Trivia

TRIVIAL IT AIN'T -- The course of a full education used to be a grounding in the seven liberal arts, a grouping that was split in two divisions: the trivium (grammar, logic and rhetoric), and the quadrivium (arithmetic, geometry, music and astronomy). The trivium provided the basic instruction in organizing, structuring and presenting ideas, but it was by no means "trivial" in the modern sense of the word suggesting "unimportance." This three-part grounding remains crucial. Logic is how you organize your thought; grammar is how you present it, and rhetoric is the art of persuasion.
Unfortunately, rhetoric has acquired a poor reputation because of its use by advertisers, marketers and politicians, who use rhetorical techniques to persuade people to do things they might not otherwise do.

DANGER, DR. SMITH -- Adjectives should in some way enhance or modify the meaning of a word.  And a case can be made for redundancy for emphasis. However, there are limits. For example, some commentators refer to a "dangerous civil war" in Syria. Is there another kind, like a "safe civil war"? Others have warned of a "full scale civil war." Perhaps this is to differentiate it from a half scale civil war, or at some other point on the bellicosity scale.

MEASURE FOR MEASURE -- How comes it that early cellphones (e.g. Motorola's Dynatec in 1983) were measured in ounces and inches, while the new Razr is measured in grams and millimeters?
And have you noticed how a can of coffee, which used to be a pound (16 ounces), is now 10.5 or 11 ounces? Or a container of juice, which appears to be a half-gallon, is really 59 ounces? Yet the prices remain the same.

Ain't capitalism wunnerful?

Flackery

TRUE, BUT -- Mitt Romney has joined the ranks of candidates claiming great credit for budget balancing. In current ads, the candidate notes that as governor of Massachusetts, he "balanced the budget every single year." As if he had a choice, and this was a great accomplishment. A quick check of the state web site shows, however, that under Massachusetts law, the budget "must be balanced."

DIFFERENCES -- The terms business and industry are often used interchangeably. But are they? A business can be a single firm, from a corner store to a transnational corporation, or a group of firms conducting similar operations. Texans take pride in their "awl bidness." And Mad Ave execs speak of the "advertising industry." Careful writers, however, will use separate contexts. Put it this way: Industry deals with manufacturing and production, while business refers to sales and service.

Gotcha

DUTCH TREATMENT --A politician in the Netherlands resigned after he talked at length about his knowledge of an extremist named "Yael Yablahblah." News reports said someone from a radio talk show made up the story, and got the politician to claim he had been fully briefed about the fictional extremist.

The ignorance of politicians comes as no surprise. That said, reporters should not indulge in tactics such as the piece describes, even as an April Fool's Day stunt. The name "Yablahblah" should have been a giveaway. But the last paragraph of the story indicates that the talk show presenter, as he is described, has done things like this before. This tells me that he is not, in any way, a reporter or a journalist. That would be like saying Rush Limbaugh is a reporter or journalist; he's not, he's a talk show host, an opinionator.

At the same time, it is a reporter's duty to show up a politician's ignorance or incompetence by asking probing questions. However, this does not justify fraud.

Here's a link to the story, which appeared in the Irish Times recently.
http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/frontpage/2012/0407/1224314499681.html

MORAL -- As Will Rogers said, it's better to keep your mouth shut and have others think you're a fool, than to open your mouth and prove it.

PR MASTER STROKE -- News reports noted that the artwork of Thomas Kinkade could be found in one of every twenty American households. This translates to five percent of American households, which means that 95 percent of American households do not have any Thomas Kincaid artwork.

Protestament

TYCOONS PROTEST INNOCENCE -- Our Munich correspondent objected to this headline, with good reason. While technically correct, in the sense that the verb "protest" means "to make a solemn or earnest declaration," or to testify in favor of something, its usual connotation carries a negative sense, as in objecting. Better choices would be claim, proclaim, or profess.

TWISTED -- When  CNN was reporting on the Dallas tornadoes (not a sports team), the weather anchor noted that because the storms hit a metropolitan area, this "enhanced the damage." True enough, but typically, the term "enhance" carries a positive sense. Munchen-man called it a brain-stopper, because "it did not sound like a good combination of words." He's right. Readers and listeners should never be forced to stop and consider the meaning and intention of the message.

