I don’t think I have mentioned that three weeks ago our family room was destroyed by a flood.  Our water heater “gave up the ghost” but continued to fill.  When I found it, the water had been pouring out of the top of the water heater for several hours.  There were three to four inches of water over our entire family room, which had just been redecorated two years ago.  Everything was soaked, much of it beyond repair.

The people we called came immediately and removed the standing water and set in place the equipment needed to dry the place out.  The walls were soaked up to four feet high.  Electric heat equipment, our desk top computer’s tower, boxes of papers and forms, chairs, a sofa, etc.   All damaged or completely ruined by the water.  The water heater and the boiler had to be replaced.

They are still working on the reconstruction.  They had to give it time to dry out thoroughly, but now the insulation has been restored and they are ready to put the wall board back up.   That should start the redecorating.   We’ve picked out new carpeting and paint.

Oh, did I mention that our office is in the family room?  That’s the point of this blog.  My desk was ruined but I was able to grab my laptop before it was damaged.   I am now working from the dining room table.   If you remember a blog  I posted back a couple of years ago, I mentioned the idea that location for writing is very important.  At that time I was writing from our sun room, but I eventually moved my desk to the family room on the lower level to be near the copier and to be further away from the TV and the noise of family life.  It has turned out to be a very good place to be able to concentrate on the work I’m doing.

Now I’m in the dining room.  I’m feeling displaced.  This isn’t where I’m supposed to be, and my rhythm is out of synch.  It just isn’t the right place to be writing.   I did take my laptop to Starbuck’s a couple of times, but writing there interrupts another need of mine…to socialize, to read the NY Times thoroughly,  and to people-watch.   They are as much a part of  my writing routine as sitting in front of my keyboard typing.

When I was9 years old my father, a car dealer, took my brother and me on a trip to Detroit to pick up our brand, new 1950 Kaiser Manhattan.  We literally saw it come off the assembly line before it was checked out and we could drive it back home.  We travelled to Detroit on the Detroit Flyer, a railroad train, and I found myself seated next to an older gentleman who was a “DP” from Poland.  That meant that he was a displaced person.  His tag which hung from his lapel had the letters DP on it, and he used the term to introduce himself to me in pretty good English.  All the way from Albany to Detroit he talked about his experience in Poland during “the War” and how he came to America.   He was happy to be here, but he did feel displaced, like a fish out of water.  He couldn’t believe what he found here; it was so different from his tiny, rural community in Poland.  I found myself trying to imagine what that felt like.

Well, this experience of being displaced from my study in the family room doesn’t begin to compare with what that gentleman was feeling.  But I do have to say that I feel uncomfortable, and find it harder to write.  I can’t wait to get back to a desk, my resource books, and the quiet setting where I can get back in touch with some of the work which is sitting idle during this hiatus.

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Photo Credit:  Remodernranch.com

It is possible to pronounce reportage as [ri-PAWR-tij], but I love the way the more French pronunciation sounds, so I prefer [rep-awr-TAHZH], with the accent on last syllable.   It is a 19th century word, obviously from the French language.   Its meaning is simple:  it means to report something, usually in writing.

I mention this word now because it is increasingly important to be able to differentiate the way in which news is presented in the print media and on television and radio.  I fear that the distinction between reportage and opinion get blurred at times, perhaps more frequently of late.   The election campaigns we have just concluded (thanks be to God!) had moments of “campaign news” that were, from time to time, opinion pieces that were masked as news reports.

This is particularly true on talk television, where the names of Fox News (a term that is seen as an oxymoron by some) became synonymous with “The Republican Party publicity office” and MSNBC served the same purpose for the Democratic Party.   If one went to these channels for information on the latest news in the campaigns, it was necessary to filter the biases in order to get to the truth.  Sometimes it wasn’t possible.

The “reporters” for these stations have been granted press credentials, and they sit in the same seats as those from CBS, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, and The Washington Post.   Of late there has been a call for the cancelling of credentials for these two channels, as well as for a group of other media resources which have been cited for regular flaunting of political bias.

There is no media group which is 100% free of political bias.  Whenever a newspaper “endorses” a candidate for office, they have stepped over the line.   And political “preferences” are visible in the best of the newspapers, The New York Times and the Washington Post being seen as “liberal” in their leanings, and The Wall Street Journal identified as more conservative.   But these are usually referred to as “leanings” and not outright “biases.”

The problem for the public is that it is often difficult at times to sort out the reportage from opinion.  For instance, some time ago I read an article about the Governor of the State of Rhode Island in the local newspaper (front page, upper fold) which was clearly tainted with a bias.   The reader cannot help but be influenced by such reporting, especially when it falls on the front page.

