it sits high forward with the /n/ sounds and has that vowel closing on high front, as though the tongue is dancing eagerly on its tip. Perhaps it really is intended to be penultimate. Somehow to the tens doesn’t quite sound as fine, does it?

I like dressing up. It’s true that the quality of your dress has no relation to the quality of your personality, but why not please the eyes? Indeed, if you what’s inside the package is not so great, it’s at least something if the outside is pleasing. Trooper may have scorned the three dressed up as a nine, but I am more inclined towards the Split Enz view, from “Ships” (which somehow no one has posted on YouTube):

Some people pop a pill, when they feel exposed
Long as I’m dressed to kill
I’ll make sure no-one knows
Disguised in fancy-dress
Deep down, messed up
Hit town dressed up
To the nines, to the nines, to the nines, my disguise

It’s not the be-all and end-all, but it’s better than nothing, no?

The be-all and end-all? In numerology, 9 is sometimes thought of as the number of ending. After it, the cycle starts again at 1. But really, that makes it the number of being all and preparing to begin yet again – to end the ending. And 9 is particularly fascinating precisely because it is 1 less than 10, and we write numbers in columns of multiples of 10. Add 9 to anything and the digits still add up to the same thing: 23+9=32 (2+3=3+2); 76+9=85 (7+6=8+5).

This is because you add ten and subtract one, so you reduce the ones column by one as you advance the tens column by one, and the total stays the same. Every multiple of 9 has digits that add up to 9 or (for larger numbers) a multiple of 9, for the same reason: every time you increase one digit by 1, you decrease another by 1… and the basis of all that is adding on 9, so it stays at 9.

This also means that if you multiply anything by 9, the digits will always add up to 9 or a multiple of 9: 3×9=27 (2+7=9); 7×9=63 (6+3=9); 64×9=576 (5+7+6=18… and 1+8=9). As the nine gives, it takes away.

So nine is agreeable; you can add it anywhere and it fits in. But when things multiply, it prevails. So too when you are dressed to the nines: You are ready to glide in anywhere, but if matters take a turn, you are suited to prevail. But always with grace, of course, and pleasingly to then eyen.

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blatant

Posted on September 8, 2015 | 2 comments

Blatant! It’s like a blunt blast from a blaring horn, something so obvious it’s a blow to the eyes and ears. It’s the exact opposite of latent, and the difference is made with the simple addition of the punch-to-the-head /b/ at the start. It’s like so many other things that start with an obstruent (b, f, g) plus a liquid (r or l) and the “long a” sound /eɪ/ in a trochaic word: blazing, glaring, flagrant, flaming, brazen…

The things most often described as blatant include discrimination, racism, prejudice, hypocrisy, and violation and disregard of various things (laws, codes, sanctions, shareholders…). There is clearly a typical sense of a shameless display of blameworthy behaviour. It’s a word for the sort of person who will lie openly… to your face… about you.

But where did we get this word? Did it slip in the backdoor, evolve from somewhere, undergo a gradual change of meaning? Perhaps it’s formed on bleat as an alternative to bleating? Or perhaps it comes from Latin blatire to babble?

There are theories and claims. But we do know exactly when it first appeared in the English language. Wander over to your bookshelf and, with both hands, heft down your copy of Edmund Spenser’s Faerie Queene, that epic poem published in the 1590s. In it, Spenser creates a character he calls the blatant beast (or blattant beast – he spells it two ways, and we can see he probably meant it to have a “short” a). It is a thousand-tongued monster, the offspring of Cerberus and Chimaera, and it symbolizes slander. The word blatant from that came to mean ‘noisy, obtrusive, clamorous’ and thence the modern sense. Somewhere in there the a became the “long” diphthong it is now, no longer just noisy but pointed.

Still, where did Spenser get the word from? Did he just blatantly make it up? He might as well have. At this point, it matters little; it is known by its sound and by the company it keeps. And it does not even pretend otherwise.

