Fritinancy

You Don't Have to Be Jewish...

...to take this fascinating survey of "American Jewish language." Its authors, a pair of social scientists from Hebrew Union College, say it's "the first of its kind to ask North Americans about the words from Yiddish and Hebrew (and other languages) that they may use or recognize."

Part of the survey is a vocabulary quiz that includes words such as the well-assimilated chutzpah, shmooze, maven, and mensch. There's also a section on Jewish-flavored English idioms, some of which were completely alien to me: Sure, I've heard (and used) "Enough already," but not "Are you coming to us for dinner?" or "What do we learn out from this?"

Because trends in baby naming are a demi-obsession of mine, I particularly enjoyed the questions about names you'd consider for your hypothetical children. Options include what I'd consider über-goyish (Christopher and Christine, absolutely; but John strikes me as more culturally neutral than the other choices) to modern Hebrew (Matan for a boy, Noa for a girl) and old-school Yiddish (Moishe, Mende, Basya, Freydie).

And yes, they're curious about non-Jews' linguistic scope, too. (You'll get a shorter survey than the one I took.)

But I wasn't able to discern which "other languages" were in the survey besides Hebrew, Yiddish, and English. Anyone? *

Via Polyglot Conspiracy.

* Update: I figured it out. There's a least one Ladino term in the survey. (Ladino: Judeo-Spanish spoken by Sephardic Jews.)

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P.S. About the post title: "You Don't Have to Be Jewish to Love Levy's Real Jewish Rye" was a famous ad campaign created by advertising genius Bill Bernbach (he also dreamed up Volkswagen's "Think Small" slogan). Beginning around 1970, the posters--featuring models from all ethnic groups-- appeared all over the New York subway system. Here's one poster; here's another.

Bad Science

My latest column for Visual Thesaurus, "Bad Science," has just been published. It's a selective list of scientific and mathematical terms that are frequently misused by the press and especially by corporate marketing departments. Yes, you'll need to subscribe to read the whole article (what are you waiting for? a year's subscription is only about $20), but here's a taste:

Fraction:

A fraction is not "a tiny amount"; it's any part of a whole. Nevertheless, we frequently see passages like this one, from a San Francisco Chronicle article about Hawaiian Airlines: "Hawaiian will offer one departure from Oakland and one flight back from Honolulu each day. That's a fraction of the multiple flights formerly operated by Aloha and ATA." What fraction are we talking about — one-sixteenth? One-half? Ninety-nine one-hundredths?

Other words that made the list: autistic, average, DNA, exponential, parameter, perfect storm, quantum leap, and schizophrenic. And I have a few things to say about paradigm shift, too.

What other examples of misused scientific terms can you think of?

Saying Grace

In honor of Quatorze Juillet--Bastille Day--here are a few thoughts about the French expression coup de grâce.

I had clicked over to Heidi Swanson's 101 Cookbooks, one of the better food blogs out there, because Heidi's recipe for Salt-kissed Buttermilk Cake looked so tempting and her description, as always, was so persuasive. But I stopped short when I read this line in the recipe itself:

The coup de grace is a floppy dollop of sweet, freshly whipped cream on the side.

Now, I cooed over "floppy dollop," a charmingly evocative phrase. But "coup de grâce"? (Yes, it should have accent circonflexe.)

Here are several dictionary definitions of coup de grâce:

A death blow intended to end the suffering of a wounded creature

A French term used in English to mean a finishing sword cut.

The dagger stroke given to mercifully end the suffering of a wounded duelist (originally used to execute a defeated knight in heavy plate armor)

A finishing stroke

(By the way, the correct pronunication is coo duh grahss. Do not omit the s sound at the end of grâce.)

I left a comment noting that I felt coup de grâce was an odd choice in this context. One later commenter leapt to Heidi's defense, citing that "finishing stroke" definition.

I disagree, although I agree that my original on-the-fly suggestion for a substitution--pièce de résistance--is just as inapt. 

The problem with coup de grâce is that grâce reminds us of the everyday meaning of English "grace": "elegance," "attractiveness," "charm." But "grace" and grâce also have theological meanings of "mercy" and "thanksgiving" (which English retains in expressions like "by the grace of God" and "the grace before meals"). A coup de grâce relies on the latter meaning: it's a merciful end to suffering.