My understanding of journalism is that the front page and designated “news” pages are meant to be places where unbiased, independent articles are printed, and that opinion pieces are restricted to the page on which editorials and op-ed pieces are located.   Of course, it is sometimes difficult to read even the comic page without bias being present.

I hope that this concern among Americans for the blurring of the boundaries between reportage and opinion never ends up in the hands of legislators.  It is not a legislative issue.  The news industry is the vehicle through which this issue can be identified and resolved.  It is really up to them to police their own industry.  It can’t come soon enough.

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Photo Credit:  Chris Roush

Quantum is a word formerly reserved to the field of science and metrics.  It referred to measurement, specifically meaning that there was a huge, sudden up-tick in quantities of whatever was being measured.

However, in recent years the word has been co-opted for use in more common language patterns, signifying, again, a sudden, dramatic increase in something being measured … not necessarily math or science.  It would not be uncommon to read a sentence that might say:

“There has been a quantum leap in viewership of the movie Argo.”

or,

“The favorability of the candidate has taken a quantum leap.”

In both cases, the point is that something has inspired a sudden interest in the movie or the person which is surprising and note-worthy.

Like most descriptive words, however, the term quantum leap is eligible for easy exaggeration.   If a candidate’s poll figures have gone from a 1% lead to a 2% lead, it would not be unlikely at all for the campaign to indicate that the candidate’s favorability has taken a quantum leap.   Not so.   The increase is barely measurable.

In fact, particularly in polls, there are  words in small print at the bottom of the poll numbers which are seldom read or understood by most readers.   Margin of Error: 4.5%.    That means that there is a likelihood of error in the poll which might skew the results by as much as 4.5%.  Hardly makes an indication of a 1% increase a quantum leap, and it may not even exist.

There is a danger in the use of exclamatory or excessively aggressive language when writing or reporting.    It is similar to the excessive use of exclamation points, when the truth is that the comment is fairly obtuse or insignificant.  It is far better to stay in a range of mild pleasure and be safe.

A quantum leap might be reserved for a day on which a specific stock offering is gobbled up and shoots to the unbelievable level without warning.  Or when the clamoring for books like the first Harry Potter novels came out and were an immediate rage throughout the world.  Or when the Prius was first introduced and there was a 6 month waiting period for delivery.  Or when attendance at places of worship accelerated  after the 9/11 tragedy.

Bryan Garner, in his book, Garner’s Modern American Usage, cautions:

“The popular sense [of Quantum Leap], involving a massive change, seems genuinely useful.  Its only disadvantage is that it’s now a VOGUE WORD and a CLICHE.”

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Illustration Credit: libertarians

Who escaped high school English classes without having to study, memorize, or recite such elegies as “O Captain, my Captain” by Walt Whitman or Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard by Thomas Gray? At the time the themes seemed morbid and funereal to a teenager, but it was an important piece of literary inquiry which would bear fruition in later study.  We learned clearly that an elegy was a poetic expression of sadness and lament.

I was surprised, therefore, in reading an article in the New York Times yesterday to see the adjectival form of the word elegy, elegiac, used in a way that clearly went against the meaning I have lived with for decades. In writing an article about Senator Scott Brown (R, MA) journalist Katherine Q.  Seeley refers to his recent TV ads which have featured prominent Democrats who support Brown in his re-election bid as “elegiac commercials.“  I’m not sure what meaning Ms  Seeley meant for the term, although I’m sure it was intended to be complimentary.  However, the ads are not poetic, and certainly have not been created to create sadness or lamentation (except, perhaps, for his Democratic opponent, Elizabeth Warren.)

It’s a curious experience of a profound word seeming to fit into a very positive article, but, nevertheless, sending out the wrong message to the readers who may take the time to inquire about the meaning of the word.  Stumbling upon this gaffe is a reminder to writers to use caution when trying to employ elegant terminology.

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Photo Credit: Savio DSilva Network

“Thank you for the sensible critique. Me & my neighbor were just preparing to do a little research about this. We got a grab a book from our area library but I think I learned more clear from this post. I’m very glad to see such magnificent info being shared freely out there.”

I get about ten of these spam comments every day.   I commend my server for having the equipment to spot them and isolate them, but it isn’t that difficult.  The “over-the-top” praise language is pretty easy to identify.   And when I have written a blog posting about something as out of the ordinary as  the derivation of the word “Moxie,” replete with a photo of a can of the bitter-tasting drink, it makes the exaggerated praise all the more comical.  I’m sure the spam writer was just aching to get his article about moxie finished so he could submit it to the Estonian Weekly magazine.

