flattening the curve

One might argue that flattening the curve started with Twiggy (Lesley Hornby) with the Mod look in the Sixties. But one might further, and more strenuously, posit that curve flattening was conceived, pushed, and marketed by men in power desirous of a certain look (can that look be termed androgynous any more?). If the sinewy, slender, skinny (all subjective adjectives) appearance being modeled did not promote anorexia, did it nevertheless subconsciously mumble (or blare in the public square) a message about shape and body, a message about shame and acceptance, desire and hunger?

And what about the hollowed-out waif look?

Has such flattening of the curve ever ceased? Pick up a fashion magazine and tell us.

Then there's curvy. As a pendulum-swinging alternative, curvy embraces the contours, the sensuous curves celebrated by, say, Caravaggio. Fatten the curve, one might say to a Twiggy-era model. (Though, to drill down lexicographically, "fatten" is a semantic choice that would put one in hot water, ripe for boiling, or into a penitential sauna sure to drip off sweat and ounces.)

Take a look at Marilyn Monroe. No one dared suggest she flatten the curve.

Times change.

Times even change to the point where such an analysis as this, such a curvilinear discourse, is not limited to one sex or gender or identity. The curves are up for grabs, flat or otherwise. As are the angular lines, the straight edges.

Not "up for grabs." Wrong phrase. Delete that. Up for discussion, yes. But anything else must be consensual.

That's My Style

The New York Times of May 10, 2013, relates an episode involving former Apple exec John Sculley and David Steinberg, head of digital marketing firm XL Marketing. The article has an apt title: "He's No Longer The Loudest Guy In the Room."

Years ago Sculley and Steinberg were on a West Coast swing. They had 10 or 15 client meetings. After the first meeting Sculley said to Steinberg:

"David, there's a West Coast style and there's an East Coast style. We need to work on your West Coast style."

Steinberg went on to explain so-called West Coast style: "Soften it up. Take it down a number of notches, and just listen instead of always talking." Of Sculley, he added: "He taught me how, from a leadership perspective, to step back and take in the landscape. . . . He will sit in a room for an hour before he says one thing, but when he says that thing, he is so right."

That explains a lot.

I need to work on my West Coast style.

Excuse me. We need to work on my West Coast style.

I intuitively have known this for many years. Rather, others have either pointed this out directly to me or have implicitly offered it as an unsolicited suggestion toward my "continuous improvement."

It's not too late, is it?

(This may be a subconscious reason I've been a San Francisco Giants fan ever since and before they moved to San Francisco.)

form and function

A couple years ago a friend wore a dress for thirty consecutive days, and blogged about it. Around that time, as an experiment in I-don't know-what, I wore a tie for thirty straight days. Or tried to. I think I succeeded. I might try it again. I enjoyed wearing a purple tie, by Pink, today. People have written books about lots of weird streaks: 30 successive days, or more, of going on a date, a year without sex, you name it.

Um, I'd rather you didn't.

the affective effect of affectation

In the Tuesday, June 22, 2010, print edition of The New York Times, the newspaper announced that Arthur S. Brisbane had been named the paper's next public editor, or ombudsman, for a three-year term.

Bravo, Mr. Brisbane.

The article in The New York Times said:

"Mr. Brisbane, who is the grandson of the legendary Hearst editor Arthur Brisbane, said he expected to tackle a wide variety of subjects during his three-year term, including the affect on The Times's journalistic standards of publishing articles for the Web on tight deadlines." [emphasis impertinently added]

Mr. Brisbane may want to begin by tackling the person who ran off with The Times's style manual, or at least the page that covers affect versus effect.

[Note: Well, maybe Mr. Brisbane did tackle the appropriate editor. Somebody did. Immediately after I posted this, I checked the Permalink, as The Times calls it, to the original story. Someone had corrected the word, to good effect, at least for the permanent online version. Fair is fair. Bravo to The Times for making things right. I might have looked like a persnickety fool who was wrong if I did not check that Permalink. This is restorative. It is refreshing to learn that someone saw this and fixed it. It affects me positively, but it certainly does not impact me! Insert emoticon of your choice.]

alpha bravo tango website

Bravo to The Associated Press for now proclaiming "website" instead of "Web site" as its preferred style (note to pedants: this is about style, not grammar).

I have long argued this was inevitable.

Yes, there are, and will be, holdouts. Maybe forever. (Right now: The New Yorker, New York Times, and a plethora of others insist on "Web site.") (As you all know, I can be stubborn about such things. I did not become a Serial Comma Commando for nothing!)