I think "grace note"--a small, decorative, unessential part of a larger piece--is closer to what Heidi may have intended; what it lacks in Frenchy finery it makes up for in accuracy, and the link with musical terminology creates a pleasing cross-sensory association.

Now, English speakers have been ringing all sorts of changes on French since the Norman invasion, and I'm sure there are those will take the descriptivist position: "If Heidi wants coup de grâce to mean delicious adornment, then I'll defend to the death her right to do so!"

But I think we need to be careful with our borrowings and redefinings. As I heard someone say on NPR the other day, "We're living in a global world"--or at least an increasingly connected one. Supoose you had a native French speaker at your table and proudly announced that whipped cream was your cake's coup de grâce. Your guest would have reason to push his dessert plate away with a murmured "Non, merci."

Finding le mot juste--like finding the perfect fleur de sel--can take a little additional time, but it's definitely worth the trouble.

P.S. I made Salt-kissed Buttermilk Cake over the weekend with fresh raspberries. Four stars. And one caveat: if you use kosher salt for the topping, halve the amount in the recipe. For the sodium-sensitive, a whole teaspoonful of kosher salt could indeed be a finishing stroke--and not a merciful one. 

P.P.S. Speaking of faux pas, right after I finished writing this post I came across this sentence in a fashion blog: "And viola!" Mais non, not unless you're introducing a member of a string quartet. The word is voilà--French for "hey, presto!", more or less. It's pronounced vwah-LAH. 

Word of the Week: Emanata

Emanata: Lines and squiggles that emanate from a cartoon character or object to indicate any of a variety of states of being.

Emanata was coined by the American cartoonist Mort Walker (born 1923), creator of the long-running comic strips Beetle Bailey and Hi and Lois. In his Lexicon of Comicana, (1980), Walker introduced a number of invented words, including:

Plewds: teardrop shapes emanating from a character's head to express embarrassment or worry.

Blurgit: a combination of symbols expressing speed and action.

Neoflects: short, straight lines around an object to indicate that it's brand-new.

Jarns, quimps, nittles, and grawlixes: the squiggles, stars, and other glyphs that substitute for curse words.

Although the Lexicon of Comicana was originally written as a satire of cartoonists' stock devices, it's used today as a textbook for art students.

More on Mort Walker's comic lexicon.

Image from Lexicon of Comicana.

Grammar Girl Trips on Its/It's

I've been enjoying Grammar Girl's Quick and Dirty Tips for Better Writing, the just-published first book by Mignon Fogarty. Like Fogarty's Grammar Girl podcasts, the book is breezy and reassuring, yet authoritative. Fogarty uses just enough popular-culture references to guarantee her readers' attention without sounding like she's trying too hard. And she charms us by sharing some of her own usage faux pas.

For example, on page 35 she confesses:

When I was in second grade, I lost a spelling bee because I misspelled the word its. I put an apostrophe in where I shouldn't have, and it was a very traumatic moment in my young life. I think this lesson is burned into my mind precisely because of my past misdeeds, and although I can't change my past, I believe the next best thing would be to save you all from similar apostrophe-induced horrors.

Well and good, except on page 177 she writes:

When you're tempted to use communicate, ask yourself if you really mean tell. Communicate has it's place...

An example follows, but I couldn't concentrate. I was too distracted by that apostrophe-induced horror.

It's bad enough when an error like this one slips into the daily newspaper or an annual report. But in a book purporting to tell us Right from Wrong, usage-wise ... oh, dear.

Linguists have a semi-jokey name for this particular nightmare: Hartman's Law of Prescriptivist Retaliation. It specifies that "any article or statement about correct grammar, punctuation, or spelling is bound to contain at least one error." (For example, in that particular phrase in the article I just linked to, by Jed Hartman himself, "error" is misspelled "eror.") This rule is also known as McKean's Law, in honor of "dictionary evangelist" Erin McKean.

Here's my advice to Mignon Fogarty, who is currently on book tour: own up to the error and treat it with your characteristic good humor. Use it as an opportunity to talk about Hartman's Law, McKean's Law, famous mistakes-in-print, and Our National Proofreading Crisis.

And make sure it's corrected in the second edition.