I suppose some people just hit the delete button when they get spam.  It’s a nuisance and it uses up valuable time just reading it before deleting it.   But I find it amusing.  I don’t read all of them, but every day I scan them just to get a sense about how ridiculous they are.

The first give-away is the spelling errors and the mis-use of language.   Adjectives which are usually reserved for superlative experiences at the Olympics or from outer space are applied to the most mundane postings.   And they usually have almost nothing to do with the content of the posting to begin with.   Then I check the URL of the sender and discover that the last three letters are Russ or Est or Lit.  The companies identified with the sender are the most exciting, such as the Black Hat Company, the XXX Literary Guild, or Spotted Cow Used Computers, Ltd.    I never open them, knowing that I’ve been tagged forever if I do, or … worse yet … that my computer will crash in three seconds.

It used to be fun to work on the computer.  It’s getting less fun all the time.   Spam is a big part of it.  Advertising is another factor.   It seems that every time I hit an errant key my laptop lapses into an ad  (or several ads)  for some company and it takes me lost time  to get back to where I was originally.    I tend to type with speed, so the frequency of this happening is more than occasional.

I’m told that if I went to an Apple I’d encounter less spam.   I’m tempted.   When I sit at Starbucks and look around at the college students, professors, and other professionals working there it’s usually at least 80% Apples.   But I like my laptop and have a comfort level with its mechanisms, short cuts, and familiar quirks.  So I have no right to complain.

I hope that you find this excellent posting to be extensively helpful in your invaluable writing.

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Photo Credit: GlobalFundi

A whole new language is being created by the creators and users of social media.  It is especially visible on such locations as Twitter which limits the number of digits available on any one message to 140.  Consequently, economy in digits has led to the use of initials which stand for a phrase.   These creations are called initialisms.  No mystery as to where the word comes from.   Initialisms are phrases which use only initials to make their point.

OMG, for instance, is an initialism for the phrase “Oh, My God!” and is meant to express surprise, awe, or complete/over-the-top/absolute ecstasy at seeing something, hearing something, or experiencing something.  No, it’s not a religious comment; it just confiscates the name of God to make the point all the more expansive.

The lexicon of initialisms is huge and growing all the time.   LOL, for instance, is now an “old timer” in the initialism world.   It can mean “lots of luck”, “laugh out loud,” or “laughing out loud.”   You have to check the context to be sure what the writer intends…and even then you can’t be really sure.

Garner’s Modern American Usage has a sizeable section on initialisms and is not terribly generous as to their uses.  Garner calls them “One of the most irritating types of pedantry in modern writing.”    His point is made (over several paragraphs) that communication is a contract between the writer and the reader, and that the use of initialisms requires the reader “to refer constantly to the original uses of terms to grasp the meaning.”  He says it is “tiresome and inconsiderate” writing.   And he’s only talking about the use of initials when they relate to organizations so as to avoid being cumbersome.   The social media usage of initialisms is yet to be discussed in his next edition.

But Garner’s point carries over to social media usage.   I suspect that those who live in the realm of Twitter-ese develop ease in surfing through the initialisms that substitute for actual words.  The temptation is to say that it is generational. But the fact is that Twitter is employed today by people of all generations.   There is a fascination, for instance, with the number of Members of Congress who use Twitter constantly to communicate with their constituents about how they feel about the legislation (or lack thereof) which is before Congress.

There is a sense of “clubiness” to the use of initialisms.  It would seem that the attitude of those using the method believe that either you understand it or you don’t deserve to understand it.   Parents of teens, for instance, don’t need to know what the content of their kids’ messages indicates.  Right!   And business people use initialisms to create efficiency of communication with their colleagues; if you don’t understand it, that’s okay.  It wasn’t intended for you to begin with.  It’s an inside thing.

I’ve toyed with the idea of joining Twitter, but I haven’t found a reason yet as to why I need it.  I’m confused enough with old-fashioned communication modes such as E-mail and Facebook.  So far they don’t require initialisms in order to survive.  It’s a good thing.  I don’t think I’m very good at it. TBTG.*

Graphic Credit: Richard Glenn

*”Thanks be to God.”

All these years, and I never got it right.  You, too, maybe.

My take on the biblical story of the Prodigal Son (Luke 15) has been to focus on the incident which occurs near the end of the parable.  The foolish son who has gone off to squander his inheritance returns penniless and is greeted without judgment by his father.  He is welcomed back into the family and treated like a prince.  Therefore, prodigal, to me, was about the return, the forgiveness and the restoration of relationship.

