Fritinancy

Goodbye to All That

I'mma let you finish 2009, but not without a few parting links:

The 15 Most Stupid Products of the Decade, including Vista, the UroClub, and—talk about the Walk of Shame!—Crocs. (Hat tip: Irene Nelson.)

Laurel Sutton of Catchword Branding selects the ten best and worst Internet company brands of the decade. Best feature of the list: the categories (The Letter-Dropper, The Misspeller, etc.).

Lake Superior State University, in Sault Ste. Marie, Michigan, presents its 2010 List of Banished Words. (Full title: "Words Banished from the Queen's English for Mis-use, Over-use and General Uselessness.") The list—the 35th annual—is compiled from reader suggestions, and includes the predictable peeves: tweet, app, chillaxin', etc. I'm not crazy about the "banishment" concept (and who's that queen, anyway?). But I can't resist citing the tweet from Steve Silberman that notified me of the list: "Tweet czars say stimulus apps a toxic asset." (If you aren't following Steve on Twitter, I suggest you do so immediately.)

John McIntyre, former Baltimore Sun copyeditor, offers the one statement that, for him and his colleagues, "fitly epitomizes the year that is gasping its last today."

Finally, a bit of horn-tooting in the guise of public service: Amy Rosenberg of the Philadelphia Inquirer sums up the year in words and catchphrases: Octomom, hopium, hiking the Appalachian Trail, and much more. (I confess I had to look up J-Roll.) Yes, I am quoted therein, and my "word etc. blog" is named. Thank you, Ms. Rosenberg!

Happy New Year, all! And special thanks to everyone who commented, corrected, and sent links and tips for blog posts. See you in the future.

The Brand That Refused to Die

Here's a little branding quiz for you.

Think of a product name that existed for just three years in the 1990s before losing a trademark challenge. The company name survived in slightly altered form, but the product name was replaced by a series of successor names.

And yet...

More than eleven years after that legal defeat, the original product name is still used, erroneously but ubiquitously, to describe an entire class of products that themselves exist mostly as fading memories.

What's the brand?

I'll give you one hint: it's a technology brand.

Answer after the jump.

Local Words of the Year

City Dictionary, a user-built "city guide organized in an easy-to-use dictionary format," has just announced its Local Words of the Year.

Check out the list to discover what sconnie, meat raffle, neutral ground, polio water, and slugging mean in their respective U.S. cities.

And poke around the nicely designed site to read definitions of featured words, participate in a poll (how do you pronounce pecan?), and contribute a local term of your own. My contribution: hella, in the Oakland section.

UPDATE: I've fixed the first City Dictionary link (apologies!). And here's a just-published blog post by City Dictionary founder Thomas Carmona that explains the selection process for Local Words of the Year.

Word of the Week: Shtick Lit

Shtick Lit: "Books perpetrated by people who undertook an unusual project with the express purpose of writing about it."

The quotation is from Ben Yagoda's new book, Memoir: A History, in which he cites Henry David Thoreau as the progenitor of shtick lit. Recent examples of the genre—and there are many from which to choose— include Julie & Julia (Julie Powell's book about reproducing all the recipes in Julia Child's Mastering the Art of French Cooking); Ammon Shea's Reading the OED: One Man, One Year, 21,730 Pages; and A.J. Jacobs's The Year of Living Biblically: One Man's Humble Quest to Follow the Bible As Literally As Possible. Jacobs might be called the king of shtick lit; he also wrote The Know-It-All: One Man's Humble Quest to Become the Smartest Person in the World and The Guinea Pig Diaries: My Life As an Experiment.

Shtick lit was apparently coined in imitation of chick lit ("literature by, for, or about women"), which the OED tracks back to 1993 but which probably arose earlier. (The OED's citation is from Newsday: "By the way, the very proper sounding ‘Female Literary Tradition’ is known there [i.e. at Princeton University] as ‘Chick Lit.’")* Shtick is a Yiddish word (via German) meaning "piece." You can have a shtick of anything, including food; the word was adopted by American comedians no later than the 1950s to mean "a piece of business": a gimmick or routine.

