Thursday, December 29, 2016

How About Today?

Zestful Blog Post #191

Don’t look back much on yesterday; especially don’t look back with regret. Because regret is toxic.

And you know what else is toxic? Tomorrow. There’s a certain treacherous comfort in tomorrow.

Give today everything you’ve got.



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Thursday, December 22, 2016

WWJW?

Zestful Blog Post #190

The photo for this post is the same as on Marcia’s and my Holiday/Christmas card this year. She thought of the concept, and I executed it. All the writing implements are mine, from my various stashes. After crafting the display on our dining-room table (the tablecloth, linen—Ikea—and I never iron), I realized just how rich I am in stuff that makes words. And that’s not even all! More pens, pencils, inks, and sharpeners lay neatly in my Bisleys and office cupboard. (Art supply buffs will know Bisleys.) I even have a Caran d’Ache rotary sharpener, though not the eye-popping Matterhorn edition. Perhaps next year you could all chip in and get me one.



[Can you find the humblest of these items: the Detroit Public Schools pencil I picked up from the floor of the orchestra room at Cass Technical High School on a visit this year?]

But seriously, I’ve been thinking about how rich I am in so many things, the best of them not for sale: health, family, friends, faithful readers. Often, when I get down about something or other I’ll give thanks for stuff I don’t have, like a prison sentence for killing somebody in a car accident that’s my fault.

Also, because it’s the Christmas season—going ahead with “Christmas” here, because I do celebrate it, more or less—I’ve been thinking, “What would Jesus Write?” And I realize the real question is: “How Would Jesus Write?” The answer is clear and simple, when you think how tuned in that guy was: With faith. Meaning without anxiety! Meaning with trusting generosity! Meaning with belief in what one little person can accomplish!

Thank you for being my friend. I love you and wish you a wonderful, happy weekend.

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Thursday, December 15, 2016

More Precision

Zestful Blog Post #189

In my ongoing campaign for precise language and spelling, today I offer:

No:
The suspect’s account did not jive with the victim’s.
Yes:
The suspect’s account did not jibe with the victim’s.
No:
Don’t give me that jibe; I know you went bowling last night.
Yes:
Don’t give me that jive; I know you went bowling last night.
Yes:
I don’t like the cut of his jib.

To jibe is to agree with or be consistent with. To jive is to talk nonsense, fib, or play jazz; to improvise. But jive is being used so commonly to mean jibe that it’s appearing in dictionaries that way. Please join me in resisting that jive. A jib is a triangular sail on a boat, or a part of a crane. The idiomatic usage, “I don’t like the cut of his jib” means to dislike how someone looks or be suspicious of someone.

While watching an episode of “Mad Men” I was gratified when Bert Cooper corrected one of his underlings. One of the guys said, “I’m hip to that.” Cooper cut in, “It’s hep.”

Just like jive and jibe, hip and hep have become confused. To be hip is to be fashionable and up to the minute; to be hep is to be knowledgeable.

Moving along to:

No:
If these voices in my head keep up, I’ll soon be in a straightjacket.
Yes:
If these voices in my head keep up, I’ll soon be in a straitjacket.

Strait means narrow, restricted, which is what one of those garments does to a person. Straight means extending in one direction with no deviation. But again, the misuse is so common, both spellings are becoming acceptable. Just not by me.

Also, let’s consider:

No:
That point is so obtuse, nobody here can understand it.
Yes:
That point is so abstruse, nobody here can understand it.
Yes:
He’s the most obtuse student I’ve ever tried to teach.

Abstruse means obscure or difficult to grasp; obtuse means dumb or dull. (An obtuse angle in geometry is one with a blunt—or dull—point: greater than 90 degrees and less than 180.) (Thanks, RM!)

Lastly, a few fine points involving vowels:


Each of these drums is a timpano. Together, they are timpani. When I play them, I call them timps.

When cheering a mezzo-soprano, yell “Brava!” When cheering a tenor, yell “Bravo!” When cheering the ensemble, yell “Bravi!” If you’re really excited, yell “Bravissimo!”

A man travels incognito. A woman travels incognita. When a guy conducts an orchestra, he is a maestro. When a gal does it, she is a maestra. (Hilarious that my auto-speller tried to reject maestra. Also timpano.)

All right, I feel better.