It turns out that the word prodigal actually refers to the behavior of the foolish son when he leaves home at the beginning of the story.  He surounds himself with things of pleasure and spends all his money enjoying himself.   Prodigal is a word which means to spend wastefully, or, as Bryan Garner says, “…frittering away one’s savings on hedonistic indulgence.”*

To fritter away is to gradually, little by little, spend everything in one’s possession.

Hedonism is the love of pleasure and the surrounding of one’s self with things of pleasure.

Indulgence means to have given in to something, in this case the pleasures.

Therefore, it would seem that the anonymous person who named Jesus’ parable, The Parable of the Prodigal Son, was actually focusing on the activity of the younger son when he abandoned his family, demanded his inheritance in advance, and proceeded to spend it all in frivolous activity.  Over the centuries those who have read the parable and have used it as a reference for Christian teaching, have adopted it as a lesson in forgiveness and reconciliation.

It’s not an uncommon thing for biblical references to be adjusted to fit into a teaching.   It even has a name: eisogesis, which means to use a biblical reference to make a point, even if it means twisting the given meaning of the words or phrases employed. In this case, it would seem that over time the story of the prodigal son was adapted by general use without any malicious intent. However, in doing so, the more significant meaning of the word prodigal became confused.   It may have been an innocent transformation of the story, and its evolution into a story of forgiveness and reconciliation may have great merit.  But the word prodigal suffered in the transformation.

Stepping away from the biblical or theological application of the word prodigal helps.   The word is not limited to that setting.

A person, a community, an organization, or even a whole society can be said to be prodigal if their spending habits lean toward the frittering away of needed revenue on foolish activity.   It is especially true if the frivolous spending is at the expense of much-needed revenue to fund needs which cannot be overlooked.

One could argue that some of the suggestions for federal spending in the U.S. could benefit from a “prodigal-check” to determine if proposals are distributing money (either directly or obliquely) into the hands of those who don’t need it at the expense of much-needed social, infrastructural, or employment spending.   The current fascination with class war arguments might well benefit from the application of the prodigal test.

Photo Credit: Huffington Post

*Garner’s Modern American Usage, p. 661.

I watch enough baseball and basketball on television to be able to recognize a cliche when I hear it.  You can’t get through a couple of innings without beginning to suffer from listener nausea as the play-by-play broadcaster and his “color” sidekick exhaust their supply of  tired, used, and wrinkled phrases which were fun at one time but have become old and should be retired.

The use of cliches is sports broadcasting comes with the territory.  There are long periods of inactivity needing to be filled with commentary to keep the viewer entertained.  One way to do that, evidently, is to resort to repetition and attempts to be clever.  If the commentator can say something that is quite evident, or that has already been said, but can be repeated using different terms, go for it!   That’s where cliches come into play.

Writers have to be careful about resorting to cliches, as well.   It’s easy to slip into a well-worn phrase to describe a moment.   The once-comical, but now juvenile and amateurish “It was a dark and stormy night”  and its attempted variations is a cover-shutting phenomenon if there ever was one.

But even beyond this easily-recognized antique, there are other cliches which are too tempting for the emerging author.   We have to guard against them and rely upon good editing to avoid being guilty of slipping into sloppy writing.   One of my mentors has suggested that we spend too much time on adjectives, for instance, and not enough on nouns and verbs.   That’s when we get careless and find ourselves wallowing in age-worn terms.     The idea is to move the story along, not get bogged down in descriptive phrases which may, or may not, help the reader make a connection to the work.

It is an awe-filled moment when a reader comes upon an original expression which captures the response the author intended and cements it in one’s mind.   If that well-received phrase is repeated, however, it loses its sparkle and the awe is gone.  One of the best examples of a charged phrase is the use of the word “Plastics”  in the classic screenplay The Graduate.   It is powerful because of its spontaneity and  simplicity, cutting into the tension of the moment in a way that the viewer could never have anticipated.  If repeated by a writer in order to achieve a similar effect, however, it is trite and juvenile. It has become a cliche.

Writing is hard work.  As a fledgling writer I have discovered just how hard it is and struggle all the time in attempting to put on paper (a screen in this case) words that are filled with life and which will resonate with the reader.   I have files filled with first drafts, second drafts, and some up to the fifth or sixth drafts.  Editing for such things as cliches and their sibling flaws is frustrating, time consuming, and requires the right mind set.   That mind set is not easily created.   When it is achieved it is magic.

