So. How do you spend your day?

Fascinating. Here are some charts loaded with data about how Americans spend their day. Not much to my surprise, time spent on 'correspondence' and 'sports and recreation' don't even show up on the charts. More to my surprise, neither does 'religious activity.'

well, maybe if you blow the chart up by about 500% you could see something.

Handwriting skills

Apparently not all children have been taught handwriting, particularly cursive writing (though Maeraed seems to be doing fine in that department). Many people seem to think that typing is the skill you need - otherwise, how are they going to text? Or blog? Or twitter? On the other hand, there are good reasons for requiring good old handwriting.

New research shows writing things out by hand not only increases brain activity, but also helps develop fine motor skills and can even predict how well a student will do in school, the Chicago Tribune reports.

So everyone should write something by hand this week.

preferably with a fountain pen.

Old English

Not really, but 19th century English. We are beginning to move so far beyond it that some of us find difficulty reading it. A member of our Episcopal book club once told me that he had trouble reading The Screwtape Letters by C S Lewis because the writing was so old-fashioned. Fifteen years ago I could force students to read a few chapters of Gibbons Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire and after some adjustment they could appreciate his style, even enjoy it. Last year I did the same thing with a reasonably bright class of juniors and seniors and they simply found his prose impenetrable.

I was amused this morning to find a writing guide published in 1883 for writing English clearly. It is fascinating to see how things have changed, and how some things have not. Here are the first few rules:

1. Use words in their proper sense. [my favorite]

2. Avoid exaggerations.

3. Avoid useless circumlocution and "fine writing."

4. Be careful in the use of "not ... and," "any," "but," "only," "not ... or," "that."

4 a. Be careful in the use of ambiguous words, e.g. "certain."

Here are some rules specific to brevity.

46. Metaphor is briefer than literal statement.

47. General terms are briefer, though less forcible, than particular terms.

47 a. A phrase may sometimes be expressed by a word.

48. Participles may often be used as brief (though sometimes ambiguous) equivalents of phrases containing Conjunctions and Verbs.

49. Participles, Adjectives, Participial Adjectives, and Nouns may be used as equivalents for phrases containing the Relative.

50. A statement may sometimes be briefly implied instead of being expressed at length.

And as self-criticism, I pick this one:

51. Conjunctions may be omitted. Adverbs, e.g. "very," "so." Exaggerated epithets, e.g. "incalculable," "unprecedented."

I am going to have to dip into this some more. I am always interested in style. It is a mistake to assume that nineteenth century people were somehow less intelligent or less sophisticated than we.

and so, adieu, I am off to hunt me some metaphors quick as a bunny.

Unprecedentedly incalculable!

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The Poetry Nook

[I am clearing out files on my little NEO. I don't think I have posted this before, but if I have, forgive me.]

Berryman
by W. S. Merwin

I had hardly begun to read
I asked how can you ever be sure
that what you write is really
any good at all and he said you can't

you can't you can never be sure
you die without knowing
whether anything you wrote was any good
if you have to be sure don't write

This morning, while I was having my coffee and cereal, I idly picked up a book of poetry Carmen was reading. Good Poems for Hard Times. Opened it up to a poem called "Minnesota Thanksgiving" by John Berryman. I read it because it had "Minnesota" in it.

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Spendid use of language

I do like a bit of intelligent vitriol on occasion. Vitriol all by itself is as common as dirt these days, but with a bit of word choice can be fun:

Their whole approach to politics assumes that the other side shares a broadly consistent view of reality. But in John Cole’s acid metaphor, dealing with the agnotological right is like going on a dinner date where you suggest Italian and your date prefers a meal of tire rims and anthrax.

Well, I am off to the dictionary to look up agnotological.

But H.L Mencken and that other guy whose name I forgot would love it.

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Bad writing and history

Well, about history in the making actually. Here are 29 tips on bad writing about Afghanistan. I like them because with just a bit of tweaking you can use these for bad writing about almost any historical subject.

Feudalism, anyone?

btw, my bad vision has been cured through the miracle of modern medicine. Can't you tell?

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Modest Celebration for Strunk and White

If you have anything to do with writing -in English, anyway- then you are familiar with Strunk and White's The Elements of Style. It is celebrating its 50th birthday. Or anniversary. Or whatever you celebrate for a book. Mark Garvey has written a tribute to it in The Wall Street Journal (Yes, occasionally I read the red-state rag). You should read it.

Strunk and White perennially remind writers to observe common rules of punctuation and syntax; to be mindful of structure and prefer succinctness to flabbiness; to aim for prose that is concrete, active and clear; and to be sensitive to current word usage. The last chapter of Elements, "An Approach to Style," caps the book's argument beautifully by offering a handful of sensible truths about how writers might achieve a style and voice all their own.

Garvey also points out how odd it is that The Elements of Style, invariably referred to as 'Strunk and White', gets up the nose of snooty academics. Not me, of course. I have it setting on my shelf.

I should read it someday.

