They used the number of angles in the figures as a mnemonic

Before that, we had Roman Numerals, of course, but what did we use to count with before the Romans? We used letters.

Before I tell you how that works, I must mention numerology. Numerology is the practice of assigning numerical values to letters, counting up the sum, and looking for interesting patterns in the numbers you get. The most common way nowadays it to assign the values 1 through 26 to the letters of the English alphabet. Numerologists manipulate results pretty much at will; consequently you can prove anything you like with numerology if you work at it. It’s a bunch of hokum. I even figured out how to prove that I, your humble curmudgeon, am the antichrist! Ask me how and I’ll tell you. It’s all very clear, and completely bogus.

Since at least the Greeks and the Hebrews actually did use letters (other groups had a pile of other systems), you can assign a numerical value to a word. When the Greeks were actually counting, they put a mark at the corner of the letter to show that it was being used as a numeral. But they didn’t go from 1 to 26 (okay, 24) in assigning the values. First, here’s a Greek alphabet.

Lowercase letters came later

Numbers, like musical terms and place names, tends to be conservative linguistically, and that leads to a monkey wrench. Between epsilon and zeta, when you’re counting, you have to insert an obsolete letter called a digamma. The digamma looks like a capital F, and it stands for six. Keep counting, and you get to iota standing for ten. Kappa is 20, not eleven. Lambda is 30, and so on, until you get to the next monkey wrench between pi and rho. In goes another obsolete letter, qof, which looks like a lollipop, and it stands for 90. Hence, rho is 100. Sigma is 200, and so on. I don’t know of a letter for 900, and they used a word for a thousand, related to our word myriad. So if you want to say you have 23 sheep, you would use kappa gamma with a mark after the two letters.

Obviously, with a system like this you can assign values to actual Greek words pretty easily. Look up the numerical values and add them up. It’s from this practice that we get the expression “the number of a name.”

And having used that expression, I have to bring up the book of Revelation and the number of the beast. What I described above is how you get to the infamous 666. You have a few problems figuring out who he is, though.

• It’s easy to get from a word to a number, but hard to get from a number to a word. Try it.
• What language do you use? Classical Greek? Modern Greek? Hebrew? Latin? Aramaic? Italian? King James English? Whatever language the beast speaks?
• What name do you use? First name? Title? Whole name? Last name? Maybe his secret name. How about nickname? Or the name his opponents call him?

Obviously it’s going to be hard to figure out who the guy is in advance, and plenty of people have figured out plenty of ways to assign 666 to a lot of famous folks enemies. My recommendation: make it into a party game. Use something like the Greek method on the English alphabet, and assign people their numbers accordingly. Make up some rules, such as the higher your number the more intelligent (or some other desirable characteristic) you are. Perhaps the closer your numbers are, the more compatible, and you can add the number of your pet’s name to bring your numbers closer together. Married people who have the same last name would be very compatible.

The sky’s the limit.

Science, like most other specialties, has its own language (in fact, it probably has about as many languages as there are specializations). Most of the time, this doesn’t make much of a difference, but there are cases where that language has a namespace collision with the vernacular.

To give a concrete example, if you talk to a scientist for long enough, you’ll probably hear about a half-dozen things that he or she “believes.” For a scientist, that’s shorthand for “there is strong evidence or a compelling theoretical reason to think that.” But it sounds awkward to a lot of people, given that belief is commonly viewed as accepting something without evidence. As any of the writers here can attest, we ruthlessly purge the use of “believe” from our science content specifically to avoid this confusion.

It’s interesting to me that and ostensibly technical publication feels the need (correctly, I believe) to avoid a word that a non-technical reader is likely to misunderstand. The rule in technical writing is that if the reader misunderstands, the problem is with the writing. And yes, I know that some people are idiots.

This diagram is titled "Sources of belief."