I have pushed for this change with particular clients I have worked with (yes, yes, yes, of course you can end a sentence with a preposition! Or even a proposition!).

The organic and natural evolution in American English is for compound forms to go from two words to hyphenated forms to solid, one-word configurations.

Be organic linguistically! Go organic!

After all, we don't use "tele-phone" anymore. We don't write "tele-vision." At least I don't.

Back in my linguistics course in 1968-69, I learned that such linguistic contraction is a mark of a language's sophistication.

Simplify.

Just as Thoreau said.

Zen masters too.

By the way, my friend Mark Murphy alerted me to a fantastic resource if you are into this sort of esoteric stuff:

OnlineStylebooks.com

Awesome. I salute its creator and maintainer.

Serial Comma Wars, Continued

As some of you know, a blog post here in January 2007 caused quite a stir. Weird that my post about the serial comma set off a minor storm -- and continues to be the most popular reason visitors come to my blog.

Now the lofty Columbia Journalism Review jumps into the fray with a piece titled "Serial Killer" and subtitled "Why the 'serial comma' isn't important." Not that a slight aroma of condescension bothers me. Much. The essay, by a Merrill Perlman, is a paltry defense of, what?, ambiguity?, or maybe is a passionless defense of apathy toward something that is, yes, less important than Mideast peace. But. It is a wishy-washy polemic, missing the simple point that opponents of the serial comma just can't allow themselves to admit: if you use the serial comma, you can't go wrong, you can't be unclear. Well, they do sheepishly admit that. They do begrudgingly admit that occasions call for use of the serial comma. Sometimes. Sort of. But we don't have to declare it as a universal rule. (Look, I understand this is all about stylistic preference and that it is beyond the realm of hard-and-fast rules. I get that. But style guides have no point if they do not profess preferences, and they profess them for a reason. Or should.)

In response to my post at the Columbia Journalism Review, Ruth E. Thaler-Carter, who declares herself "a big fan of 'no serial commas,' nevertheless provides her favorite argument in favor of the serial comma by way of the "classic book dedication":

"To my parents, Ayn Rand and God."

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA! I love it. I had not heard that one and of course it is essentially a cousin of the example I like to quote from the folks at The Chicago Manual of Style:

"With gratitude to my parents, Mother Teresa and the pope."

Sit on the sidelines no longer.

Fight the good fight.

Join the brigades.

Become a commando in the Serial Comma War.

Be a Serial Commakazie.

The PANTheon of Bargains

This recession has its benefits. A few days ago, way back in 2008, I learned this first-hand. I am not extravagant. Correction: I am not extravagant when it comes to purchasing, especially clothes, an area where I am puritanically frugal, seeking to ferret out sensational bargains (though prone to wild-abandon impulse buying at inexplicable times), a mercantile abstemiousness exercised not just by me but also imposed on those around me, but I can be recklessly extravagant in the swirl and sprawl of a single sentence, sodden with solipsistic reverie and rollicking verbosity, yet obedient to the rules of grammar, syntax, and style, as with this very example, complete with its own serial comma. Back to the benefits of an economy quieted by its earlier excesses: Ralph Lauren Polo jeans. Black. Originally marked $125. Normally, I would not look at them. In fact, I'd likely rail against their very existence in this space. Marked down to $99.99, now hanging on a 50% off rack. Lord & Taylor's. Then a 20% off coupon. $39.99. $41.59 with tax. Still exorbitant for me, and admittedly I was lured by the dramatic differential from the so-called original price and what I ultimately paid, and aware of the hollowness and trickery of all that. But still. Better than the $12 jeans from Old Navy given me at Christmas, pants that won't be worn by me because, because, there are buttons, buttons! instead of a zipper, on the fly. No way that flies for me, no way. (But on the Polo pants some colorful stitching on the coin pocket: three polo-playing jockeys on well-nigh-flying horses; must be why the pants were so chic. Pedigree. All that.) Bye.

Fodder for the Serial Comma Wars

In today's Washington Post, Jonathan Yardley pens a lovely salute to The Elements of Style by William Strunk, Jr., and E.B. White.

Yardley's essay has this excerpt:

This is the same William Strunk, Jr., who two pages earlier writes, "In a series of three or more terms with a single conjunction, use a comma after each term except the last," as in "red, white, and blue," this second comma being "often referred to as the 'serial' comma," except in newspaper offices, where it is often referred to as the "space-eating" comma.

Score one for the serial comma!