Yagoda credits book reviewer Sarah Goldstein with coining shtick lit in her October 2007 review of The Year of Living Biblically:

The market for gimmick books—shtick lit, as it were—has enjoyed a surprising shelf life. There are authors who pledge not to spend money for a year, those who promise to say yes to everything and, of course, those who only eat food made by 21st century chemical processes. Writing one seems simple enough: You need an absurd lifestyle and the willpower to stick with it for a year or some other marketable length of time.

But shtick lit had appeared in print, at least in passing, several years earlier. Steve Almond dropped shtick lit (without a definition) into a 2003 essay that turned out to be about "dick lit" (his term). The definition of shtick lit was still fluid enough by 2008 that the Elegant Variation blog included this definition (and alternate spelling) in its "taxonomy of lit":

Schtick Lit - Footnotes, characters named for colors, and other look-at-me machinations.  (See Special Topics in Calamity Physics and, again, Infinite Jest.)

Also in the taxonomy: mick lit, brick lit, quick lit, hick lit. Published too recently for inclusion is Mary Karr's Lit, about her history of drinking; its genre might be called lit lit.

Listen to an NPR interview with Ben Yagoda about Memoir. I've written about Yagoda's earlier book The Sound on the Page here.

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* Chick lit was in turn probably formed by comparison with chick flick, which has been around since at least the mid-1980s.

 

 

 

The Airing of Grievances

Happy Festivus, the holiday for the rest of us! The aluminum pole has been lofted, the Feats of Strength admired. Now it's time for the Airing of Grievances, my favorite ritual of all. I've been saving up grievous examples for more than a month in anticipation of this special day. Too negative for you? Go watch It's a Wonderful Life.

Grievance the First. This Bloomingdale's ad, which ran in the New York Times on Dec. 7, merits a citation from the Apostrophe Abuse posse:

Its, dammit. Its. You may send me a free pair of overpriced shoes for my troubles.

Grievance the Second: From an online ad for "Copywriting Experts (Native English Writer Only)" on the Pro Freelance Projects site: 

Do you know how to write web copy that make people click? Do your words make people inch until they do what you want them to do? We’re looking for an on going copywriter and willing to pay great rate for the right person…

Are you inching to know what that "on going" "great rate" might be? A less-than-princely $250 to $750. (Hat tip: Richard Pelletier.)

Grievance the Third: From a story in the Your Home section of the Toronto Star about actor-turned-DIY-instructor Mag Ruffman:

To that end, she has created a pyramid based on Mazlo's hierarchy of needs, that she "heard in first-year university" and then applied to home shows.

The story was published Dec. 5, and Abraham Maslow's name is still misspelled. (Hat tip: Sherry Noik.)

Grievance the Fourth: From a brief story about actor James McAvoy published in the Los Angeles Times on Dec. 3:

[McAvoy]... may be best known for ... "The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe" (as Mr. Tumnus, the fawn)...

That would be faun, a creature that's half human, half goat. A fawn is a young deer. (Hat tip: Carroll Lachnit.)

Grievance the Fifth: A Dec. 3 story about memoirist Rhoda Janzen written by Cathy Horyn, longtime style reporter for the New York Times, contained this gem of an eggcorn in the lede*:

The New York Hilton. It is the breakfast hour, the day before Thanksgiving, and the lobby is busy with clean-looking families who are up and Adam, ready to set off in their varsity-letter jackets and Rockports for some holiday shopping, maybe a show.

The idiom is "up and at 'em." Even in Manhattan.

Grievance the Sixth: This one comes, once again, from the sharp-eyed Carroll Lachnit, who spotted it in a press release titled "Networking Strategies for the Holiday Office Party, Do's and Don'ts." I'll let Carroll set it up for you:

I get a lot of PR pitches, and the bad ones are usually bad for all the usual reasons. This one is a little worse: 1) a misspelling of "liquor" as "liquer" (or maybe for "liqueur," if people get blasted on Chambord at holiday parties), and 2) signing off with "All Heart." Ick.

And then there's this, smack in the middle of the release:  

•  Use the Introduction as a Segway. The end game here is to open the door for follow up.  You want to be able to connect with the Boss after the party, one-on-one. 