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Penmanship

Or perhaps I should say 'handwriting.' What good is teaching it, since every kid is now wired into a keyboard almost from birth?

As it turns out, quite a bit, according to Newsweek (via Andrew Sullivan). And as many of us have always suspected, it should still be taught, and more intently than the less than 10 minutes a school day at best that is now devoted to it.

Hand-writing. It's not just for fountain pen fanatics.

On the other hand ...

... I also write with a "slightly meandering baseline" according to the same book on handwriting anallysis.

Meaning? "Liveliness; intelligence; well-balanced character." Remember, the author has a PhD! In Psychology. From the Sorbonne!

I am a sinistrogyric.

Which means my handwriting slants backwards, towards the left-hand side of the paper. I always thought that this was because I am left-handed and had to learn the correct way to hold the paper when I was 10 years old. Until then I held the paper the way a rightie ought to, which caused my hand to drag through what I had just written. So I cocked my arm around in the sinister hook typical of lefties, and my writing slanted to the right. When I learned the proper way to write it suddenly slanted to the left. Thus, I am sinistrogyric.

Now I read this in "The ABCs of Handwriting Analysis" by one Claude Santory, PhD:

"Backward slant [reversed, sinistrogyric]

Meaning: Immaturity; egocentricity; stubborness; incapability in forming deep relationships; often an attachment to mother; obsession with the past; emotional detachment. Subjects are deceitful as friends, are often anxious, and deal with their problems by dissembling and lying."

An obvious piece of pseudo-scientific bullwhaa that I resent.


I am NOT stubborn.


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My new weird little machine, the NEO

It's not really a laptop and its not really a typewriter (remember those?). What is it good for? I have just read two articles that help explain my thinking after the fact - at the time my thinking was more intuitive than rational.

Rob Pegoraro in the technology section of the Washington Post makes the point that "Laptop design has advanced a great deal over the past decade, but a few things still generally hold true: Batteries won't last through a cross-country flight, and affordable laptops weigh too much." This is certainly true - and it's the "affordable" part that hurts the most.

Jon Miller in an odd little blog I found this morning called Gemba Panta Rei makes a slightly different point.

As much as I love the bells and whistles of modern day word processing, there are built-in interruptions and flow-stoppers on my laptop that make me wonder if we wouldn’t be better off going back to our manual typewriters, telephones, and other examples of pre-21st century office productivity tools.

In other words, the laptop has so much stuff crammed into it that it is a distraction all by itself. While you are typing, you can also check your e-mail, play solitaire, cruise the web, get instant messages, and watch a cartoon on You Tube. He concludes

Economist use statistics to tell us that information technology has vastly improved productivity. Perhaps. There are times like this week when I wonder if a single-function machine wouldn’t serve me better.

My solution to this was to buy a Neo by Alpha Smart. This is what it looks like. It only does one thing - type. It has a full featured word processor in its little brain and can produce text files that are then transferred to your computer in whatever application you wish.

I've just gotten it and will keep you posted on how useful it is, but it sure solves the problems listed above. It is cheap (not even $225). It is as light and as small as a notebook. I mean a real notebook, not a computer. It is rugged, since it was originally designed for children. Also very simple to use. And you won't be distracted by anything else emanating from your own machine. It doesn't do anything except produce text. And perhaps best of all, its three AA batteries will keep it going for about 700 hours.

It will be perfect for on the bus, in a bar or coffee shop, and above all, in a library doing research. I can type up my notes, take the little machine home and dump the files into my WordPerfect files on my computer.

Robert A. Heinlein and the Right

As is probably fitting for the author of "Starship Troopers" and "The Moon is a Harsh Mistress" Robert Heinlein has earned this retrospective from John J. Miller, a reporter for National Review magazine. Elliot and I had a brief discussion about Heinlein* - some of The Claw's readers characterized him as "a dirty old man," which is ironic considering his appeal to the Right.

Anyway, here is a taste of what Miller has to say:

Heinlein certainly wasn't a conservative traditionalist. His most popular book, in terms of copies sold, was "Stranger in a Strange Land"--a paean to sexual liberation and an attack on organized religion. Published in 1961, it resonated with hippies. Yet the author remained aloof from the counterculture: In 1964, he and his wife Virginia were enthusiastically for Barry Goldwater. A few years later, according to "Robert A. Heinlein: A Reader's Companion," he signed a magazine ad that supported U.S. military involvement in Vietnam.

In his recent book "Radicals for Capitalism," Brian Doherty observes that "a youthful love for Heinlein's tales of rugged individualists often lies in the past of dedicated libertarian activists"--a statement that's possible in large measure because of the 1966 novel that many regard as Heinlein's greatest: "The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress."

The story takes place mostly within a lunar colony, where the residents grow restless under a command-and-control economy imposed by the Lunar Authority, a government that operates for the benefit of Earthlings.

