Some things I didn't know (20070417)

Some things I found out today:

• That Gertrude Stein cared about grammar (though not necessarily in the way you or I do).


• That CPAs care about communication.


• That the Pulitzer people care about jazz.


• That municipal officials in Beijing care about the quality of Chinese English (though in hindsight, it makes sense).


• That some journalists care about the spelling of the plural of "ho" (not the garden tool).


• That the people in Arkansas care whether you spell the possessive form Arkansas' or Arkansas's.


• That Pierre Trudeau apparently didn't care that "bonjour" is actually one word.

narrative, comics, and technical writing

Back in December, I read about 99 Ways to Tell a Story: Exercises in Style on my colleague Michele Marques' blog. I don't do comics, and I don't do stories as such, but I was intrigued so I picked it up from my local library. Interesting stuff, and it led me to Exercises in Style, on which Madden's book is based.

The possible connection to what I actually do for a living wasn't really clear until I came across this blog post (not by a colleague, but someone I could probably benefit from knowing). Now I'm thinking about how narrative techniques could influence what I do.

If you're in Fairfax (any time)...

...and you are bugged by bad information (or museum) design, you may want to read this before going here.

And speaking of guns in Virginia...

If you're in Anchorage tomorrow...

...STC Alaska is running a lunchtime session, Designing the User Experience for the Web.

Check out their latest newsletter, too.

10 more unlikely modifiers for (any sense of) "battery"

See here for the first list.

Thanks to Keith for the first four in this list.

free-range
Raphaelite
transcendental
stop-motion
postcolonial
Sino-American
transformational-generative
mucilaginous
pro-choice
bareback

IMO (2007.04.04)

This is just sad.

And this, well, I don't think so.