Ceramic penguins and anteaters, photography, recipes, web accessibility and usability, the natural world, rants about the misuse of English. What more do you want - excitement?
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"Q: I'm interested in block printing and dying. Where can I find out more?" - Angela Simpson writing in the Telegraph travel section, 2nd December
A: http://www.dignityindying.org.uk/
Doesn't anyone actually read what they are about to commit to print, one wonders? Sometimes, a spellchecker just won't do.
"This will help disincentivise polluting activities" - report on the Chancellor's PBR, BBC1 lunchtime news
Anyone who uses ugly neologisms like 'disincentivise' (a noun plus a suffix) when there is a perfectly good English verb already - 'discourage' for instance - should be taken out and strung up by the progenitive equipment (but I think that about lots of journos). I have no problem with creative innovations in English - but why torture it like this? Worthy of the impersonations of Dubya on 'Dead Ringers'
Related link:
I normally try to avoid general ranting, but this really got my (nanny) goat.
Yesterday, this little "Christmas card" appeared with the post. As a taxpayer, I am contributing to this absolute nonsense, of which the Professor of the Bleeding Obvious would, no doubt, be proud.
Full of festive hints like not eating mince pies past their sell-by date, not letting gift vouchers expire (really!), and making sure your fairy lights have a CE mark. Never mind whether the darn things actually light up when you get them out of the attic - they were working when you put them away last year!
The finishing touch is the warning on the back:
Related links:
press release (word document) at http://www.consumerdirect.gov.uk
"Great action photo! Ok, the face has an unnatural red hue and the crop at the bottom is less than optimum... and the color of the water is not the rich blue one expects from a shot in the pool.. but having said all that, the action, the timing is so compelling that kudos for this shot are certainly in order." - photo critique on PhotoSIG.
I've seen this usage before and smiled then too! 'Kudos' is, of course, singular, and not the plural of 'kudo'. I also thought the quote is a good example of "damning with faint praise".
Related links:
PhotoSIG (warning: may offend as it includes adult content)
Kudos from the OED
Kudu from Wikipedia
The small ads in our local freesheets are always a treasury of typos - I imagine a lot of them are read out over the phone or written on scraps of paper, then transcribed. There was a real jewel in last month's Marshwood Vale magazine: "Nikon Fez camera with F4 zoom lens".
(I have an FE myself, and happen to know there's an FE2, so it's an easy mistake to make, I guess.)
'Within three or four days, the first "radical" root appears. When this is about 5cm (2in) long, transfer the seed to the pre-warmed compost. Don't bury it, but put it on the surface, standing upright, with its roots going straight down. Put it in bright light in a protected place indoors' - Sarah Raven, writing in the Daily Telegraph gardening section, 28/10/06
She might well use inverted commas! As any botanist knows, the thing is called a radicle. Such lack of knowledge is rather shameful in a professional horticulturalist: unless of course she dictates her copy and can't be bothered to proof read it afterwards. In either case, rather shabby! Another neat illustration of the fact that a spellchecker (or audio typist) can't necessarily be relied on to tell homophones apart. (And a lament for the sub-editor.)
Related links:
Homophones, homographs and homonyms at Wikipedia
... as Homer might say.
Yesterday (in a moment of madness), I visited Tesco's in Axminster to do the week's shopping. A sign at the entrance informed me that the fresh produce was reorganised, and they'd very kindly provided a map of the new layout in case I couldn't find the carrots. I was amused to see that one of the new sections was called "Ambient Salad" - no doubt a term that means a lot to the B Ark personnel who study retail science or whatever it's called - but entirely meaningless to the person to whom the notice was directed: the ordinary shopper.
Moral: don't use jargon that your intended audience will not understand. A particularly apposite one, given that today a survey was published, which reveals that managers who use jargon are distrusted by their staff.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/6118828.stm
(In case you are interested, ambient salad looks very like lettuces!)
I just visited a web site that came with its very own user manual, taking up the left third of the home page:
"How to best view this website
We designed this website to be viewed on a monitor with a screen resolution of 1024x768 or greater. Using a smaller screen resolution (800x600 or 640x480) may result in the navigation buttons located above this statement to be hidden. Most monitor screen resolutions can be adjusted.
For Macintosh:
Click on the apple in the top left corner to access the control panel. Then click on monitors and adjust the screen resolution to a minimum of 1024x768.
For PC's:
Right click on the desktop and click properties. Then click on settings and adjust the screen resolution to a minimum of 1024x768.
Other helpful suggestions: Close or minimize other windows. Increase the browser display window by clicking on the top right button to maximize it to your monitor or stretch the screen manually by dragging the bottom right corner.
If you have any questions please contact: [webmaster]
Thank you."
You've heard of the KISS principle (Keep It Simple, Stupid) - anathema to this designer, obviously. He has instead gone by MIRCC: Make It Really Complicated, Cleverclogs.
