Language & Grammar – Page 4

Reading The Histories

I hadn’t always wanted to read Herodotus. He has a mixed reputation among historians, often cited as an unreliable source, gossip monger or simply as a fantasist. Sure, he’s the “father of history” as Cicero called him (or at least of historical writing) and penned the earliest surviving work of non-fiction, but he often doesn’t get the respect that, say, Thucydides gets for his efforts (dry as they might be at times). Herodotus has even been called the ‘father of lies‘ by some modern historians. … click below for more ↓

Fowler for the 21st Century

2016-08-02 2016-08-02 Books & Reviews / Grammar / Language & Grammar / Style & usage / What I'm Reading Now / Words & etymologyOne Comment

On the desk of every writer, every reporter, every editor, every PR director and every communications officer is a small library of reference books. A good dictionary (Oxford, American Heritage, Merriam Webster, Random House but gods forbid, never a generic Webster’s). A thesaurus (likely Roget’s). A style guide (CP for Canadians, or AP for Americans… Canadians likely have both). A dictionary of quotations (because the print version is reliable as a source, and the Internet isn’t). And a usage guide. That’s de rigeur for these … click below for more ↓

Designing Type

2016-07-30 2016-07-30 Fonts & Layout / Typography / What I'm Reading NowLeave a comment

Karen Cheng’s 2005 book, Designing Type, is the third of the recent books on typography I have received*. Of the three, it is the most technical, appealing to the typophile and design geek more than the average reader. But it’s also a reference for layout and graphic artists looking to choose a specific font for a work. If your goal is to actually design a typeface, she helps appreciate the subtleties of design that differentiate and separate typefaces and letterforms. But it’s not a book about … click below for more ↓

Frutiger vs Palatino

2016-07-23 2021-05-15 Books & Reviews / Fonts & Layout / Typography / What I'm Reading Now2 Comments

In a recent review of Sarah Hyndman’s book, Why Fonts Matter, I casually commented that, You can no more adequately comment on the relevance and impact on the viewer of, say, Frutiger versus Palatino, without discussing the design and layout in which it is set… The point of which was not to single out those two typefaces as much as to suggest the debate between how readers respond to sans-serif and serif faces (respectively). Fruitiger is a modern, humanist sans-serif type designed by Adrian Frutiger … click below for more ↓

Reading Letters: Designing for Legibility

2016-07-23 2016-07-23 Books & Reviews / Language & Grammar / Typography / What I'm Reading NowOne Comment

The human brain is truly a remarkable machine.* We can see a bunch of lines and in that same brain turn them into an M and know it’s not a V or an N or a K or W. Yet M isn’t a ‘thing’ – it’s an abstract representation of a sound that itself has no concrete meaning outside the Mmmmm of meditation. When you mentally assemble a bunch of other lines and sticks and squiggles, those sounds form a larger abstraction: a word: MOON. … click below for more ↓

Why Fonts Matter

2016-07-21 2016-07-21 Arts / Books & Reviews / Fonts & Layout / Language & Grammar / Marketing / Typography / What I'm Reading Now3 Comments

The first problem I have when receiving a new book on typography is that I spend far too much time looking up the typefaces described or sampled therein, and searching for them online, instead of reading. Then I start looking at (and critiquing) the typefaces chosen for the book itself. It’s a trees-not-the-forest kind of wonderment that comes over me. As I am wont to do, I sit back on my deck in the evening sun, glass of wine in hand, and a large pile … click below for more ↓

Power, ambition, backstabbing

2016-07-05 2016-07-05 Culture / Language & Grammar / Shakespeare / What I'm Reading NowLeave a comment

Power grabs. Backstabbing. Lust. Ambition. Conniving. Hypocrisy. A weak but well-meaning ruler. A grasping second in command who viciously usurps power. A bureaucrat jealous of the nobles, jockeying for power and trading favours to get his way. Sleazy nobles selling their loyalty for petty trinkets. A cast of despicable, grasping characters all out for themselves, oblivious of the cost of their machinations on the common people, and willing to tread on anyone who gets in their way. Machiavellian plots and secret meetings. The destruction of state institutions … click below for more ↓

Uncommunicative again

2016-06-28 2016-07-21 Collingwood / Council / Ethics and behaviour / Fonts & Layout / Publicity & Communications / Typography2 Comments