The funny thing about Strunk & White is this: over the years as an editor, I have heard countless colleagues (often engineers and scientists) make adoring comments about it -- and rarely, if ever, apply its principles. It got to be that if someone quoted Strunk & White to me, I cringed, knowing their writing would be obtuse and bloviated.

I doubt they ever read it.

Same with many lawyers.

Such is life.

Anti-Semantic Banking

As part of a new ad campaign, HSBC Bank barks forth with this online copy:

A headline of:

there's no small change

Followed by:

Choose a more impactful way to bank.

It's all part of the green, eco-friendly bandwagon, which is fine, which I salute. The HSBC site says they were the first major bank, in 2005, to be recognized for being "completely carbon neutral." Fine. Excellent. Even without a hyphen between carbon and neutral. Alleluia. I get it. I'm green with usury.

But let's ponder impactful.

Yes, it is found in dictionaries; yes, our dynamic, living language gives birth to new words every day. I don't subscribe to the pedantic or superior view that yesterday's solecisms can't become today's standard form. You might say it's sort of like clothing fashion and style.

Impactful, how do I hate thee? Let me count the ways.

Well, for one, I believe it all stems from "impact" as verb, arising from environmental impact statements in the U.S., starting in the 1970s. With that usage, "affect" flew out the window like some threatened or endangered bird.

Impactful carries with it all the weight of seriousness it doesn't deserve.

It abdicates responsibility; it lets the writer or speaker avoid taking sides as to whether we're talking good impacts or bad.

I loathe it.

You can bank on it.

p.s. At least the spellchecker hates it, too, for once (for nonce).

Manhattan Serial-Comma Mystery Probed

Score one for us, The Serial Commakazies.

Yes, we of The Loyal Order of Serial Comma Orderliness and Logic (TLOSCOL) can take solace and comfort from this sentence in The New York Times, today, March 2, 2007, anno Domini, page A1, from the lead story, no less (the lead story is the one in the upper-right column in the ancient style of reading newspapers made of paper, which is my preference):

[hautboys, as they say in Shakespeare]

"A series of disclosures published prominently in The Washington Post about the living conditions, the red tape that ensnarled treatment, and other serious problems have challenged the notion promoted for years by the Army -- especially since the war in Iraq -- that wounded soldiers receive unparalleled care at Walter Reed."

Take a deep breath after that mouthful, eh? Imagine diagramming that one in Mrs. Rivers's seventh-grade English class! (I've just got to do a post on her one of these days.)

Well, this is delicious on several levels. First, the Gray Lady is forced in its lead story to pay homage to its stalwart competitor, The Washington Post. And, as if that ain't bad enough, the sentence, written by David S. Cloud, is brightened by my beloved serial comma. Can you spot it? Yes, it elegantly and clearly and brazenly shines after the word "treatment." (I will dodge the grammatical debate that might ensue over whether it should be "A series . . . has . . . .")

A tantalizing mystery presents itself: is the serial comma grudgingly allowed by a copy editor because it is simply too confusing without it? If so, a victory for us (just one battle, not the war), who have claimed all along that is why we insist on this punctuation mark. Or is it an error or oversight on the part of writer and copy editor? In other words, will they be slapped for not following The New York Times Manual of Style and Usage?

Or, is this a tidal turning point in the culture wars, symbolized by an awkward embrace of the serial comma?

Will we ever know?

Will Manhattan media watchers and gossipmongers, such as at gawker.com, be able to get to the foggy bottom of this persnickety puzzlement?

"No comma," is not, um, an acceptable answer.

(You just don't get sizzling stuff like this on YouTube.)

Impacted Wisdom

Count me among those who dislike using impact as a verb. I didn't say it couldn't be justified or defended on linguistic and historical grounds, as pointed out by The American Heritage Dictionary and others.

But I don't have to like such usage -- or use it.

And if I do use impact as a verb, I want it reserved for one of its most literal meanings, which I experienced yesterday as a passenger in a car.

"The car I was riding in was impacted by a pickup truck advancing upon us from the rear, which forced our car to collide with the car in front of us."

Yes, collided is a better verb. (But the collision, or, um, adverse impacted event, also known as an accident, hurts just as much or causes as much damage.)

Along with others, I don't like impact as a verb because it smacks of smug jargon. A more specific verb (affected, influenced, harmed, deteriorated, corrupted, failed...) would convey the real intended meaning. But maybe the users of impact as a verb are trying to obfuscate. (I think the current vogue use is owing to the jargon employed in environmental impact statements.)

Anyway.

No one got hurt in the accident. I thought I'd be sore today, but wasn't.