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It you were expecting this post to be about ice cream, I apologize. Read more about It's-It ice cream treats here.

Crafting a Voice for RepairPal

For many of my clients I'm the namer-in-chief. For a few others I'm in charge of what's usually called "content"--I come up with ideas, do research and interviews, and write copy. For others I'm a ghostwriter of books or speeches. And for some clients I do something that falls somewhere in between: I create a vocabulary that becomes the client's verbal brand.

Verbal branding is what I did for RepairPal, the auto-maintenance site that launched last month. The site allows users to find and rate repair shops, get accurate and unbiased estimates for repairs, look up common repair problems and issues specific to their car's make and model, read about car parts and systems, and securely store repair records online.

My work for RepairPal began just before Christmas of 2007 with a proposal I submitted for "positioning the company, creating an effective and engaging corporate voice, bringing home and landing pages into focus, and establishing a verbal brand that can be extended into other parts of the website and other communications." This sort of work is hard to describe and (usually) even harder to sell. Fortunately, in RepairPal I had a smart and receptive client. CEO David Sturtz and his management team knew they needed an outsider's perspective to clarify, simplify, and "warmify" their content.¹ David's a self-professed car buff who knows a lot about how cars work; he took for granted many of the questions his less-sophisticated audience would have. He wanted a woman's perspective, too: for most of my six-month engagement, all of RepairPal's executives and technical advisers were men, but they expected most of the site's users to be women.

So my assignment was clear--and also vague. "Voice" and "tone" in writing are notoriously difficult to define. Here's what Jack Hitt says about them in a chapter titled "Voice" in his excellent book, A Writer's Coach:

Like a singer's, a writer's voice is an elusive thing, the sum of everything that goes into his or her style of written expression. A distinctive vocabulary might contribute to it. So might a preference for particular sentence forms or syntax. Or voice might emerge from even more subtle dimensions of writing. Unique angles of approach to subjects, maybe. Or a characteristic pace or degree of formality.

Later in the chapter, Hitt identifies some of the enemies of an authentic writing voice: pomposity, trendspeak, clichés (he provides a long list), private languages, and the "elegant variation" (a tortured effort to avoid repetition, as when a writer refers to Mickey Mouse as "the Disney rodent").

Hitt is addressing journalists and essayists, but we verbal branders face the same challenge--with the added twist that we're channeling (or inventing) a corporate personality that needs to be perceived as authentic and consistent.

The draft copy RepairPal showed me of the home page and main landing pages had predictable first-draft problems. Much of the language was stilted and formal. In striving for brevity, the team had sacrificed warmth, connection, and even essential information. The copy was sprinkled with MBA-isms like "metrics," "benchmarks," and "next steps." You could hear the effort that had gone into writing it. And this was for a website that needed to sound relaxed, confident, and friendly--like a repair pal.

(A note about the name: it had already been chosen and registered by the time I signed on. At my first meeting I mentioned my concerns about conflicts with PayPal--would customers think RepairPal was a subsidiary? Would PayPal sue?--and was told that trademark lawyers had already looked into those issues and given a green light.)

Many of my recommendations had to do with consistency: on the home page, each of the three "action" boxes now has a headline that starts with an imperative verb. Consistency leads to clarity, and clarity builds confidence. I also recommended using "you" and "your" as often as possible: strange as it seems, that direct connection with the user had been missing. I also came up with the home page's main headline, "We take the mystery out of auto repair!" We went through a lot of rounds on that single line. Should it be "mystery", "headache," or "guesswork"? Did we really need the exclamation point? (I said yes.) At one point the line was going to be "Take the despair out of auto repair," which has the cute rhyme and that touch of darkness I personally find appealing. But it was a tad too dark for many other folks.

I did a lot of work on the tagline, too. In the end, David Sturtz chose a line he'd been working on himself: Car Care Confidence. (For several weeks it was Confident Car Care, which I preferred. What do you think?)

Then there were all the brandable elements: What should we call the huge parts-and-service database, the estimating function, the record-storage section? And there were questions about whether certain terms--including car make--were too jargon-y for a general audience. I said most people--yes, even women--knew what make meant. The word went in. We went back and forth on such seemingly trivial points as whether the record-storage section (a nifty and valuable feature of the site) should be called MyCar or My Car. I said the closed-up version looked too artificial. The space went in.