"Here in Luna we're rich. Three million hardworking, smart, skilled people, enough water, plenty of everything, endless power, endless cubic," says one of the moon-dwelling Loonies. "What we don't have is a free market. We must get rid of the Authority!" A few pages later: "It strikes me as the most basic human right, the right to bargain in a free marketplace."

It's an interesting, though oddly incomplete, profile. Not surprisingly he devotes a lot of space to "Starship Troopers."

UPDATE: just realized this is a shortened version of the full article, which explains why it seems incomplete.

*I don't have the energy to search for the link. Sorry.

AnthonyTrollope and Writing

Continuing with the theme of how great, or even mediocre, writers write, I was listening to a recorded version of Anthony Trollope's "Barchester Towers" and learned that:

Trollope considered himself a craftsman rather than an artist creating great literature. He wrote to support himself and his family. Since he also had a job with the post office, he set himself a rigid schedule for producing prose. He was up and at his writing desk by 5:30 every morning and by the time he went to breakfast had finished his writing for the day. He was able to do this by setting his watch on the desk and forcing himself to crank out 250 words every fifteen minutes.

How could he do that? I have trouble writing that fast for my Matins, which is simply stream of consciousness writing with no thought whatsoever with what I am saying. Not only did he make sense, he produced a steady flow of novels that are still popular.

The Master of the Temple

Since you have born with me will I have complained about finishing my paper on Robert of Craon, second Master of the Temple, here is a key paragraph from it, summing up why I thought the guy was important.

Birth, upbringing and training had prepared Robert for this position. He was a product of a family with a tradition of loyalty to the counts of Anjou, of excellence in command, be it military, judicial, or social, and of deep religious feeling. As a youth he had been present to see Pope Urban II, a guest of his grandfather's, call for what would become the First Crusade, and he had seen his grandfather and his uncle leave on the crusade, never to return. He grew up knowing both Robert d'Arbrissel, one of the most famous of the wondering preachers and Geoffrey of Vendôme, a powerful prince of the Church. He had also seen that same Geoffrey humiliate his older brother in the full curia of Anjou. In his career in Aquitaine he had displayed talent and vigor as a military leader for Count Vulgrin. And as a younger son with nothing to inherit, giving up a wealthy heiress, perhaps moved by his father's own deep religiosity, he had found the perfect solution in the military order of the Templars. The organization and wealth that allowed the Templars to gain their reputation, for good and bad, was in large part the legacy of Robert of Craon.

Wait for the movie. The article is a bit academic.

Writing for Law School

No - it is not an oxymoron. Lawyers can too write! The honest ones, anyway.

Here is Eugene Volokh's recommendations for what to read about writing before going to law school.

What Book Should I Read Before Going to Law School?

As I mention below, lots of people ask me this question. Please post your answers here, but for now let me mention mine: A good English usage dictionary — my favorite is Webster's Dictionary of English Usage, but Garner's A Dictionary of Modern American Usage is good, too. (Garner also has A Dictionary of Modern Legal Usage, which may be worth reading as well, but it covers a different set of matters.)

My advice for writers of history?

MAKE IT CLEAR! The style can come later.

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On Writing

Last night I found a blog by a frustrated author which stuck a chord with me, so I left a comment. The comment was meant to be helpful, but I doubt that it was. Still, it got me to thinking. I don't think of myself as a writer, though writing is part of my job and I do a fair amount of personal writing - letters, journals, the three blogs. I am working on an article right now I think will get published. The craft of writing has always fascinated me. Actually setting down and doing the work, once described by a famous writer as sitting at your desk staring at the wall until blood forms on your brow, is a whole 'nother matter.

So it was with a certain amused surprise that I found two items on writing this morning that I think are worth passing on. One is by Garrison Keillor, who can certainly write - he may in fact be a modern Mark Twain. Here it is. And here is his advice on what to do when having trouble writing which includes a critique of Moby-Dick!

Walk briskly and it will improve your circulation and your brain will remember the basics of good writing: Cut to the chase. Cut the introductions. Cut the agonized introspection. When in doubt, write something that is fun. Read your work out loud: It's the automatic b.s. detector. Write on a computer if you must but correct by hand on a typescript with a yellow No. 2 lead pencil.

John Berryman once said that if you need to know if it's good or not, maybe you shouldn't be a writer, and now, in the last week of work, I take those words to heart. I just want to get done. And when I am, then I'll be free to read other writers I've been saving up. A young poet who is funny and brilliant, and a couple of novels by a friend, and of course I have a guilty conscience about never having finished "Moby-Dick," being an English major and all, so I may fish Melville down from the shelf and think about him for a while. He didn't cut to the chase, unfortunately, and agonized introspection is the ham in his sandwich, so I may put him off until winter.

The second item is a blog by Miss Snark, a literary agent giving plain, unvarnished... well, actually pretty darn sarcastic and biting... advice to authors. In between the wincing and laughing you will get some very good advice from someone who knows the business.

If you like to write, nurture unrealistic dreams of being a writer, or just like to watch other people suffer, check these out.