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tirade

Posted on September 7, 2015 | Leave a comment

You know what it is when someone launches into a profanity-laced torrent of irate verbiage, an oral rampage of outrage, against someone or something. Oh yes. What does one launch into? What is always against someone or something and often profanity-laced? Yes, when someone is fit to be tied and makes a verbal raid on some subject, it’s a tirade. Alas, the person on the receiving end is so rarely the one responsible for the provoking state of affairs. Hey, as they say in French, ne tirez pas sur le pianiste! Don’t shoot the piano player!

Funny, isn’t it: in English it’s shoot but in French they say tirez sur, which literally translates to ‘draw on’ or ‘pull on’ – or, more figuratively, aim at or shoot at. From that, a volley or shot is a tirade (which in French sounds sort of like English “tea rad”): literally something pulled, but actually something let fly. A salvo. Figuratively, it’s also a long passage of prose or a speech. In English, it has a specialized use referring to a passage of poetry, but in ordinary use it always includes a sense of vehemence. A tirade is like a harangue. Long.

Just like the vowels in it. Well, they’re what we call “long”; actually, they’re diphthongs now, not lengthened versions of their “short” counterparts. They start with the mouth wider open, and then it narrows down, like biting. This seems to make the word tenser, wilder, more expansive and more aggressive. It also gives a stronger echo of other angry words. Just as the words rampage and outrage, which come from French and have the same –age suffix as garage and garbage, express their tension and resemblance to rage with the turning of a reduced “short” vowel into a full-value diphthong, tirade sounds more irate and more like I rage and I hate when the original French vowels are reinterpreted according to English orthography. Though she might tell tales at length, Scheherazade would not launch into a tirade – but a pirate might, or a raider, or a tyrant… unleashing it on his poor tired aide.

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None of it is true, and none of them are right

Posted on September 4, 2015 | 7 comments

One of the more popular grammar superstitions is that none must always only be singular. This belief has less basis and produces more awkward results than the idea that you should never step on cracks in the sidewalk, but it persists, even though if you Google none is none are you will get a full page of authoritative sites, none of which supports it.

None of which support it. Not one of which supports it.

Ah, and there’s the thing: those who spread this bit of syntactic spit-over-the-shoulder support it with the contention that none is short for not one or no one. Since you would say no one agrees or not one of them agrees, you should – they counsel – say none agrees and none of them agrees.

Even if the supposed derivation were true, it wouldn’t matter: etymology is not a guide to current usage. Even words that have their current form due to a historical mistake still aren’t guided by the pre-mistake usage – although peas was a reanalysis of pease, which was singular, we can’t now say The peas is ready. (Well, not in standard English, anyway.) But none isn’t a contraction of no one or not one.

OK, to be fair, back in the mists of time it came from a root meaning ‘not’ and a root meaning ‘one’ or ‘any’. But by the time there was an English, it was already one word, nan or non, and it was already being used with plural as well as singular referents.

And there’s the important thing: you can use it with the singular. Of course you can. It’s the less common usage – when we want the singular we are more likely to say no one or not one – but it’s entirely available. You can even use the conjugation to make a subtle differentiation: “We expected deer, but none have arrived”; “We expected deer, but none has arrived.” (The former sentence might be spoken in a park, the latter perhaps in a restaurant.)

Given that every authoritative, learned source you can find will tell you that none can be singular or plural – and given that anyone well read in English knows it by reflex – how is it that so many people insist on this mumpsimus? Most likely just because it was enshrined in one book that remains popular, even though it is inconsistent, self-contradictory, and prone to declaring many of the most revered authors in the language to be wrong.

The book in question is The Elements of Style by Strunk and White. If you want to know why people who know English syntax well tend not to be so fond of it, read Geoffrey Pullum’s “50 Years of Stupid Grammar Advice.” Pullum notes that on the matter of plural none, Strunk and White place themselves above Oscar Wilde, Bram Stoker, and Lucy Maude Montgomery.