The stupid thing is that they only need this raft of instructions because they came up with an inflexible and (rather amateurish these days) design. So I have a helpful suggestion of my own: "Take a running jump; I'm not changing my desktop just for you, mate".
Related link:http://www.christopherburkett.com/frames/b.html
- also a good illustration of why frames are a bad idea unless implemented knowledgeably. This page is easily found in Google for instance.
Today is the day for all UK citizens and residents to join in what might be the biggest single blog event in the UK: a bit like the mass observation diaries they used to keep last century. Find out more here:
http://www.historymatters.org.uk/output/page96.asp
As long as you record what you did today (in all its mind-numbing detail), you can upload it till the end of this month.
As a child, I found History rather a boring subject: but this project sounds like it could be fun, so go on, put fingers to keyboard and have a go!
"It's a wise country that doesn't put all its energy eggs in one basket." - Malcolm Wicks (energy minister, DTI) speaking on Today, BBC Radio 4
I've heard of mixed metaphors, but not proverbs. We have a treasured collection of silly snippets like this in the family: "high technology basket" is another. What is it with wicker and silly analogies?
"...discover our blissful flannel linen. Soft and warm to the touch, gorgeous brushed cotton. Utterly cosy. Combined with a Polar Fleece Blanket, the effect is unspeakable." - promotional email from The White Company
Just one word that entirely changes the mood, and is the antithesis of what was meant. Perhaps they thought that "unspeakable" is commonly taken to mean "rendered speechless with joy" rather than "too utterly horrible to put into words". Knowing the dictionary definition is not always enough!
Another tip for successful writing: run your words past someone else if you can, in the hope that they will catch unfortunate mistakes like this.
Related link: http://www.thewhitecompany.com/
"While I was in the middle of taking an extended series of black and white street portraits, over a period of several months with a 400 Takumar often combined with 1.4 or 2.0 extender that people I focused on saw me more often than not, before I could get a shot off ... I wanted to capture that magic moment before they realized their picture was being taken – or better yet – not at all" - Michael Thompson writing on the Luminous Landscape web site
I was going to be kind to the guy and pass over this mangled English, but when I visited his web site to be told my laptop screen is not good enough to view his works properly (and that I should notify him and take a test before linking to it - sheesh!), I thought, "Why not?"
Even if you are a keen photographer and know what he's going on about, I defy you to read the above and make instant sense. I had to read it several times before realising the proper meaning.
It is well-known that the originator of a text finds it hard to spot mistakes. So, if you don't have the luxury of a proof-reader or sub-editor, can I respectfully suggest that you read your words aloud to see if they mean what you intended - before committing them to paper or screen?
Related links:
http://www.luminous-landscape.com - one of my favo(u)rites, and the article in question
http colon slash slash www dot thebeautyofdestruction dot net
(not actually linking, since I have not emailed nor taken the test to do so in accordance with the owner's wishes)
In an idle moment the other day, I was watching (well, in the same room as the TV while it was on) "Celebrity Masterchef".
My attention was caught by a description of a dish from a well-known (though not to me, thank goodness) London restaurant, as follows:
"Smoked eel on fondant potatoes; with courgette purée, blackcurrant marmalade and pain perdu*" (*eggy bread to you and me)
This is the cheffy equivalent of marketingspeak. It is also a complete bastardization of the principle of good food simply prepared.
I concede that it just might taste wonderful (one should hope so at £22 a pop). But it sounds like a haut cuisine version of the nightmare meal prepared from all the Friday leftovers in the fridge after you you went to the pub and had ten pints, coming home ravenous.
My leftovers never include eel or blackcurrants - but I can knock up a jolly fine bubble and squeak!
Related recipés: Eggy bread (a superior version), and bubble and squeak (from fresh ingredients: but much more satisfying using leftovers from your Christmas dinner or Sunday roast)
Related link: http://www.sketch.uk.com (what an arsy web site. Why am I not surprised?)
I'm currently doing some work on quick-start guides for VoIP phones for Gradwell. When you read the documentation that comes with the phone, you may realise why. This is from the User Guide for one model (take a deep breath before you start reading):
"Experienced telephony service network operators recognize that technical acumen coupled with responsive pre and post sales support are critical for a successful deployment. [Manufacturer]'s extensive interoperability track record with VoIP industry infrastructure leaders via standards based and platform specific SIP signaling enable network providers to quickly roll-out competitive, feature rich service offerings.
Featuring a mature feature set with hundreds of programmable parameters, the [model] utilizes the call processing functionality found in existing [Manufacturer] products. [Manufacturer] VoIP endpoint solutions solve many time-to-market requirements of enterprise users and leverage the advantages of an IP network like easy acceptance of station moves, presence and shared line appearances across geographically separate locations."