Did you receive your “spring” newsletter from the town? The one delivered on the first day of summer (or later), lacking any actual news… yes, that one. To me it appears as clumsily formatted and poorly written as all the previous issues. Another one that likely wouldn’t even get a passing grade in a high school art class. Since the town continues its race to the bottom of the design barrel, I won’t reiterate all the problems in detail, since they just repeat those already … click below for more ↓

The definition of evil

2016-06-15 2016-06-15 Council / Critical Thinking / Language & Grammar / PhilosophyLeave a comment

I try to choose my words carefully. Words have power, words can create emotions, words linger and stick with us. Words matter. Words can be tools of great precision and effect. So when I hear or read them being abused, misused or simply inappropriately chosen, my hackles rise. I want to make corrections. I want to insert my idea of the better choice into the sentence. My Facebook followers know how I react (and react too often…) to misplaced apostrophes, misspellings and improper verb tense. … click below for more ↓

The gems of Salomé

2016-05-31 2016-05-31 Books & Reviews / Language & Grammar / Personal Reminiscences / Poetry & LyricsLeave a comment

I was perhaps 11 or 12 when I first encountered Oscar Wilde’s play, Salomé. Some of it, at least. At the time, I knew nothing of Wilde, his writing, or even much about theatre in general. After all, I was in grade seven or eight. It would be a few years before I encountered (and developed a passion for) Shakespeare and other playwrights. But Wilde I actually discovered first. Faced with the dramatic challenges of their own – my mother was either still in hospital or had … click below for more ↓

Amateur layout and bad ads. Again.

2016-04-17 2016-04-17 Collingwood / Ethics and behaviour / Fonts & Layout / Media / Publicity & Communications / Social Order & Disorder / TypographyOne Comment

I see the Town of Collingwood is still letting the EB layout its full page of ads in the paper. Tragic. Embarrassing. Cringe-worthy. The latest back page mashup has as its first ad the worst of the worst sort of ad layout, the sort only amateurs would create. It’s too wide for any human being to comfortably and efficiently read. Then there’s the second page with its fat partner in layout crime. It’s embarrassing for a municipality to be thus represented. The only saving grace is that … click below for more ↓

Type Crimes and Taxes

2016-03-03 2016-03-04 Canadian Politics / Critical Thinking / Fonts & Layout / Grammar / Language & Grammar / Politics / Style & usage / TypographyOne Comment

Type crime is the term author Ellen Lupton uses in her book, Thinking With Type, to describe egregiously bad typography. That description came to mind as I perused the latest fluff mailer from our MP; the so-called “Tax Guide.” So-called because it isn’t a guide: it’s the usual, dreary Conservative whack-a-mole propaganda about how great they were when in power and how evil the Liberals are now. In fact, if you want actual information, the publication has a final page where you have to send … click below for more ↓

The Crafty Crow and the Doves

2016-02-27 2016-02-27 Culture / Fables / Humour & Satire / Legends & Myths / Literature / What I'm Reading Now / Writing & FictionLeave a comment

Once upon a time, an old crow lived by the seaside. He had grown fat over the years because he was too lazy to work for his food. He preferred to sit than fly. He followed the other animals to get their leftovers, taking what wasn’t his, and annoying them by begging for some of their food. The other animals shunned him. They had chased him from many places, until he found himself on the coast. He was unwanted and unloved. One day, a flight of doves … click below for more ↓

Just My Type

2015-12-31 2015-12-31 Books & Reviews / Fonts & Layout / Typography / What I'm Reading Now2 Comments

Those long legs. Gently sloping shoulders. The swelling curves above and below. The sophisticated line of the throat. Everything to attract me, to draw my aging eye, to warm my heart. The sensual Bembo. She’s my kind of type. Bembo is one of the great Renaissance typefaces that has since been revived. It was designed by Francesco Griffo and first used in a book of poems and essays by scholar Pietro Bembo, published by printer Aldus Manutius, in 1495. Monotype recut it for modern use in 1929, … click below for more ↓

Teas or Tisanes?

2015-12-19 2015-12-19 Critical Thinking / Food & Drink / Language & Grammar / Style & usage / Tea & coffeeOne Comment

I suppose it’s crotchety of me, but whenever I hear the term “herbal tea” used to refer to an infusion of leaves or fruits that contains no actual tea, I get shirty. They’re actually not tea at all, they’re tisanes, a pleasant French word that means’herbal infusion.’ They should be called such and labelled appropriately in stores. Tea is, properly a plant originally from China: Camellia sinensis. How the word came to be used as a descriptor for any hot drink in which leaves were … click below for more ↓