They also place themselves above John Dryden (himself no wild descriptivist), Henry Fielding, Oliver Goldsmith, and Somerset Maugham – and that’s just in the short list of citations in the Oxford English Dictionary. I particularly like these two illustrative quotations presented by the OED:

None are more ignorant of them than those learned Pedants…
—Tom Jones, Henry Fielding

There are none so deaf as those who will not hear the truth.
—The Times, March 4, 1963

So trust your ear, and ignore those who self-deafen with this superstitious hypercorrection. None of them is right.

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from time to time, time after time

Posted on September 2, 2015 | 3 comments

These are both phrases I see from time to time. I don’t know that I would say I see them time after time. But they are familiar to me, and have associations for me.

They’re also highly idiomatic. I hadn’t really thought much about how anomalous they are in form until I saw where a non-native speaker of English had written from a time to a time.

Well, why not? What are we saying, in fact? From this time to that time? Not exactly, nor from time A to time B, nor some recursive operation on one axis of a space-time graph. Somehow the times are implicitly specified and iterative. If something changes from day to day, that means it’s different every day. We can do this with place too: from place to place. We can say we went from house to house. Indeed, if I say I was at the cat show and I went from cat to cat petting them, you have a clear picture of me stopping at every next cat I came to and petting it.

So is it that from time to time gives us a picture of something occurring at every next time? Rather not. It is much more desultory. It’s not like going from town to town, from day to day; it’s just here and there, now and again. It’s relaxed, insouciant. Occasional. Not at all from moment to moment. Just, you know, from time to time.

Time after time, on the other hand, is incessant. It matches other uses of the same form: cat after cat, he petted them obsessively; beer after beer, he shotgunned it and stuck the can in a chicken for roasting (and chicken after chicken, he stuffed a beer can up its backside). Day after day, week after week, month after month: it’s a clear picture of an incessant procession. It’s atypical because it specifies the nouns involved without a definite or indefinite article or possessive. But at least it’s consistent.

Except that time is not something that occurs at regular intervals. It’s a continuum. We’re using time here to refer to moments – just as we do in this time and one chicken at a time and so on – and we’re implying a procession of regular intervals. We use time similarly in from time to time, except it doesn’t have the tight insistence that other things in that phrase form have.

Well, it doesn’t anymore. Although the ‘now and again; occasionally’ sense has been with it since its first appearance (in the 1400s), from time to time was used for a time (note that time in for a time refers to an extent of time, not an instance) to mean ‘continuously’. Which may explain the phrase I associate with it.

I’ve known from time to time since I was young, but since I’ve been regularly exposed to Anglican liturgies, I have from time to time encountered it, in the General Confession from the Book of Alternative Services (an updated version of the Book of Common Prayer): “We acknowledge and confess our manifold sins and wickedness, Which we from time to time most grievously have committed, By thought, word and deed, Against thy divine majesty.” We can leave aside my association of manifold with auto mechanics. It’s that from time to time that seems so out of keeping to my modern ears. It’s as though someone said to me, “Have you committed any sins or wickedness?” and I said, with a shrug, “Eh, from time to time.” You know, a sin here, a wickedness there. But when it’s in this self-denunciatory common enunciation, we learn that from time to time can be sterner.

Still, wouldn’t it be better if it were “which we, time after time, most grievously have committed”? I think that puts it across much better to the modern ear. There is an impatient insistence to it. It’s also fresher. Although time after time was in use as early as from time to time, it doesn’t show up in Shakespeare or the King James Bible, as from time to time does (and, incidentally, mostly has our modern meaning in those contexts).

I’ll tell you where it does show up, though, and what is my first association with it. It’s an instance where it’s insistent but not impatient. It’s this song, that I return to on occasion and yet with a guarantee that I will return to it again – in other words, I return to it from time to time, but I will always return to it, time after time:

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deuteraesthetic

Posted on August 31, 2015 | 1 comment

Don’t pretend you don’t sniff books. We all do.

The smell of a book may not have anything to do with the quality of the contents, but it is a part of the reading experience. I love the smell of a library; it tells me I am swimming in books. I love the smell of an art gallery, too, that olio of old oil, decaying latex, aging canvas and paper, mixed with the wafting scents of coffee and quiche from the cafeteria. My wife loves the smell of an ice rink; I love the smell of a theatre backstage (dilute latex paint and a bit of wood).