Call me stupid, but I can't see how this trowelful of marketing gobbledegook has any relevance at all to some poor sap sitting with a boxful of bits on the desk, and no idea of how to get the damn thing to work! Perhaps they pay their technical authors by the 1000 words rather than by any objective standard of usability?
Sports commentaries are always a rich source of amusement for those of us with an interest in English, and yesterday's coverage of the Chinese Grand Prix on ITV was no disappointment.
I imagine that the team send a gofer out to the cliché supermarket before every broadcast.
He or she returns staggering under the weight of newly minted and classic clichés, with side orders of mixed metaphors and tortured usage. These are then distributed to the commentators with strict instructions to use them all up by the end of the programme, or else.
Two that made me snort my tea:
"He [Robert Kubica] bet the house, and the house fell down on him"
"Fisichella is the meat in a very unpleasant sandwich"
One might think that people phishing for bank details would take some trouble to sound like an official body in their messages. How anyone with more than two brain cells to rub together would be taken in by this sort of thing is quite beyond me:
" Dear Customer:
We have introduce a new security firewall that will help you stay protected online, this is due to the rate of problems other UK banks are facing today from fraudstars.
In order to secure your account, we may require some specific information from you for the following reason:
We would like to ensure that your account was not accessed by an unauthorized third party.
as soon as you are log into your online it will automaticaly upgrade your online access protect your online access.
Please click the link below to upgrade your online access with the new firewall. " - phishing message received today from Cooperative Bank plc - as if
I just love "fraudstars" - the person writing the message is obviously a real fraudstar! The tenuous grasp of English grammar, spelling and usage makes me think that, just perhaps, the originator is not actually British. And his or her lack of knowledge of how a firewall works is a bit of a giveaway too.
"DECEMBER - 'TIS THE SEASON
Unleash your forward thinking. Pick up the HOTLINE.
Find the best of Corbis... ahead of time.
December Highlights:
To call the anniversary of a natural catastrophe a "highlight" is, to me, incredibly insensitive. A highlight is, surely, suggesting something fun or exciting to look forward to, rather than an occasion for national mourning? I can just imagine all those advertising executives rubbing their hands in glee, which projects entirely the wrong image. Bad call, Corbis.
Related link: http://www.corbis.com
I have recently installed PaintShop Pro version 10, and I'm still getting used to its vagaries. I was rather amused by this small but perfectly formed message that popped up yesterday when I was wanting to save a file:
The only point of the message seems to be clicking the button to dismiss it: all a bit too Zen for me. It's quite lovable in an annoying puppy sort of way!
I was mildly amused by a junk message I received this morning: look at the screen shot and see if you think the title ("Optimisation: a clear view on SEO") and the content (as seen in Outlook with normal junk mail settings) are contradictory!
No matter what the medium is, you can't get your message across without a detailed understanding of what other people will see, not just what happens on your own computer. These guys - http://www.leadbank.co.uk/ - clearly don't, which makes me wonder how thorough their understanding of the web is.
"... as we continued walking along to the Cobb, [we were] disappointed that the intimate character, visual interest, groins and features that appealed so much to children was all gone, replaced by a bland characterless pile of shingle ..." - Letter to Lyme News, Sept 15th 2006
I have visited Lyme many times, and the groynes were certainly interesting - but not necessarily the groins. Oh well - something to bring a smile to the readers of the local paper; and also to prove that you do actually need to read what you write before committing it to print. 
I am continually amused, baffled and irritated in equal measures by artspeak: that special brand of pretentious adjective-laden language employed by writers about the arts. Take this example I noticed the other day:
"The ... paintings ... are without concern for mimetic skills or for evoking literary sentiments from the freely arranged colours, forms and perspectives, whose final combinations using oil paints on canvas are aiming for a reality which is joyously decorative, almost pretty in style." - Bridport Open Studios 2006 Venue Guide
Huh - what's that all about? Looking at the accompanying illustration, I can sum it up in a few words: "Impressionistic oil paintings of landscapes in bright colours". OK, we don't want to reduce everything to plain words, and it might be interesting to know about the painter's motives - but you'd never know what drove him from the above nonsense.
Anything that mentions 'vibrant', 'exciting', 'powerful', 'energised', 'bejewel', 'groundbreaking' and similar terms (all from the same publication) - without actually saying what you might see when you get there - is a waste of words, in my opinion!
(And anyone who uses 'whose' for inanimate concepts, and 'which' instead of 'that' should try to do better next time.)
"In conjunction with FSB and Business Link, Dorset Business have put together an exciting event covering all you need to know about what's hot and what's not with business websites.
