Consistency
Two quotes from Louis Menand’s New Yorker review of the new edition (15th) of the Chicago Manual of Style, which I have been coveting….
“Some people will complain that the new ‘Chicago Manual’ is too
long. These people do not understand the nature of style.
There is, if not a right way, a best way to do every single thing, down
to the proverbial dotting of the ‘i.’ Relativism is fine for the
big moral questions, where we can never know for sure; but in arbitrary
realms like form and usage even small doses of relativism are
lethal. The ‘Manual’ is not too long. It is not long
enough. It will never be long enough. The perfect manual
of style would be like the perfect map of the world: exactly
coterminous with its subject, containing a rule of every word of every
sentence. We would need an extra universe to accommodate it.
It would be worth it.”
“First of all, it is time to speak some truth to power in this country: Microsoft Word is a terrible program.
Its terribleness is of a piece with the terribleness of Windows
generally, a system so overloaded with icons, menus, buttons and
incomprehensible Help windows that performing almost any function means
entering a treacherous wilderness of pop-ups posing alternatives
of terrifying starkness: Accept/Decline/Cancel; Logoff/Shut
Down/Restart; and the mysterious Do Not Show This Warning Again.
You often feel that you’re not ready to make a decision so unalterable;
but when you try to make the window go away your machine emits an angey
beep. You double-click. You triple-click. Beep beep beep beep beep. You are being held for a fool by a chip.”
He then goes on to discuss Word’s propensity to get in the way.
Especially funny are the bit about the paper clip (“Never, btw [which,
unlike “poststructuralism,” is a word in Word spellcheck] ask that
androgenous paperclip anything. S/he is just a stooge for
management, leading you down more rabbit holes of options….”) and the
blue underlining of URLs, which he notes, “There is undoubtedly a way
to reset this, but it is deep within the bowels of the machine, guarded
by dozens of angry pop-ups. Microsoft wants you to go on the Internet.”
It’s amazing what a good piece of writing can do. This is a
review of the Chicago Manual, for heaven’s sake. It’s a generally
dull book, but Menand writes some of the freshest prose I have ever
read about the dull mechanics of writing.
My dad likes the paper clip. In an e-mail to me, he once wrote,
“I am really quite amused by the little paperclip icon with the googly
eyes. It looks all around the screen, blinks, dozes off, twists itself
into different shapes, and seems a great deal like a small pet. Very
cute.”
Ecto blogging software
6 October 2003 at 5:15 pm.
And don’t forget the cute puppies/kittens on some versions! Why pay attention to the complexities of the modern world when you can sit, waiting for the puppy to put on some cute little glasses and disappear into the ether.