It may seem mind-boggling that this sort of work can occupy six months, on and off, but the RepairPal guys, to their credit, take language very seriously. The site is still in beta, and I'm sure much will change. Still, I'm pleased that I could give RepairPal many of its first public words. Take the site for a test drive (sorry; couldn't resist) and let me know what you think. The really impressive section is the one for which I did no consulting at all: the auto repair encyclopedia. An army of auto experts shared their collective wisdom to create it (and a professional copyeditor helped smooth out the language). It's a beautiful thing.

Read what the press has been saying about RepairPal.

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¹ I discovered "warmify" on Picasa, the photo storage and editing site: it's one of the effects you can apply to your pictures. I've been using the word in other contexts ever since.

One X at a Time

Remember 360 Vodka's twist on the formulaic "X-ing the Y, One Z at a Time"?

(Sorry I couldn't find a bigger photo; the slogan reads "Saving the planet, one glass at a time.")

When I wrote about it last September, I cited ten other examples of this sloganclone (my term for a commercial snowclone--a specific type of cliché).

Here's a new variation I spotted the other day:

The snowclone "Changing the [world/earth/planet], one X at a time" appears to be more common than "Saving the [world/earth/planet], one X at a time" (584,000 Google hits for the first, with the "world" variant; 181,000 for the second). Snowclone queen Erin O'Connor includes "Saving the world, one X at a time" in her snowclones queue--a long list of snowclones awaiting analysis.

Starting Date: Yesterday

Job listing on Craigslist: 

Date: 2008-07-08, 5:25PM PDT

i can't spell and don't do grammer good and need a freelance. this will be an ongoing freelance gig.

Hat tip: CBrown.

 

New York City's Got the Blues

On the skyline, that is. The New York Times explains:

Two new high-rises, one on the Upper East Side, the other in Brooklyn, a have the same name: Azure, a deep shade of blue. Seem familiar? It should. On the Lower East Side, another new building is called Blue.

Sky House, under construction on East 29th Street, is not to be confused with the Cielo (Italian for “sky”), on East 83rd Street. And then there are Star Tower, in Long Island City, and Solaria, in the Bronx.

It is an unintended consequence of the city’s historic building boom: a traffic jam of similar sounding names. To showcase the sweeping views from buildings with huge, wrap-around windows, real estate developers are flocking to a set of words that evoke the sky, clouds and stars.

Sky-high names, you might say, for sky-high projects. Most units in these buildings are selling for more than $1 million.

Developers generally do their own naming, according to the article. They start

with a list of over 100 names and, working with marketing experts, advertising executives and graphic artists, slowly whittle them down to one. The winner becomes the centerpiece of a marketing campaign, typically costing millions and including newspaper advertisements, Web sites, glossy advertorials and sales centers.

My favorite paragraph in the article is a quote from an executive at Alexico Group, a developer. "That is what people pay for: views, light, sky, air. That is why there is such a huge emphasis on that in these names."

It's not the quote that tickles me. It's the name of the executive: Louise Sunshine.

Write a Haiku, Win a Phone

At last, a technology contest for poetry geeks!

The scoop: CrunchGear is giving away a Samsung phone every week to the winner of an online haiku contest. This week's prize is an M520; the final prize will be the new Web-enabled Instinct model.

The catch: you must post your haiku on Twitter, addressed to @useyourinstinct. If you're not already among the Twitterati, simply go to Twitter and create a login. (It's free.) While you're there, look me up--I'm Fritinancy--and follow my tweets. Or not.

The rules: You already know that a haiku is a three-line Japanese verse form with the following structure: five syllables, seven syllables, five syllables. This week's additional rule: your subject must be the sense of hearing. CrunchGear admonishes us to keep it clean, creative, and clever. Funny is good, too.

Enter as often as you like, but you can win only one prize.

Read all about it here.

Full disclosure: I have nothing to disclose. I have no connection whatsoever to Samsung; I didn't name the Instinct or any other phone. (I had to check to see what kind of phone I actually own. Oh. It's a Sanyo.)

I did, however, win a haiku contest in eleventh-grade English class. Watch your back, grasshopper.