Carroll asks:

Does the PR person actually not know that the word is actually "segue"? Or has she just opted to fuse the word with its product persona so the reader will visualize that with this introduction in hand, she can effortlessly (if somewhat geekishly) glide her way to a new job?

My two cents: If I have to motor around on a ridiculous two-wheeler to meet Bruce Springsteen after the party, so be it. (What? He's the Boss, right?)

Also: "end game" is not a synonym for "goal."

And one more thing: I wrote about the worldwide Complaints Choir phenomenon last year. I'm pleased to report that the movement continues to gather momentum, and if we're lucky we'll soon see the Complaints Choir movie. Here's the trailer:

 

For additional examples of grievous newsroom malfeasance, see John McIntyre's compilation, "Save Money: Cut Back on Editing."

And do try to have a holiday that's perfect in every way. See you next week.

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* Lead paragraph. "Lede" is the way journalists spell it. 

DISCLAIMER: All errors in this post are corollaries of Muphry's Law, a k a McKean's Law.

(Festivus magnet sold at Cafe Press.)

Mmmm, Algorithmic Guilloche Patterns!

From the TCHO Chocolate website, a tasty example of designer bafflegab:

A TCHO Chocolate bar, with its algorithmic guilloche patterns, looks like a modern form of currency. “Modern” was always part of the brand brief — no faux traditionalism, but resolutely forward-looking for a new generation of chocolate enthusiasts.

So the TCHO brand language is deeper. Color, pattern, shape, the TCHO Flavor Wheel, and typography all serve to distinguish the TCHO visual brand.

But where, we want to know, is the Dynamic of Perimeter Oscillations?

Hat tip: Seth Godin's blog.

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Image: Algorithmic guilloche patterns on the TCHO 1.0 "Chocolatey" 60g bar.

Brands of the Year: Fritinancy Edition

The headlines this year were full of failing or dead brands, from Circuit City and Max Factor to Pontiac and Saturn. (For more about eight major brand failures, see CNN Money's wrap-up.) And let's have several mournful moments of silence for the defunct newspapers and magazines—the Rocky Mountain News, Gourmet, I.D., and many others.

But my own Brands of the Year list isn't a eulogy; it's a salute to brands that survived (sometimes despite serious damage) and made us look, talk, and think.

For a longer view, see my Brands of the Decade: 2000-2009 post.

In alphabetical order:

Word of the Week: Uncanny Valley

Uncanny Valley: The dropoff in humans' acceptance of robots when those creations' appearance becomes eerily lifelike.

Uncanny Valley was coined in 1970 by Japanese roboticist Masahiro Mori. From the Wikipedia entry:

Mori's hypothesis states that as a robot is made more humanlike in its appearance and motion, the emotional response from a human being to the robot will become increasingly positive and empathic, until a point is reached beyond which the response quickly becomes that of strong repulsion. However, as the appearance and motion continue to become less distinguishable from a human being, the emotional response becomes positive once more and approaches human-to-human empathy levels.

TV Tropes, the resource for everything television-related, has this to say about the Uncanny Valley:

The Uncanny Valley may be a deep, instinctual reaction; it steers humans, on an automatic level, away from humans who are dead, diseased, or deformed (which is often an indication of poor health). It may also alert "normal" people to the presence of mental problems which would render someone unfit for inclusion in a peer group. In that way, the theory goes, the Uncanny Valley is a protection against associating with sources of infection. Of course, backfires of such beneficial instincts might also have a large part in the development of racist sentiment.

This might explain why we like Ridiculously Human Robots, even if they don't make a lot of intuitive sense; they are just far enough out of the Uncanny Valley not to bother us.

This idea has recently been applied to CG [computer-generated] effects. While it's become very easy for programs to simulate textures and skin tones, convincing movement and facial expressions aren't always as simple. This can produce an effect where the character comes off as a zombie, if a production company is going for a purely realistic human look.

Uncanny Valley has been appearing lately in discussions of the new James Cameron release Avatar, which uses sophisticated CG effects. Reviewing the film in the Chicago Sun-Times, Robert Ebert calls  it "sensational entertainment" and "predestined to launch a cult." Of Avatar's "technical breakthrough," he writes:

The Na'vi are embodied through motion capture techniques, convincingly. They look like specific, persuasive individuals, yet sidestep the eerie Uncanny Valley effect.