And who doesn’t love the smell of a new car? For that matter, who doesn’t pay attention to the sound of their car? High-end sports car manufacturers (Porsche, Ferrari, Lamborghini) put a lot of effort into getting just the right engine sound, the one that distinguishes them from the others. It’s a mark of the mettle of the metal, the machismo of the machine. Meanwhile, vacuum cleaners have long been far louder than they need to be, just because people wouldn’t believe they worked if they were too quiet (this is changing, which pleases me; I won’t say that, like nature and cats, I abhor a vacuum, but I sure hate the sound of one).

Pick up a new wine glass. What’s one of the first things you’re likely to do to it? If you’re like me, you’ll flick it with your finger to hear the “ting.” If I see a silver coin I will drop it just to hear its higher ring when it hits. I can only assume gun owners pay attention to the sound their gun makes when it’s cocked – I know that different guns can be identified by the sound they make when being fired (AK-47s apparently have a distinctive sound unlike American equivalents; I assume an Uzi has its own resonance too; and so on). Photo equipment buffs always pay attention to the shutter sound, whether they admit it or not. One photographer I chatted with said she loved the Mamiya 7 (one of the best cameras ever made, by common opinion) but couldn’t get over the light, almost flimsy-sounding click of its shutter. (It’s also ugly. A camera only a results-oriented person could love.) Any Leica freak will have clear attachments to the sound of a Leica’s focal-plane shutter; go to Steve Huff’s website and check his videos in his reviews of Leicas and other new cameras – he never misses trying the shutter sound and comparing it to other models.

Heck, people are so attached to the sound of a shutter that digital cameras that have no mechanical shutters will come with a fake “shutter” sound – or a choice of several. But I’m not here to talk about skeuomorphs today. I’m here to talk about genuine sounds and sights and smells that are secondary to the ostensible principal function of a thing. These sensations are associated with the valued thing and so gain a glow of that value, but in many cases they also tell us something extra about the quality of the thing. How well-built is the car, the camera, or the gun? How pure is the glass or crystal, or the silver in the coin? What sort is the paper and ink in the book or magazine?

We taste reality like many of us taste wine. Why does the colour of a wine matter? What difference does it make if this pinot noir has a light ruby glow while that one bleeds like borshch? In the end, it’s the taste that matters, right? Well, let’s be honest: few of us would drink as much of it without the alcohol. But if it’s not just the alcohol that matters, why should it be just the alcohol and taste that matter? Why not appreciate the look of it? Why not appreciate the label on the bottle, too? Many people do. As well they should. Why not look for reasons to enjoy things?

Many people pretend to taste and discernment but spend their time looking for reasons not to enjoy things. It’s evident that their primary enjoyment comes from feeling themselves of superior discernment, a discernment that means knowing which few things are good and which many things are not. I do not think this is a very effective way of enjoying life. It is true that there are many things a given person will not enjoy, and that things that seem wondrous to you when you first start in a pursuit may seem trite when you know the subject better. But if you want to enjoy what you experience, why on earth would you not look for more ways and reasons to enjoy things? Why would you look only for reasons not to enjoy things? This just increases the number of things you don’t enjoy. I don’t like the look of that balance sheet.

When we appreciate secondary aspects of things – their sounds, their smells, their appearances (I’ve barely mentioned the look of cars and cameras and so on; somehow we all take it for granted that that’s important, though it has little to do with function) – we are appreciating reality as we appreciate wine. And, of course, words.

But what is the name for these sensations, these secondary aesthetic qualities? I’m not familiar with an established formal-sounding term (though perhaps someone will toss one my way), so I’ve decided to confect one from the usual classical bits. It’s the word you’ve been waiting for me to get to: deuteraesthetics (with or without the final s, as needed), from deuter, meaning ‘second’ or ‘secondary’, and aesthetic, referring to sensations. The deuteraesthetic aspects of a thing are the sound of a shutter, the smell of a book, the look of anything that has a primary function unrelated to appearance.