GLEANINGS of an Itinerant Speller -- This one bites. The faux diamond sales catalog praised its Princess Anastasia ring and wondered whether the missing heiress managed to escape her captors and "flea imperial Russia."

Press bias

TIGER OR PUSSYCAT?-- Should the press have been more diligent in warning of the economic meltdown of the last decade? Our correspondent across the pond wondered whether the media failed in its duty to warn of coming problems. He notes that there were sufficient warning signs of the looming disaster for the press to pick up and report.

He writes: "I remember there were a few reports of that nature, but the politicians and bankers and property developers dismissed these reports as meaningless.
"Someone even coined the term 'Celtic Tiger' to describe the Irish economy. For some reason those members of the press who read the signs correctly were not broadly published or believed.
"I know the press can be like a dog with a bone and work away on
something until all is revealed; one of the most famous cases is Watergate.
"Should the press simply be an observer, or should it also take on the role of watchdog?"

Here's my response:

To me, the press is both observer and watchdog. Your analogy of a dog after a bone is apt; I've used it myself, with the scenario being that a dog sniffs a bone somewhere and keeps digging until he finds it.
The problem with economic and business news is that many reporters think it's too hard, so they don't do it. They think the "real news" is on Page One, and those are the stories worth pursuing. I encountered that attitude more than once at the paper where I worked, with some very good reporters claiming that business news was "too hard." My response was that quite often, stories would appear on the biz page weeks and months before these stories would be "discovered" by the Page One crew. The same attitude was held by senior editors. Soon after I started on the biz desk, a story about real estate (my beat at the time) cropped up, and the managing editor wanted to give it to one of the general assignment reporters because it was a Page One story. Fortunately, the editor in chief, overruled the managing editor, saying that the story should be given to the reporter who knows the field best.
Another claim was that the style of writing for Page One stories was somehow "different" from business and economic stories, and required a different skill set. This, of course, is nonsense. Good writing is good writing.

Opinion

PRIORITIES -- Rick Santorum said today that he believes in "free-market health care, not government-run health care." The view from here is that health care is too important to be left to the free market. There are many other things that are also too important to be left to the free market, among them roads and bridges; sanitation; law enforcement, policing and court systems; fire protection; environmental protection, and military defense. Many hospitals began as nonprofit facilities run by local volunteer or religious groups. However, many have been taken over by corporate-owned health systems, which are profit-oriented. Is the level of care any better? That's an open question.

REMAINDER -- The staff reviewer for an NBC morning talk show noted that the audience for the new film, The Hunger Games, was 50 percent women and 40 percent men. We wondered who were in the remaining 10 percent. Trolls, perhaps?

Trivial arts

BACK TO BASICS -- A thorough education used to be considered a solid knowledge of the Seven Liberal Arts: Grammar, Logic and Rhetoric (known as the Trivium), as well as Arithmetic, Music, Geometry and Astronomy (known as the quadrivium).


The first three yielded the term now called "trivial." But unlike its original meaning connoting "important, basic," the current meaning of "trivial" conveys a sense of little or no importance, and not worth spending time on. Consequently, the teaching of Grammar is ignored (by students, partly because their instructors don't understand it, either); Logic is offered largely to Philosophy majors in college or as an elective; and Rhetoric, the art of persuasion through well-constructed sentences, is dismissed as political or marketing gimmickry -- an attempt to get people to do something they don't want to do.


Of the remaining four, Arithmetic has been surrendered to the use of electronic calculators. Music is one of the first programs to fall victim to budget cuts, Geometry is victimized by rote and stultifying boredom, and Astronomy is limited to Boy Scout troops and university graduate specialists.


Rhetoric is not a dirty word. It is the ability to use Grammar (the relationships of words to each other), Syntax (the use of well-constructed sentences), and Logic (the arrangement of concepts and ideas) to prove or disprove something.


Success in writing depends on the appropriate use of "trivial" strategies.