Meanwhile, Jim Emerson, also of the Sun-Times, invokes the Uncanny Valley in his own review of Avatar—and arrives at a conclusion diametrically opposed to Ebert's:

The imagery dive-bombs into the Uncanny Valley in the very first shot and never climbs back out of it: An aerial representation of a rain-forest is impressively full of detail but looks utterly artificial, the CGI equivalent of Astroturf.

UPDATE: Michele Hush forwards a link to her recent post about the Uncanny Valley, which includes more background about uncanniness ("that creepy feeling") and CGI artist Jonathan Joly's version of the Uncanny Valley chart, which adds stuffed animals, Disney movies, and Ann Coulter to the mix.

Watch a 2½-minute compilation of video clips demonstrating the full robot-human spectrum, including many examples that reside in the Uncanny Valley.

Watch the Avatar trailer.

Buzzwords of 2009

In today's New York Times, Grant Barrett, editorial director of the online dictionary Wordnik and curator of the Double-Tongued Dictionary, presents his top buzzwords and catchphrases of 2009, from aporkalypse to ununbium. 

From the introduction by Times reporter Mark Leibovich:

If the year were a Government Motors car, it would be a clunker. There was so much distraction. Things like Great Recessions and mancessions will do that, distract you (like a Dracula sneeze). So will texting while driving, which is far more dangerous in the scheme of things than sexting (unless it’s sexting while driving), and maybe even hiking the Appalachian Trail. Whatever, it was a year when a lot of people acted stupidly.

I'm pleased to see several of my own choices (including birther, mancession, and meep) on Grant's list. But I'm even more tickled by the words I'd overlooked or hadn't even known about: Dracula sneeze? Drive like a Cullen? Warmist?

Comment on, or add to, the buzzword list here. And read about Grant Barrett's buzzwords of 2008 here.

December Linkfest

Didn't get everything on your Chanukah list? Haven't received any Festivus invitations? Cheer up: I have goodies to spare.

First course, more year-end lists:

• The Guardian (U.K.) selects its "Noughtyisms," a year-by-year list of the decade's best words. They place cougar in 2005; I had it on my 2009 list. Hat tip: Sherry Noik.

• Separated by a Common Language announces the best American-to-British and British-to-American imports of 2009.

• Minneapolis naming agency Pollywog picks its best and worst brand names of 2009. I disagree about Bing—I think it's a pretty good name—but I agree about the rest.

• This just in: The German word of the year is Abwrackprämie (literally: "wrecking premium"), the equivalent of "cash for clunkers." Runner-up: kriegsähnliche Zustände, or “war-like conditions,” used to describe the situation faced by German troops in Afghanistan.

And looking toward the new year:

• From Trendwatching, 10 consumer trends to watch in 2010, including "(F)luxury," "Maturialism," and "Urbany."

A couple of enjoyable time-wasters—uh, research opportunities:

• SlangSite, "a dictionary of slang, webspeak, made-up words, and colloquialisms." I'm partial to qiken (pronounced chicken), "used to describe chicken cooked in an Asian style." Hat tip:  Dick Margulis, author of an excellent blog on writing, publishing, editing, and web design.

• WordCount, a brilliant interactive display of the 86,000+ most commonly used words in (British) English. Hat tip: Descriptively Adequate.

In anticipation of Festivus, with its annual Airing of Grievances, here are a couple of grievances about relationships between designers and clients. Equally applicable to name developers and copywriters, to be sure. (I'll air more grievances on the actual holiday, Dec. 23.)

• Eight ways to kill an idea. Beautifully illustrated, painfully true. Hat tip: Catch This.

• How a web design goes straight to hell. With very few changes, could apply to writing and naming projects.

Finally, here's a bit of, uh, breaking naming news you may have missed: The Swedish Association for Sexuality Education has announced a new name for the hymen: vaginal corona. In Swedish: slidkrans. Thanks a million for that link, Wes Phillips.

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Image: Festivus ice cream, a seasonal flavor produced by Ben & Jerry's in the early 2000s, brought back by popular demand in 2006, and now retired.