At base, of course, they are all sesquiotics: semiotics, but three times as good.

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Denali

Posted on August 31, 2015 | 2 comments

The late kerfuffle over the official recognition of Mount McKinley as Denali has taken me by surprise. I had actually thought that the name had been officially recognized ages ago. It turns out that while the national park surrounding it has been called Denali since 1980, the mountain itself has remained McKinley because of objections… from Ohio.

As you may know, Denali is not in Ohio. In fact, Ohio has no mountains. Why would Ohio wish to bend distant Alaska to its will like some alien Svengali? Just because Ohio happens to have the birthplace of President William McKinley. McKinley never visited Denali, but he was assassinated in 1901 and it was decided officially by the federal government in 1917 to name the mountain after him, following a tradition that had been started by a prospector who called it that when McKinley was still running for president. It had also been called Densmore’s Mountain.

Well, why would they ask the local Koyukon Athabaskan people what they had been calling it since time immemorial? They had a name for it, after all. It may not have been nailed on a sign, or somehow inlaid in the stone, but maybe someone could have asked them…?

The name, of course, was Denali, which means ‘the great one’ or ‘the big one’ (not, though it may sound appropriate, ‘the gnarly’). The Russians (who colonized Alaska for a while) had called it Bolshaya Gora, which means ‘big mountain’ and may have been a translation; anyway, it was more or less aligned with Denali. It is a big mountain; hard to deny that.

But when explorers explore and discoverers discover, they want to name things! It’s like when we were kids. We come to a new place and we discover a new playground. No one has ever seen this playground before! We just discovered it! I was the first here ever! Yeah? Well I was here two steps ahead of you, so I was the first here everer! Shut up, you two, I touched the swings first, so I was the first here everest! So what are we gonna call it?

Except, of course, we eventually learn that someone, in fact, built this playground, and lots of people have been there before. But if we’re adults in a new land, we conveniently ignore the people who were there before. They’re just this tribe we discovered! What shall we name them?

But you can’t ignore them forever. And indeed, the people of Alaska – even the non-indigenous ones – have been calling the mountain Denali for quite a long time. This isn’t some Democrat-versus-Republican issue; the politicians from Alaska who have been pushing for officialization of Denali include many Republicans.

But why would the people who live there matter, when we have this glorious tradition of honor to uphold? It’s America’s tallest mountain! It was named after an assassinated president! It’s cultural heritage! It’s always been that way!

For nearly a century, anyway. In the mouths and books of people who have never visited it and will never visit it. A change to the name is “insulting to all Ohioans!” Never mind that having Ohioans dictate what Alaskan mountains are called is insulting to Alaskans. It would be more sensible to name something in Ohio after McKinley, no?

It’s just like those fake “rules of English” (or social norms, or or or) that many people adhere to. They remember it being that way when they were kids, and maybe someone told them that was the rule, so that means it’s the great universal tradition from the golden ages and for all times. Anything else is a gross abuse and innovation.

And so we have the recent news headlines. Here’s one from The New York Times: “Mount McKinley Will Again Be Called Denali.” (Actually it never stopped being called that; it’s just being officially recognized.) But then here’s one from ABC News: “White House Renames Mount McKinley as Denali on Eve of Trip.”

Perhaps, after “renaming” the mountain what it was always called by people who had some connection to it, Obama can create a new state in honour of those who think McKinley was the original name and the local people don’t count. He can call it Denial.