By the end of the session you should have an understanding of the concepts to better position your website; how to set and achieve realistic goals; how to successfully market and promote your site using free and chargeable methods, an insight into the new and emerging world of bloggs." - Business Link Wessex Email Bulletin
So new, they haven't even worked out to spell it yet. The writer cannot blame his spellchecker, since although Bloggs is commonly used as a generic name (both Fred and Joe), bloggs never has been.
And as for "what's hot and what's not" - that takes me back to the days when Netscape was all shiny and new. I can't help feeling that using two such antiquated forms to publicise an event about current technology is misjudged. Or was he being retro and ironic? I think not.
As you've been good and read this far without complaining, I won't mention the split infinitive and scattergun punctuation in the second paragraph.
"I think we let out a lot of Trojan Horses when we opened that Pandora's Box" - Sir Norman Tebbit interviewed on The Frost Years, BBC Radio 4, a few minutes ago
I wonder if they also forgot to shut the stable door after the Trojan Horses had bolted?
My husband was talking to his former tutor at college at the weekend. He learnt that students are now officially called funding units (or FUs) - which says all you need to know about the state of vocational education in this country.
Such mealy-mouthed terms not only annoy me hugely, they also promote exactly the wrong mindset in everyone who uses and accepts them as normal. We seem, collectively, to be in danger of forgetting that the whole purpose of education is, surely, to impart knowledge to people: not to get money for bums on seats?
September in England is the best time to gather blackberries (brambles) from the hedgerows and fields. Such delicious and free wild fruits are one of the few truly seasonal pleasures left to us in these days of year-round availability of produce from the supermarkets.
Blackberries and apple are a marriage made in heaven: redolent of autumn and truly delicious. Stewed together with a little water and sugar, they are delicious with cream, plain yoghurt or ice cream, or you can bake the mixture in pastry for a traditional blackberry and apple pie. But best of all is a crumble:
Rub 75 g of butter or margarine into 300g of plain flour. Stir in 2-3 tbspns sugar to taste, and 2 tbspns flaked or rolled oats. If you like the taste, add 1/2 tsp ground cinnamon.
Peel, core and slice 2 large or 3 small apples. Add about 100-150g washed and picked-over blackberries to the apples. Sweeten to taste (I prefer it on the sharp side to contrast with the crumble, so about 2 tbspns sugar is plenty), and put in an overproof dish.
Spread the crumble mix over the top, and cook in a moderate oven (gas mark 3, 160°C) for about an hour, till the fruit is soft and the top starts to brown. Perfect with icecream, custard, or if you are lucky like me and live in the West Country, clotted cream!
I am lucky to live in part of the country where we only have four terrestrial TV channels and digital reception is poor: who wants hundreds of channels of drivel when four is sufficient? Well, lots of people do, and your idea of drivel and mine are probably different. But looking idly at a TV guide this morning over breakfast, I was struck by the programme titles on a couple of satellite channels, all clamouring loudly for my three-minute attention span:
Without being familiar with the content of the channels, I think you might find it rather hard to guess which was which: in fact, 1 is the History Channel and 2 is National Geographic.
My point is that by going for such needlessly sensationalist (and also undescriptive) titles, whoever thinks up the titles is not only underestimating the intelligence and discrimination of viewers, but also devaluing language: if everything has to be so "wow, look at me, I'm so exciting" - what words are left for things that really are significant and should be attention-getting? It's a bit like using the F word all the time in conversation (or your blog!), then having nothing satisfying to say when you hit your thumb with a hammer.
"The horse jumped fantastic" - Zara Phillips, interviewed on the Today programme about her win at the World Equestrian Games in Germany, BBC Radio 4, yesterday morning.
Call me old-fashioned, but I expected the Queen's granddaughter to have a slightly better appreciation of grammar than this.
At first, I thought it might be a slip of the tongue in her excitement, but she repeated exactly the same mistake in two other interviews.
So: is it true that even a first class education (which she presumably received) is not sufficient to drum in the difference between an adjective (fantastic) and an adverb (fantastically: would be even better to add "well"). Or is it perhaps that she wants to achieve the common touch by speaking like her less well-educated contemporaries?
This is not without precedent: Tony Blair has developed many Estuary English pronunciations and mannerisms since he became PM, for example.
"Last week, at the end of America's National Speed Week, when large numbers of mostly men descend on the salt flats and drive as fast as possible, Dieselmax broke the 300mph barrier. " - Guardian unlimited web site, 22 Aug 2006
I am looking forward to meeting this new breed of mostly men: the mind boggles at which bits are not of the traditional masculine kind. Perhaps they wear pinnies?
If the writer had taken the trouble to proof his words, he might have realised that he meant to say "large numbers, mostly of men,".
The Guardian was always known for the carelessness of its sub-editing in the days of hot metal typesetting (hence its nickname, Grauniad), but now that subs are a thing of the past, such howlers are common in even the most illustrious publications, as I shall no doubt report in the future.