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Thursday, December 8, 2016

Of Precision I Sing

Zestful Blog Post #188

If you’re a stickler for precise language and spelling, these are dark times. The rise of voice-to-text software, declining literacy rates (at least in the U.S.—I read about it), and the hurried way we often produce and consume words—all of this is adding up. Also, OK, I’m all for STEM. STEM for president. STEM for lucrative, clean-hands jobs. But more emphasis on STEM means less emphasis on literature. I’m sorry, but it does. And it shows. And I grieve.

OK, here are some commonly misused words, with corrections. I am driven to write this today. I know word meanings change over time, often because of sloppy usage. But let us not be part of that hideous process.

Reticent / Reluctant
No:
He was reticent to open the door.
Yes:
He was reluctant to open the door.
No:
She was reticent to speak about what she’d gone through.
Yes:
She was reluctant to speak about what she’d gone through.
Yes:
She was reticent about what she’d gone through.

Reticent means being unwilling to speak; the origin is Latin, for ‘be silent.’
Reluctant means being unwilling to do something.

An announcer said this on the radio yesterday: “But the school principal was accused of flaunting the rules.” No. You flout the rules, you flaunt your six-pack abs at the beach.

Keeping to the ‘f’ theme, let’s look at another pair:

No:
The ship floundered on the reef and was lost.
Yes:
The ship foundered on the reef.
Yes:
He floundered for months, then at last grasped the essence of the theorem.
Yes:
They took control of the foundering company and made it profitable again.

To flounder is to struggle; to founder is to sink.


Again, yesterday. I picked up a package of page tabs in a store—you know, those things like paperclips for marking pages in a book? Was going to buy it until I read on the back that the tabs are ‘discrete’. Put it back. No, the tabs are discreet; they don’t hang out like sticky notes or the like.

So, no:
Roger and Joan were discrete about their affair.
Yes:
Roger and Joan were discreet about their affair.
No:
Each file folder holds a discreet project. (Although, come to think of it, if these were personnel records at a bordello, that could be true.)
Yes:
Each file folder holds a discrete project.

Although the words are related, discreet means to be cautious or even guarded, while discrete simply means separate, individual.

While we’re on homonyms:

No:
The demotion didn’t phase him.
Yes:
The demotion didn’t faze him.
Yes:
That model was phased out in 2011.
Yes:
My dog’s mood seems to depend on the phases of the moon.

To faze is to disrupt or disturb. Phase can be a noun or a verb; a phase is a stage or an episode, while to phase is to execute a sequence.

No:
The governor took a lot of flack for his statement on low-fat butter.
Yes:
The governor took a lot of flak for his statement on low-fat butter.

Flak is anti-aircraft fire from ground positions; the metaphorical meaning is severe criticism. A flack is a publicist or promoter.

Thank you so much for your attention to these matters.

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Thursday, December 1, 2016

Thine Own Self

Zestful Blog Post #187

Before today’s post, I want to give a shout-out to one of our own, Stanley Walek. Big Stan is a friend, client, Zestful Blog reader and comment poster, and as of recently, he’s an author. If time travel, archaeology, ancient British history, ventriloquism, science, and off-kilter humor hold any interest for you, check out Paxton's Worlds. Congratulations, Stan!

The latest Writer’s Digest magazine (January 2017) is out, featuring a piece by yours truly, “21 Ways to Pivot Your Plot.” Here’s Editor-in-Chief Jessica Strawser’s blog about the issue. The theme is “Write That Novel!”, most appropriate for the New Year, I say. Lots of good stuff in there.

Was honored to have some of my work mentioned in a roundup of ‘best’ story writing advice by Jane Friedman recently. She’s put together quite a bouquet of sound material in that list, if I say so myself, so consider looking in on it.

OK. Today’s post is a pushback against Shakespeare abuse. The other day I heard somebody say ‘To thine own self be true,’ to justify some little selfishness or other, and it made me mad, because that’s the opposite of what Shakespeare really said. The quotation is incomplete.

I remember my mother discussing this once, when I was about nine. She was attending college to become an English teacher, so naturally she was studying Shakespeare. One day she was sitting with a cup of coffee at the kitchen table, musing, maybe more to herself than anything, about people screwing up this quotation. Then she must have noticed me standing there, and recited the full passage:


[from the cover of my old Kittredge edition]

“This above all—to thine own self be true,
And it must follow as the night to day,
Thou canst not then be false to any man.”

The play is Hamlet, the speaker is the ill-fated Polonius, and he’s finishing up giving a bunch of life wisdom to his son Laertes.

Buddha would approve. Good advice for children of all ages! I remembered that moment with Mom all these years.

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