The headline is right.
Humor
Off topic: Meacham on Barbara Bush
I’ve just read this and had to post:
On Saturday, presidential historian and author Jon Meacham gave a loving and at times comical tribute to Barbara Bush during her funeral in Houston.
Books and screens
cartoon tweeted by Dan Willingham
Headlines I have known and loved
Almost a blooper:
Here are 330 Ivy League courses you can take online right now for free
Right now?
All 330 of them?
This reminds me of my all-time favorite National Enquirer headline:
Do you know the 1,110 reasons marriage makes women sick?
I still remember wandering the grocery store aisles chuckling over that one.
No!
I do not know the 1,110 reasons marriage makes women sick!
Nor will I ever know the 1,110 reasons marriage makes women sick, because: how long would it take me to memorize 1,110 individual reasons marriage makes women sick?
Not as long as it would take me to complete 330 free Ivy League courses online, but still.
As I recall, the Enquirer actually listed all 1,110 reasons inside the paper, but since I didn’t buy a copy to preserve for posterity, I can’t say for sure.
(P.S. I’ve spoofed the headline, but I actually appreciate the post and the effort that went into it…. in fact, I’m reading the entire list of 330 free Ivy League now. Sad to say, I don’t see a course offering on How to Hear in French.)
Getting over my word-count mania
One of the best writing instructors I ever had gave some advice that, for many years, I took too much to heart. “Wordy,” “repetitive,” “you can reduce this passage by a third”—these were among Mr. C’s most frequent comments in the margins of our English papers. My takeaway: the number one priority in revising your work is to cut out as many words as possible.
To this day, I continue to cut. And even when I’m forced into virtual clear-cutting—say when my first draft is several hundred words over the limit—I’ve generally found what survives to be much improved: denser with active verbs and precise nouns, freer of fillers like “it” and hedges like “seems”.
What I’ve been thinking about for the last 6 months (besides SentenceWeaver)
Some things that have been on my mind:
- Catherine and my many recent conversations about the new SAT reading sections
- Related thoughts we’ve had about SAT vocabulary challenges
- Thoughts on verbosity and hedges (“obviously”, “apparently”).
- The Dreamy Child Syndrome, aka Multi-Factor Introversion (not autism, and not in the DSM!)
- Beyond background knowledge: other background variables in reading comprehension
- How the Curiosity Mindset (or lack thereof) affects comprehension
- Clues that “kids these days” are doing less and less careful reading
- Clues that they’re getting less and less writing instruction
- Thoughts on “Why do you think that?”, “Yeah!”, “It’s a good question”, and “one less thing to worry about”
- The ongoing recovery of the English language from the Norman Conquest (or is it something more sinister?)
- J’s adventures as a college undergraduate
For now, I’ll share the following email exchange—a sign, perhaps, of things to come:
E: Katharine, happy to meet with you. I will have my new assistant help us. Amy, can you help set up a meeting with Katharine next week?
E: I forgot to cc Amy.
K: Great—Thank you, E! Next week I am quite open Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday.
A: Hi Katharine. Just wanted to check in and confirm what action you’d like me to take.
If this is an entirely new meeting you’d like me to get on the calendar, just let me know “Amy, please schedule a meeting” and CC in the people you’d like to meet with.
Alternatively, if you’d like me to make any updates to an existing meeting, could you please resend this message in the original thread for that meeting?
For now, I’ll take no action on this.
Amy
E: Katharine, Thank you for your patience with my new assistant. I guess “forgot to cc Amy was not understood.” So trying again. I will take over if it doesn’t work.
Amy can you please schedule a meeting with Katharine next week?
Thank you.
A: Hi Katharine,
Does Monday at 11:00 AM EST (Eastern Daylight Time) work?
Alternatively, E is available Monday at 2:00 PM or Tuesday at 10:00 AM.
The meeting will be a web conference.
Amy.
At this point I was ready to type an exasperated “As I said…”– but something made me to look back through this bizarre exchange.
It turns out that Amy, whose last name is Ingram, has an email signature that concludes with the following details: “Artificial intelligence that schedules meetings. Learn more at x.ai”
Uh oh
Just saw this in the Chronicle of Higher Education:
Question: Now I am seeing “reticent” and “reluctant” confused with each other, a development that makes me shiver and remember when “impact” became a bad verb, which it still is. Do you think public shaming via, say, a raucous outpouring of tweets would stem the tide of ignorant folly before it overwhelms and drowns us all in a tsunami of inanity?
Answer: No.
I love that. Very funny.
Of course, now I’m wondering whether I myself perceive a difference between reticent and reluctant.
Answer: not really.
Fully agree that impact’s ascent to verb status was a bad development.
Catherine & Katharine 