Cartoon Credit: Nil

If there is already a word like abundant to describe a more-than-adequate supply of objects, why would you then revert to the use of the word rife?   It’s an Old English word which means the same thing, but is used so obscurely that many people would not be aware of its meaning.   Yet it is a word that is used in many articles, reports, books, and other means of communication.

An example would be an article about higher education, when an author of the article might say:

In a nation which is rife with opportunities for college and other higher education opportunities, why is it that so few young people take that step?

There is no great mystery about the meaning of the word in this context.   The reader is immediately aware of the writer’s intent.   But if asked, out of context, about the word, a person might plead ignorance.  So why use it?

That is an issue which writers face all the time.  There is a clever word which strikes the fancy of the writer, but the question emerges immediately:  Is the reader going to know what I mean by this?  It is possible that in the desire to be clever the writer has lost the reader, at least for this moment.   But this moment may be enough to cause the reader to close the book (or close down the electronic ‘book’) and move on to something else.

The writer’s task is to make that evaluation and feel secure in the answer.

The primary purpose of writing is to communicate.   If that purpose gets skewed by one’s ego into being an exercise in the demonstration of cleverness the project can be doomed.

I read Stephen King’s  book, 11-22-63, recently.  It was my first King book, as I’m not terribly excited by science fiction and graphic fantasy.  It was wonderful, however.    Throughout the book I found myself confronted with numerous examples of words which were unfamiliar to me.  Some I actually had to stop and pull up my online dictionary in order to be sure I fully understood the meaning.   However, the book was so well written (as I imagine most of King’s books are) that the exposure to new language became part of the thrill of reading it.  The language challenge was laced through the plot, which could be complicated at times.  Had the book been written in a less competent manner I might easily have become discouraged.   I wasn’t.

But that’s the risk.  In this case, I embrace the use of the word rife, believing it to be easily understood because of its place in context.  Numerous examples of other words which might be more of a stumbling block to the reader come to mind however, and it is important for me to remember that when waxing eloquent.

Photo Credit:  Sheri Gundry

I am increasingly frustrated with the lack of editing of articles in my local newspaper.  As I have watched the economically-motivated redistribution and elimination of personnel over the past several years, I have also watched the increasingly blatant errors which have resulted from those measures.

An editor, specifically a copy editor, is more than a functionary in the publishing scheme of things.  The copy editor is the link between reporting a story and the reader who is drawn to the topic.   Many times there is a personal connection to the topic, so blatant errors in facts, spelling, and data become more than irritating.  They become personal acknowledgements of failure on the part of the publisher of the newspaper to provide the product the customer has purchased.   There are times when I want to put the paper in an envelope, send it back to the publisher and demand my money back.  That’s what I would do with another product that was unsatisfactory.

I was stimulated to write this posting by an article which appeared on the front page of the Providence Journal today covering the final day of worship at the Episcopal Cathedral in this city.  The pre-Revolutionary War building is beyond repair and must be closed to protect the safety of those entering it.  The millions of dollars for appropriate repair are not available and would seem unavailable in the future.   In addition, the building is not handicap accessible and simply fails to meet the standards which would make it safe and usable.

The article was filled with errors, particularly as it applied to nomenclature appropriate to the Episcopal Church.  For instance, the clergyperson quoted in the article, the Assisting Bishop of Rhode Island was referred to as “The Rev.” when his title is appropriately “The Rt. Rev.”  and he was called “Mr. Joslin” at one point.  This may not be earth-shattering, but to people already grieving the loss of the Cathedral it added to the frustration.  The article identified the Episcopal Church as the second-largest religious community in the State of Rhode Island, so you would think there was more than a passing familiarity with it.  The Governor and the Mayor of the second-largest city in the State were identified as communicants of the denomination, as were  numerous other notable people whose names  appear in the media on a regular basis.

What would it have taken for the journalist or an editor to run the article by someone familiar with the Episcopal Church as a way of spell-checking and detail checking?   Wouldn’t you think the Editor would have assigned someone familiar with the Church to either write the article or edit it?  If it warranted front page coverage wasn’t it important enough to deserve editing?

This is just a personal matter on my part relating to this specific story.   But I am aware that such flagrant problems occur almost daily in the Journal and it must be as frustrating to others who see their organization, event, or incident botched in a similar manner.  I am convinced that it is this kind of unprofessional journalism that has led to the diminishing of respect for the printed media.  I suppose there is a “chicken or egg” quality to that thought, but it sure doesn’t help in trying to re-establish the importance of a printed media by putting such unprofessional products before the public.

What a shame.

Graphic Credit: cdohnio