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hoard

Posted on August 28, 2015 | 6 comments

Yes, I like accumulating things – judiciously, not wantonly – and I am disinclined to part with my treasures. I have an indeterminate number of books, but anyway more than there is room for, especially merged with my wife’s equally prodigious and constantly growing collecting; I have nearly a thousand CDs and no more room for new ones, so now I buy on iTunes; I have about a dozen cameras, about as many lenses for the ones that can take different lenses, and thousands upon thousands of photos stored up from them; I still have every email of any significance at all from the past sesquidecade; my section of the bedroom closet is packed like a Tokyo subway, but two thirds of them haven’t been worn this year or last; I have a dozen or so watches and two dozen or so ties; I have every issue of the Literary Review of Canada that I’ve ever worked on (nearly 20 years’ worth), and almost every issue of The Walrus since its first; I have a couple dozen bottles of liquor, but at least I finish those… gradually…

Aina thinks I may be a hoarder. But she’s the one whose clothes drawers erupt black fabric when she opens them, and she’s the one with more than a hundred books piled against the wall by her side of the bed. So.

I am not a true hoarder. A true hoarder is like this bloke I read about today, who incessantly accumulates old doors and window frames in his yard (click on the link just to see the pictures). It’s like this woman who died after a pile of her accumulated stuff collapsed on her. It’s like this person who had more than five dozen cats in a one-bedroom apartment.

Wait! Can you hoard cats? I know you can’t herd them. But are “crazy cat people” hoarders? Hoarding is for treasures, but inanimate ones, no? If I see a platoon of puddy tats, I’m more likely to think it’s a horde than a hoard.

Horde is not related to hoard, by the way. Horde comes ultimately from a Turkic word for ‘camp’. Hoard is a good old Germanic word that since the beginning of English (when it was hord) has been a noun for a collection of valuables laid away for future reference, and thence a verb for the act of laying them away. This word has been in the collection as long as there has been a collection.

English has increased its collection quite substantially since then, of course. We still have many of the oldest words, some of them at the bottoms of piles, some much worn from regular use, some brightened or bent over time – how does a gathering of treasures harden so it is heard as a bad thing, anyway? because it sounds like a hoary horror? – but we have accumulated an unmanageable treasury from our millennium and more of excursions and inventions. The English vocabulary is like Smaug’s gold-hoard (and the mot juste that’s on the tip of your tongue is its Arkenstone of the moment).

Is a word-hoard a bad thing? Robert Macfarlane seems not to think so; he glories in adding local landscape terms to his display cabinet. I don’t think so either, as my blog’s ton of word tastings (if they’re a pound each) attests. English may have an utter superfluity of words, but somehow we can always make use of one more to add just the right bit of flavour that was missing before. Unlike Scotch or Bordeaux, additions to your vocabulary are usually free and don’t occupy a lot of space.

I suppose excess words could collapse on you if you’re not careful with them. But really, my myriad of words is to me not so much a yard of dirty doors and windows (though words are, in their ways, doors and windows to the world) as a mewing mass of moggies waiting to be petted, to taste you with their sandpaper tongues, and to dig their tiny claws into you and your friends.

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Forget the title

Posted on August 26, 2015 | 6 comments

I have, on occasion, gotten responses to my articles published on commercial sites (Slate, The Week, BBC) that have focused on the titles.

Here’s the TL;DR of what follows:

Paid authors on commercial sites don’t write the titles. Forget the titles.

Seriously: When you read an article, the title is probably what drew you into it. Yay for the headline writer. They did their job. Now you’re reading the article. The person who wrote the article is a different person from the person who wrote the title. The article was written first. The title is an ad for the article.

Most people who read articles don’t actually have a clear idea of how articles are made, it turns out. A sparkling example of this came in a comment on one of my articles that was republished on Slate’s Lexicon Valley. The reader clearly assumed that I had written it following the same process he had probably used writing his last essay, which was probably for grade 9 Social Studies:

1) Come up with a topic; make it the title.

2) Start looking things up. Write as you go.

3) Stop when you run out of things.

This, as it happens, is pretty much the opposite of how real professional writers actually write their articles. Here is the sequence I typically go through:

1) Think of an interesting topic for an article. (Occasionally a publication or site that you’ve worked with will suggest a topic and see if you want to write on it. Your answer is probably YES! Writing is a drug that sometimes pays rather than costing.)

2) Do some research to see whether it’s feasible and which way it will actually go.

