Two Harrumpfs

No comic today, but something to think about.

My second gold rule of writing is to be correct. This from This Day in History for July 20:

In December of the same year, Apollo 8 took three astronauts to the dark side of the moon and back, and in March 1969 Apollo 9 tested the lunar module for the first time while in Earth orbit.

The whole moon is dark half the time! They went to the FAR side of the moon! I know, “dark” is a synonym for “unknown,” and I presume they were using a professional writer who decided to write, um, informally. Still, why not be accurate?

While I’m at it, here’s another example of bad writing from the same article:

After traveling 240,000 miles in 76 hours, Apollo 11 entered into a lunar orbit on July 19.

“Into” is unnecessary. (It’s redundant. “Entering” includes the idea of going into.) I call this kind of mistake “fluff.” It goes against my third rule, to be concise. If you don’t need a word, don’t use it.

Double harrumpf.

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I’ve recommended A Word A Day a couple times in the past (and still do), and someone once asked about places to post their short stories, so I posted links to a few sites, and I always give credit when I quote comics (and usually other sites, unless it would embarrass them). Recently another site has been posting links to this site! I confess that I’m flattered, even though sometimes this sort of thing is a racket of some kind.

Well, the site is legit. At least I’m not the only one he mentions, and he stays on the topic of technical writing a lot. It’s an effort to have a social network site for tech writers. In fact, I joined up a long time ago and then forgot I had done so! Too busy tech writing, I guess.

Anyway, I’ll return the favor and post a link to his site:

Technical Writing World.

Give it a look. Maybe sign up.

Okay, I’m being lazy; this is an easy post. I do have some good stuff in the saddlebag, though.

A while back (actually last May) I wrote about Goedel’s proof, about how he proved that it’s impossible to have a completely consistent set of rules about anything. If you skipped the post, you should go read it. It’s not exactly about writing, it’s about a fact of life: We’ll never figure things out completely because contradictions always exist.

So here’s proof. Is this Break of Day comic logical or not?

Answer: Yes, it’s logical, but it’s also contradictory.

PS. I can’t help making a writing comment: It should be “…petition to help stop us.”

I saw a version of this back in the 1960’s in Readers Digest.

http://www.gocomics.com/pearlsbeforeswine/2017/06/12

Okay, I have to admit I cringed and laughed at the same time when I saw this. Once before I wrote about what you call someone who’s picky and public about correct grammar. Oops—twice, I guess. I would have included this comic (posted in The Nib) if it had been published then. It’s one of six, by the way. Go look.

At least the guy is correct about his grammar…