1. Read the Roman-Raphaelson book on writing. Read it three times.
2. Write the way you talk. Naturally.
3. Use short words, short sentences and short paragraphs.
4. Never use jargon words like reconceptualize, demassification, attitudinally, judgmentally. They are hallmarks of a pretentious ass.
5. Never write more than two pages on any subject.
6. Check your quotations.
7. Never send a letter or a memo on the day you write it. Read it aloud the next morning — and then edit it.
8. If it is something important, get a colleague to improve it.
9. Before you send your letter or your memo, make sure it is crystal clear what you want the recipient to do.
10. If you want ACTION, don’t write. Go and tell the guy what you want.

I put in a link to the book in rule 1. If you click the link and buy the book, I’ll get a pittance from Amazon. If you go Brain Pickings and click their link, they’ll get the pittance.

Be careful with rule 2—people talk messily, and good writing is a product of reflection. I wonder if my word “pretentiousism” fits in rule 4. Rule 5: Mr. Ogilvy was writing in a business memo context, I think. I can’t imagine that he would be against books, plays, and complete instructions. Rule 6 is just plain being responsible. You can generalize rule 7 to anything you write. That fish poem I wrote a couple posts back went through a good twenty revisions over at least four days. I like rule 10. Not being there in person one a minor problem of distributed teams: We can’t go stand over someone who is slow to respond.

David Ogilvy

I’m reading A Universe from Nothing by Lawrence M. Krauss. It’s a book on cosmology written to literate (read interested in cosmology) laypeople. So far the book has been a nice review of a lot of material about cosmology that I’ve already read, and it pulls some things together for me. On page 113 I ran into a nice correct use of “comprise,” and I decided to share it with you. Remember, “comprise” goes between the whole and its parts, in that order. It’s a rather long sentence; bear with me until you get near the end.

It is worth repeating the implications of this remarkable agreement more forcefully: Only in the first seconds of a hot Big Bang with an initial abundance of protons and neutrons that would result in something very close to the observed density matter in visible galaxies today, and a density of radiation that would leave a remnant that would correspond precisely to the observed intensity of the cosmic microwave background radiation today, would nuclear reactions occur that could produce precisely the abundance of light elements, hydrogen and deuterium, helium, and lithium, that we infer to have comprised the basic building blocks of the stars that now fill the night sky.

The part that I’m interested in is “…the abundance…that we infer to have comprised the building basic building blocks…” The abundance (the whole thing) comprises the blocks (plural, parts). A complicated sentence, but he got it right.

However, the book is good for more than a good example. On page 114 I found this poor misshapen gem:

When 60 percent of the visible matter in the universe is comprised of helium, there will be no necessity for production of primordial helium in a hot Big Bang in order to produce agreement with observation.

The universe will be 60% composed of helium, or if you prefer, the universe will be made up of 60% helium. (Best is to avoid the whole issue: the universe is 60% helium).
Dr. Krauss is hardly someone I’d accuse of being pretentious, but it’s fun to catch the smart guys once in a while, too.

One of the denser illustrations in the book

To be fair, Dr. Krauss uses “comprise” correctly at least twice more, in consecutive sentences, no less. Repetition is the mother of learning, so I’ll quote them here so you can practice seeing how the word is used correctly.

More recently, however, universe has come to have a simpler, arguably more sensible meaning. It is now traditional to think of “our” universe as comprising simply the totality of all that we can now see and all that we could ever see. Physically, therefore, our universe comprises everything that either once could have had an impact upon us or that ever will.

I leave it as an exercise for you, dear reader, to work out that these usages are correct.

I was a sales trainer in another life. For the United States Chamber of Commerce, no less.  One of the things I taught my trainees never to say in a presentation was these two phrases:  ”I want” and “let me.” By the way, did you notice that I wrote “was these two phrases?” That’s a singular verb, and “two phrases” is a plural. What gives? Re-read the sentence, and you will realize that the subject is the first word in the sentence, a singular. The two phrases were a single lesson. I admit the sentence is somewhat awkward, having the subject and verb so far apart, but it’s a good example of being alert about subject-verb agreement.

I want to show you our new product. Let me show you how wonderful it is.

