Four Thoughts from Up North

[jesse_the_k]

Pam Wye's Graphic memoir "Water I've Loved" is serialized In Mutha Magazine. Very detailed drawings explore daughter- and motherhood in pools and the ocean near Boston. Author's mom has mental illness. Wye captured aquatic joys I'd never had words for.

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Typing emoji on a Mac is a lot easier now that I know control-command-spacebar brings up an emoji browser with a search field.

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Copyediting FAQ from the great Robert Benjamin Dreyer

Q. What’s the most redundant redundancy you’ve ever encountered?

A. I recall it as if it were yesterday:

“He implied without quite saying.”

I was so filled with delight on encountering that, I scarcely had the heart to cross out “without quite saying” and to note in the margin, politely and succinctly, “BY DEF.”

An Utterly Correct Guide to Clarity and Style by Benjamin Dreyer

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Bella continues to be the best dog

We're enjoying another week up north, and Bella's been snarfing up random bits of the forest floor and cabin surrounds. Something triggered diarrhea in the wee hours. The cabin has antique carpet except in the bathroom and kitchen. On three occasions, Bella manage to confine her explosive insides to the linoleum in those two locations.

Comments

[esteefee]

hey thanks for the emoji trick! 😻

[jesse_the_k]

❤️❤️

[sonia]

Oooh, thanks for the emoji shortcut! 😍 It also shows special characters one has declared as favorites from the Emoji and Symbols dialog, which is useful for those of us transcribing music in languages with special characters (for example).

I've just finished reading Benjamin Dryer's book based on your earlier rec and loved it! Thanks for the rec! Still thinking about how to write it up for my book blog. (You have his first name correct once in this post, and incorrect once. Unless there's something I don't know about Robert Dreyer.)

I mentioned it elsewhere and got an oddly lukewarm response. Oh well, we each have our tastes...

Without dissing the book at all, this particular example of redundancy in isolation reminds me of this article on how native English speakers can gently educate non-native speakers, and graceful redundancy like the sentence you quoted is one good way. https://medium.com/@mollyclare/taming-the-steamroller-how-to-communicate-compassionately-with-non-native-english-speakers-d95d8d1845a0

Thanks for proofing.

[jesse_the_k]

And that Medium link is EXCELLENT! It’s applicable to all conversations in many contexts.

If somebody does say that they’d like you to help them with their English, try this very gentle technique: continue the conversation while repeating back a corrected version of the last sentence.

You can work a restatement into your next sentence: “Where’s the stapler? I am always having the stapler right here.” Instead of saying “Do you want to borrow mine?”, say “Yeah, you do always have the stapler right here. Do you want to borrow mine?”

In an earlier life I was an ESL tutor, and I can testify to the effectiveness of this approach—I wish I’d read this advice back then and saved my students from annoying corrections.

Re: Thanks for proofing.

[sonia]

Glad you like it! 😌

[sovay]

Pam Wye's Graphic memoir "Water I've Loved" is serialized In Mutha Magazine.

I shall definitely check that out.

I was so filled with delight on encountering that, I scarcely had the heart to cross out “without quite saying” and to note in the margin, politely and succinctly, “BY DEF.”

Haaa yikes.

[adrian_turtle]

The great Robert Dreyer seems like the sort of snob who would disapprove of me because I say things like "almost but not quite," or "they read the whole book, beginning to end." I am not even slightly impressed.

[jesse_the_k]

I do think there’s a fundamental difference re: redundancy in written vs spoken language.

I can’t scrub back a conversation to pick up what I didn’t hear! “They read the whole thing beginning to end” is one useful concept in an ongoing talk.