There but for the grace of God go I.

(Hmmm, as noted in the link above, Wikipedia gives an informative history of that phrase, crediting John Bradford.)

It wasn't a semitractor-trailer bearing down on us.

I am reminded of Emily Dickinson's sobering words:

Because I could not stop for Death He kindly stopped for me. . . .

Serial (Comma) Celebrity

Who would think a remark or two about the serial comma would elicit so much comma, comma commotion (sounds like the chorus of a Del Shannon or Boy George song)?

It turns out my post last week on this topic ventured headlong into one of the more contentious battlegrounds of the cultured wars. (Notice, I didn't say "grammar wars"; it really has to do with style and whether you adhere to a particular style, or solipsistically and sloppily ignore it. That was one of my key points.)

I installed a web counter for the first time last week, more out of curiosity than vanity (liar!). I discovered that James Wolcott of Vanity Fair and Emily Gordon of The New Yorker Between the Lines, also known Emdashes, made passing references to my serial comma post. Yikes! Well, Ms. Gordon did more than that. She said, "The continued existence of people like this is literally what makes me go on living."

Gulp.

You're welcome, Emily.

[Disclaimer: Neither The Laughorist, nor any of his dependents, codependents, or heirs, or accomplices, have or has [wasn't sure; didn't want to research it, ask David Grambs] ever knowingly met or spoken or before her post corresponded with said Emily Gordon; nor has any remuneration, be it financial, erotic, laudatory, literary, or otherwise, op. cit., loc. cit, oh shit, been offered to or given to said Ms. Gordon or her cohorts in exchange for or in any relation to comments on the serial comma, amen, ipso facto, ad nauseam, inter alia , solidus interruptus period full stop]

Speaking of existence, contined or otherwise, what if I were to declaim about the Kierkegaardian comma? Would I be flooded by posts from Denmark? I hereby proclaim the existential existence of the Kierkegaard, or Kierkegaardian, comma. The Kierkegaard comma has to do with the riddle of whether you use a comma or not, and whether you feel guilty either with the comma or without it. Either/Or. That says it all: An existential dilemma facing each of us every day, on some level or another.

Either I put in the comma, or I don't.

Either I get up, or I don't.

Either I live, or I do not.

Either the tragedy in Iraq gets better, or we impeach Bush.


Laugh. Or....

Else.

p.s. I think we should tell the maker of Alpha-Bits to put some commas in their cereal. Y'all with me?

p.p.s. You commenters who nastily said "use your goddamn head" last time around betrayed your own ignorance and infelicitous inattention to detail by misspelling the name of the famous recently deceased nun. Who could take you seriously? No one.

Let's Stop Serial-Comma Killing Now!

We know society exhibits moral outrage over serial killings, as well it should.




But why the widespread apathy over the death throes of the serial comma?




Fight the good fight. Become a Serial Comma Commando today!


The serial comma, also known as the Oxford comma or the Harvard comma, is the comma found in this construction:

Hurray for the red, white, and blue.

Believers of the use of this construction (like me) insist on that comma after the word white.

My particular reasons are straightforward: consistency and lack of ambiguity.

At least I thought so until I checked out the entry for topic at Wikipedia. I must say, the entry is exhaustive and entertaining.

It gives cogent arguments both for and against.

I used to be a newspaper copy editor. Nearly all newspapers (at least in American and Canada) do not use the serial comma. The New York Times and The Washington Post, excellent newspapers, do not employ that comma after the word white in the example above. Nearly all book publishers used to use it. The New Yorker magazine still uses it.

I reject the argument (made by some, including Lynne Truss of the popular book Eats, Shoots & Leaves) that this style decision is variable depending on context and circumstances. (Oh, of course, you can find an exception to any rule. So, yes, all such decisions are potentially variable. I'm not talking about that. Oliver Wendell Holmes said something like you have to know the rules before you know how to break them. I'm talking about the rule here, not the exception[s].)

I say adhere to the rule, or not, but do so consistently.

It is troubling in recent years to find myself reading a novel and to encounter style usage all over the place on this.

Sloppy.

Most of you say this is all silly and does not matter.

I'll close with the wonderful example from The Chicago Manual of Style (which, naturally, supports the view of the serial comma embraced by The Laughorist):

According to the erudite and entertaining folks at the University of Chicago Press (check out their FAQ section), not using the serial comma can put you in this pickle with this hypothetical book dedication:

"With gratitude to my parents, Mother Teresa and the pope."

Laugh. Or....

Else.