Nothing will brand you as a pushy salesperson more quickly than those two pairs of words.

Now the third thing you should never say: “I’d like.”

I’d like to thank you all for reading my blog.

Don’t say that you’re going to say something, just say it!

Thank you for reading The Writing Rag. Knowing that you spend your valuable time here strongly motivates me to produce the best material I can.

Cleaner, crisper, more direct, more sincere, less work for your reader, and you’re doing something, not merely promising to do it. Don’t say you’d like to do something unless something is preventing you from doing it.

Here’s an example of someone using “I’d like” correctly:

My thanks to John Hambrock, who writes The Brilliant Mind of Edison Lee.

I’d like to post a link to the comic, but I’m not sure it works.

2. Recently my brother came to town for a visit. Among other things, he had a good time reciting a poem about a mouse in a bar being ready to take on the cat after drinking some Guinness that had spilled onto the floor.

The tone of my brother’s poem, combined with the title of that article, inspired me to write this poem. Somewhat timidly, I offer it to my discerning readers. Sorry it’s so long. Mixed meter tetrameter, rhymed couplets, mostly.

I was dozing on the pier in the Chesapeake bay
When a great big fish swam up my way.
And then the fish spoke and I really awoke!
What I tell you is true, this is no joke.
Said the fish to me, “I’ll grant you a wish
If you grant me a boon—to this poor old fish.”
Amazed though I was to speak to a fish,
I asked him “Sir, what is your wish?”
And then that fish, he winked at me.
“I’ve heard about coffee, you see,” said he
“If you could bring me a taste that I could try,
Then I would be happy, before I die.”
I pondered a while his dilemma true:
The sea would ruin the finest brew.
I thought some more and then I knew a way!
“Just bide right here and stay in the bay.”
I ran to the coffee shop of my choice,
And announced to Emma in a confident voice,
“I need a special coffee brewed today,
So would you kindly make it just my way?”
She knew her trade, this barista fair,
But she looked at me askance as she tossed her hair.
“I know your tricks, you homely man,
You ask for something hard ’cause you think you can;
But I like a challenge, so fire away.”
And she began my special brew that day.
She ground those coffee beans so fine,
They turned to dust in almost no time.
Then she pressed them flat on a little tray.
“That flat enough for your taste today?”
She asked with her eyebrow raised halfway.
“Looks good to me,” I said with glee,
“Now one more step I need from thee.
Just wrap it in your finest pastry dough,
And into the oven now it must go,
To brown that flakey dough just so.”
She took it from the oven when it was done,
Saying, “Here’s your coffee-hiding bun.”
I took the little scone out to the pier
And called to the fish “I have it here!”
Pop this in your mouth and hold it still.
When the pastry melts, you’ll get the thrill
Of the taste of the very best coffee mill.”
So he took it in his mouth and held it a while,
Then his face broke out in a great big smile!
“A taysht define I dho deglaire!”
He said as he flipped his tail in the air.
He savored it a while, then swallowed it down,
Then he looked at me and he looked at the town.
“I made a promise that I must keep
Before I return to the briny deep.
What is your wish, my clever man?
I’ll do it for you, friend, if ever I can.”
I knew right away what I wanted him to do.
“I hope this isn’t too hard for you:
I’ve always been homely, so I would wish
That you make me ever so handsome, dear fish.”
“I’ll make you like the handsomest thing I’ve seen
In all the places that I ever have been.
‘Tis easy to do.” He gave his tail a swish
And turned me into—a great big fish!

Postscript: I had planned to take this to the coffeehouse in the poem, down in the historic district in Annapolis, and read it unannounced, in  the hearing of all the customers and the staff, one of whom is Emma. The day ahead of this planned performance, I was having a snack at a restaurant and doing some reading. I realized that the background music they played at the coffeehouse would interfere with my extemporaneous performance. Alas, Emma would never hear my poem, and neither would the customers. As I left the restaurant where I had been reading, whom should I run into but Emma! I let her read the poem and she laughed several times as she read it. She said she liked it. Life is good.

