More on Buckley

From today's Wall Street Journal excerpts of the late William F. Buckley's writing and speeches:

"I am lapidary but not eristic when I use big words."

Lapidary: "Characterized by an exactitude and extreme refinement that suggests gem cutting."

(ME lapidarius, relating to stone cutting).

Eristic: "Pertaining to controversy or disputation."

Derived from the Greek eristikos, eris meaning discord.

Death of a sesquipedalian writer

William F. Buckley Jr., who for decades warmed my father's heart and chilled the necks of liberals, died today at 82. Died at his desk. Died writing a column.
The New York Times' headline must have Buckley raising a heavenly martini in toast:

William F. Buckley Jr., 82, Dies; Sesquipedalian Spark of Right

The Times indirectly defined that fabulous word we learned as kids when it made reference to Buckley's use of "ten-dollar words."

On writing

Roy Peter Clark at Poynter has an interview this week with legendary sports writer Frank Deford, famous for his work, among other places, at short-lived The National (I have a copy of the last issue) and at Sports Illustrated.

The interview got me thinking about writing techniques. Deford has a couple of good ones:

· He types his written notes to get a sense for what he has, doesn’t have and needs to get.

· He uses colored paper to block out chunks of his stories (the historical background on blue, for instance).

· And if he has writer’s block (I’ll dedicate a post to this at a later date), he just starts somewhere and works from there (say in the middle and writes to the end and then figures out the top).

Writing in business is straightforward: You’re trying to communicate simple messages effectively; not elaborate on chaos theory. There’s always a beginning, a middle and an end. The beginning is what you’re going to say; the middle is what you want to say; and the end is recapping what you just said.

Visualizing that structure is relatively simple.

Deford’s techniques (and others) are effective on much more complex writing projects. The most valuable book I ever read on writing is “The Art and Craft of Feature Writing” by William Blundell, a onetime editor for The Wall Street Journal. Blundell taught me to use 3x5 index cards to frame both major and minor points, including quotes. You can then lay the cards out in front of you, pushing them around to where they best work.

Adopting outline and prep techniques like Blundell’s or Deford’s make the act of sitting down at your laptop to write much less daunting.

An abundance of fodder

Andy Kessler, who wrote "How We Got Here," is one of my favorite business columnists. I catch him in The Wall Street Journal whenever he makes it onto the op-ed page. Today, he has a column titled "Internet Wrecking Ball," about the so-called "net-neutrality" issue.
I call out a couple of minor boo-boos (not to pick on Kessler but because I've got to post an item, and a bird in the hand is twittering at me):

"I personally would climb telephone poles on my street..." If you're doing the climbing, Andy, you can't outsource it. It's going to be personal.

"Yes, despite an overabundance..." (Part of the definition of the word abundance is "oversufficient quantity or supply," so overabundance is overly oversufficient and going over-over the top. But aha! you say, as if you've lured me into a rusty bear trap that has snapped violently around my ankle: Why, then, is the word overabundance in the dictionary? Because smart people who write dictionaries sometimes screw up.
Can you use overabundance? Sure. You can use colloquialisms too. But my point is: edit paranoid. The more critically you look at every word, the more you will whittle your copy into cogent prose and communicate clearer thought.

Word of the day: Skintle

(′skint·əl) (civil engineering) To set bricks in an irregular fashion so that they are out of alignment with the face by ¼ inch (6 millimeters) or more.

This word is fairly new because it's not in Webster's Unabridged, even in the new-word section. Tip of the cap to Brian "Wretch" Santo for calling this out. His house is apparently one of only a few in his city that's skintled.

From where I sit...

Before satellites and infrared technologies, sight was a major advantage in hunting, military campaigns and pioneering, to name a few.
I came across the construction today: "From my vantage point, it appears...."
Since vantage means "a position, condition or place affording...a commanding view," vantage point is redundant.

As is...
"Entirely new." That came from the same contributed piece I reviewed.

In an analyst report, I encountered this sentence:
"Having generated clear success on the public Internet, the question becomes whether or not these tools add business value."
Aside from the "public Internet" (because I have yet to come across the private Internet), the construction, while common, is nevertheless weird. It should be "xxx the question is 'do these tools add business value.?'"
Or...
"xxxthe issue becomes whether these tools add business value." (whether or not is just lazy grammar).

The Period As Statement

Women's Wear Daily reports today that The Wall Street Journal 's planned magazine, Pursuits, which is scheduled to launch in September, has been renamed WSJ. (That's W S J period). WWD quoted a Journal spokesman as saying:

"The three letters happen to be typographically quite pleasing. And its simplicity gives us enormous flexibility visually and semantically."

I haven't been able to track down the font yet, but it's worth noting that down to the period used WSJ., it's different from than The Wall Street Journal masthead type font. That style is Escrow, designed by Cyrus Highsmith, a graduate of the Rhode Island School of Design. Tomaso Capuano, who designed the quarterly Times of London supplement, Times Luxx, is designing WSJ.
In an era in which video rules our lives, words are devalued and typography seems quainter than quill pens, this is a fabulous story. The Journal, in fact, always has placed a premium on typography since the paper until relatively recently was text heavy, black and white and ran few graphics. And to my knowledge, The Journal is the only newspaper in North America that puts a period at the end of its name.