07.02
Scene: Rob and a friend wait for the molasses-powered elevator at the Sheraton San Diego. The emergency exit floor-plan is posted nearby.
Rob: “Egress?”
Jim: “Yeah. It’s the opposite of ‘ingress.’”
Jim was right. “Egress” is the opposite of “ingress.” I was impressed by the demonstration of verbal aptitude. But he’d also failed to see my point.
Jim, realizing why I’d pointed it out: “Oh, yeah…I don’t know why they didn’t just say ‘Exit.’”
This sign reminds me of at least three thoughts to keep in mind for those of us tasked with choosing the right words.
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06.23
Although I’d planned on entering, I narrowly missed the deadline (oops) for 2009 submissions to New Times’ 55 Fiction competition, which calls on readers to submit 55-word fictional stories. So I was excited to hear the announcement of NPR’s Three-Minute Fiction Contest, requiring authors to write stories that can easily be read out loud within three minutes (under 600 words, according to them, but shorter is fine).
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05.14
I posted about this nerdy pet peeve of mine awhile back. Here it is rearing its ugly head again, this time accompanied by its friend, Unnecessary Capitalization.
(I haven’t won yet.) This extraneous punctuation got me thinking about people’s natural tendency to over-complicate things like names and logos, not to mention products and product features. Why is it so difficult to make things simple? And is simplicity really what we want, anyway?
04.07
Every year New Times of San Luis Obispo hosts a unique writing competition. The goal is to write an entire fictional story in 55 words. Submissions are not due until mid-June, but are accepted all year. As the website states, keeping a tale under 55 words—fewer than are in this paragraph—is “not as easy as it seems.” But it’s a pretty interesting experiment to see how much story you can squeeze into a few sentences, so I’m planning on giving it a go again this year.
In about 2002 I was working in insurance and desperately seeking some way of releasing creative energy in between performing financial analyses and filling out rate sheets in Excel. When I accompanied some friends to Cal Poly one weekend, I happened to pick up a New Times and read about the competition. I decided to write down a few ideas over the following year, and somehow managed to stay organized and submit them before the deadline. I think I entered about 16 stories, and the following story was chosen as one of many winners:
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03.12
If you’re not sure what the serial comma is, check Grammar Girl’s post about it. I agree with most of the points she makes, but feel strongly that it shouldn’t be optional. Sounds like the only reason people started omitting it was to save space in newspapers. Understandable in that situation, I suppose, but otherwise I think it’s a necessity because a) it removes confusion from sentences like “My favorite sandwiches are hummus, turkey and avocado and ham and cheese.” and b) it prevents ridiculous sentences like “My favorite sandwiches are cheese, ham and ham and cheese.” (Not sure why all my sentences are about sandwiches.)
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03.09
said the store owner.
And is that an apostrophe in “restroom’s”? The unnecessary quotation marks are a pretty common error on signs, but I still find it amusing. In fact, I’ve never understood why the mistake is so common.
Turns out there’s a whole blog dedicated to them—The “Blog” of “Unnecessary” Quotation Marks.