A husband’s method of doing something might be different from his wife’s method of doing the same thing.

But what if you’re comparing verbs? Then you need an adverb! The adverb is “differently. ”

I happen to be reading The Proper Care and Feeding of Husbands, by Dr. Laura Schlessinger. My wife and I are planning to read it together, but I got a little head start. (I hope there’s also a book about the proper care and feeding of wives, but to tell the truth, neither of us has much of a complaint about the other, but I digress.) The book has excellent English, some of the cleanest I have seen in a book in a while, and this morning I ran into the sentence that led to this post. Dr. Schlessinger does a nice job with “differently,” so I’m going to share it with you.

Wives need to remind themselves that when their husbands do something differently from how they would do it themselves, it does not constitute a breach of sanity or a display of contempt.

Note the correct use of “from.” Nice. You can tell what verbs are being compared, right?

Dr. S, posed differently from how I would expect. Yup, the pose is different from the usual one.

Ladies, (so far, anyway) I recommend the book as a source of some good ideas about how you might treat your hubby differently from how you might be treating him, and to everyone, I recommend the book for the good grammar.

… It is at this age that most children begin to put together three words into complex sentences – ‘Margot kiss Daddy’, rather than simply ‘Margot kiss’ or ‘Kiss Daddy’ – with the subject-verb-object (SVO) structure, or syntax, that characterizes English and most other human languages. The structure SOV (‘Margot Daddy kiss’) is used by a few languages (Japanese, Korean, and Tibetan among others), while VSO and VOS structures are used by around 15% of languages (Welsh is an example of the former and Malagasy of the latter). The rarest structure of all is OSV, perhaps best known from the film The Empire Strikes Back as the language of Yoda the Jedi master: ‘Sick have I become’ and so on, used by only a handful of languages spoken in the Brazilian Amazon.

The important thing to glean from this syntactic diversity is that word order plays a crucial role in our understanding of a sentence. …

So, the explosion of linguistic complexity in a two-year-old is a result of the mastery of syntax, and from then on it is a never-ending barrage of ever more complex sentences. The great leap forward in understanding, however, involves crossing the syntax barrier… This is what we see with chimpanzees taught to use American Sign Language … The significant difference in human vs. ape communication seems to have been the creation of brain structures that allowed an understanding of syntax, and thus the communication of complex meaning.

Gorillas can do ASL, too

This is a more extended passage than I usually quote, but the remarks about chimps and syntax don’t make a lot of sense without the examples of syntax. The whole section is good. (Pages 86 and 87 if you look it up.) I had been wondering if there was a qualitative difference between ape and human language ability beyond anatomical hindrances in the chimp. Now I see there is.

A woman without a man is like a fish without a bicyle.

This section of the book describes features of mitochondrial DNA, transmitted through the female line, and stretches of DNA on the Y chromosome, transmitted only through males. They produce independent histories of the human genome, so they can be used to corroborate one another. Anyway, read on until you reach page 71. About the middle of the page you run into this passage.

It is literally a ‘journey of man’, but it is the best tool we have for inferring the details of the trip. It is obviously important to examine the female lineage to see if it follows the same pattern – to make sure the fish stays with the bicycle, so to speak – but the Y-chromosome does provide us with the cleanest distillation of human migrational history.

—A reference to something either in well-known feminist literature or a quote 20 pages earlier in the book, take your pick.

Sorry about the sexist humor. That's a Y chromosome on the left, X chromosome on the right.

Gloria must know a lot of fish who like bicycles.

I’ve known her for a decade and a half
I think that she’s a witch because I know
She’s just as gorgeous now as when we met
And still my heart is captive to her charm

I can’t escape; I haven’t even tried
The very thought of looking somewhere else
Repels me like a fox repels a hare
I really want to feel her close at hand

Two quatrains of blank iambic pentameter. Much too stiff. I need something a little more casual and friendly.