3) Pitch the topic to the site you want to publish it. (If you’re writing for your own blog, skip this. If you’re writing for a group blog, check with the other contributors to make sure you’re not eating someone else’s lunch.)

4) If they OK it, research the topic. Make notes.

5) Think about how to structure the article.

6) Write the article. Do a draft, revise, feel disgusted, revise thoroughly, restructure, revise, realize you can’t view it with any objectivity anymore, be done. Maybe. Put a provisional title at the top when you start. Change it when you finish, if not before.

7) Send the article to the publication. (If it’s your own blog or one you’re a joint contributor to, you will go with your last title and just publish it. And then maybe look it over in the morning and fix a few things.)

8) The publication’s editor will go over it and tighten it up and change things. If you are wise, you will assume they are right (except where they have accidentally changed the sense, in which case you obviously didn’t write it clearly, so you negotiate a revision if you can). You lack objectivity at this point. Also, they’re paying you, so that counts for something. If they’re not paying you, well, they still have a fresh perspective; how much do you respect them? Anyway, they usually run the changes past you before publishing. Not always.

9) Someone – your editor, perhaps, or some mystical nameless other – will come up with a grabby title for the article. You may or may not get to see it before it is published. (I know one person, exactly ONE person, who gets to write his own titles and they’re used as is. Hi, Dad!)

10) Someone may add theme images with or without captions. You will see them no sooner than any other reader of the publication (website). If they’re really problematic, you can always ask if they can be adjusted, but you would be wise to be quick about it.

So there it is. If you’re reading an article, you may have gotten to it because of the title, sure, but the title is an ad for the article, almost certainly written by someone else. Once you’ve started reading the article, forget the title.

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Posted in arts, editing

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dirigible, blimp

Posted on August 24, 2015 | 2 comments

What’s the difference between a dirigible and a blimp?

They have the same general form, but you don’t want to be misled. It’s tempting to assume, as I did for so many years, that the difference between the airships is visible when they’re deflated: a dirigible is rigid and a blimp is limp. It just seems so obvious, no?

Obvious but wrong. Similarity is not identity. Hydrogen and helium can both keep an airship aloft, but if you choose the wrong one you can go down in flames.

The truth is that a blimp is a dirigible. But not all dirigibles are blimps.

One may be forgiven for seeing rigid in dirigible, but I can see gerbil in it too and yet I am confident that airships are not held aloft by rodents running on wheels. Likewise, the presence of dirge, bridge, and bilge in it do not guarantee funereality, traversivity, or seawater. To find the origin of the word you must look in the right direction.

The right direction is direction itself – specifically the Latin word (and etymological origin) for it: dirigere. Something (in fact anything) that is dirigible is capable of being directed – i.e., steered. This is what all those cigar-shaped, finned, lighter-than-air vessels have in common, be they rigid (like Zeppelins – a brand name, by the way), semi-rigid, or blimps: unlike the classic “balloon-shaped” balloons, they can be steered and propelled. They are not merely at the mercy of the winds.

A blimp, then, is a kind of dirigible that does not have a rigid framework. Deflate it and it will be limp. So of course it is tempting to assume that the limp in blimp is the limp in, well, limp. There are even stories about how the word came to be, such as that the airship was “Type B: Limp.” Alas, there is a striking lack of actual historical evidence for limp­-based accounts. At least as likely are accounts linking it to the sound it makes when struck with the hand, or other more impressionistic sound-symbolic explanations. But no one’s entirely sure. Yet.

What we do know is that the word blimp showed up during World War I, when the things it names did. Of course, coming up with the ability to fly, we soon look to it for ways to hurt other people, for example by dropping bombs from above. Now, though, we have even more efficient and effective ways of killing people, so the place you’re most likely to see a blimp is floating above a sporting event – the continuation of way by other means. And actually the current Goodyear airship is the continuation of blimps by other means: it is an airship, and a dirigible one, but it is actually a semi-rigid airship made by Zeppelin.

So be wary of relying on forms! They may be nothing but hot air. They may be limp. They may be misdirecting you.

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Posted in word tasting notes

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