My wife is cute
She’s such a hoot
She likes to snuggle, too
She’s such a dear
’cause when she’s near,
She also likes to–

Nah, too casual. Gotta be something I can recite in public. Maybe a ballad form. Quatrains of iambic tetrameter, AABB rhyme scheme.

I like my wife, she’s nice to me
She feeds me supper faithfully
Her birthday’s coming soon I hear
What gift to get my wife so dear?

I know! I’ll take her out to eat
I think she’ll think that that’s a treat
I’ll tell her “Get what’er you wish
And you won’t have to wash a dish!”

Better, but not very lovey-dovey. Can I put together something a little more romantic?

You make me think of flowers, dear.
They’re always lovely every year.
You’re like the stars, those gems of light,
You light my life and make it bright.
You’re like a book I like to read—
I never know where the plot will lead.
You make me happy as a clam,
I married you, and glad I am!

Think that’ll do? Just in case, wish her a happy birthday in the comments, okay?

And here’s a picture of her:

Our DNA carries, hidden in its string of four simple letters, a historical document stretching back to the origin of life and the first self-replicating molecules, through our amoebic ancestors, and down to the present day.

Here we have some nice examples of figurative language in what amounts to a scientific document. It’s in the preface, so the figures are appropriate, I think. Let’s take them out, and you’ll see what I mean.

Human DNA contains, in its string of billions of copies of four nucleotides, information that describes life from the time of its origin until now.

Not nearly as interesting, is it?

The original sentence contains examples of personification (ancestors), pleonasm (“present day” instead of “now”), metonymy (“letters” instead of “nucleotides”), synecdoche (“four” instead of “string of billions of copies of four”), hysteron-proteron (putting “self-replicating molecules” ahead of “the origin of life”), metaphor (“document” instead of “information”), and anabasis (adding “amoebic ancestors” between “molecules” and “present day.”) There; I think I got them all. You might include catachresis, or incongruity, since we generally consider the movement from self-replicating chemicals to humans as moving upward, but he describes the passage of time as downward (“down to the present…”). He also starts describing time as going back to the origin, and ends by coming down to the present. Adding physical directions to the passage of time is a figure of speech, too, but whatcha gonna do?

personification: attributing human characteristics to something

pleonasm: redundancy

metonymy: substituting one  noun for another

synecdoche: saying a part of something, but meaning the whole thing

hysteron-proteron: putting the second thing first

metaphor: giving something another name

anabasis: going slowly upward

catachresis: being self-contradictory

Your reaction is probably surprise. To which I say, figures of speech are pretty common, aren’t they?

If you prefer, here’s a simpler approach:

I've seen versions of this used to explain mathematical proofs, too. Sorry, I don't know the source.

The article is titled Grammatical Gaffes are the Worstest, and I recommend giving it a read.

It’s more or less my kind of article. I even commented on it. It ends with a challenge to find all the mistakes in the article, a fun exercise if you’re a grammar curmudgeon/nazi/emperor. Or wannabe.

Here’s an essentially unrelated picture, but I wanted to include something to look at besides my deathless prose.

I got this from Colin Collins on G+, but don't know the original source.

Another bad habit that is practiced quite a lot is to make a verb out of a noun. For example, “text.” Is it a noun or a verb? Remember the song, “Matchmaker Matchmaker, catch me a catch”? I remember someone once criticizing this habit when we have perfectly good ways to say something already. They were writing about using “office” as a verb, as in “Where do you office?”

I am slightly embarrassed to confess that I joined this club today with my own neologism. First a little context. A geek joke is running around in the texting community, in which instead of (ahem) texting “K” (short for “okay”), the person texts “potassium.” Get it? (Okay, for my non-chemist non-geek readers, the chemical symbol for the element potassium is K. Hence the joke.)

It probably won’t last long because texters are notoriously frugal with their keystrokes, but I like the joke, and I used it on someone the other day. Then I texted a friend who was in on the joke that I had potassiumed someone.

Bananas are said to be a good source of potassium

Mea culpa.