the smedley log - suburban scrawl

Dead letter office

Happy Fourth of July to the passersby!

I realized a slow build up of thoughts has been sifting through my mind, things that would otherwise be discarded or forgotten. One thing is my report on the candidates forum at Bright Hope Baptist Church on Monday. Find it by clicking here, if you’re interested.

Then there’s John Oates, (from tonight’s Welcome America headliners, Hall and Oates) who wants to be my friend! Apparently, he’s actually using Twitter and reaching out a bit to the common folks. Of course, I accepted his overture of friendship. I’m not sure if I’m going to attend the festivities in center city tonight, but I was fond of Hall and Oates’ music coming up in the early to mid 80s, so there is a certain ache of nostalgia rumbling through my bones.

Finally, here’s an outtake from the Q&A section of the Chicago Manual of Style Online that was featured in a Harper’s reading from (I believe) the February issue. This one involves the “proper usage” of emoticons, via The Chicago Blog:

Q: Is there any standard for the usage of emoticons? In particular, is there an accepted practice for the use of emoticons that includes an opening or closing parenthesis as the final token within a set of parenthesis? Should I incorporate the emoticon into the closing of the parenthesis (giving a dual purpose to the closing parenthesis, such as in this case :-); simply leave the emoticon up against the closing parenthesis, ignoring the bizarre visual effect of the doubled closing parenthesis (as I am doing here, producing a double-chin effect :-)); or avoid the situation by using a different emoticon (some emoticons are similar :-D), placing the emoticon elsewhere, or doing without it (i.e., reword to avoid awkwardness)?

A: Until academic standards decline enough to accommodate the use of emoticons, I’m afraid CMOS is unlikely to treat their styling, since the manual is aimed primarily at scholarly publications. And the problems you’ve posed in this note have given us added incentive to keep our distance.

The thing that brought the emoticon question to mind is a letter I wrote to someone in the Modern Letter Project a week or so ago. It occurred to me that I don’t feel comfortable using emoticons in handwritten notes. But then how will they know I’m just kidding?

Until academic standards decline enough to accommodate the use of emoticons…

THAT’S a precious line… dripping of equally of both disdain and dispair!

Oh, Steve – I copied that same line to paste!

I’m afraid that academic standards are in the same slow decline as the earth’s temperature. So slowly as not to notice, yet inexorably on a path to destruction.

Having recently completed degree studies at night with several “day” students, I can attest to the decline of the written word.

As with telephones and microwaves, we seem to have forgotten that this new method did not always exist, yet the world somehow flourished.

I smell a blog post coming.

I found that many of the editors’ responses were quite scathing in tone, Steve.

As for the decline of the written word, that may have been my biggest initial adjustment to college life. There was a point when it hit me that half the people in my classes (all of whom had graduated high school like I had) couldn’t compose a simple, complete sentence. I was in disbelief for weeks. In some ways, I still am.

When I did my ENG101 at Widener, we had to write one 250-word essay every week. For me, it was a fun assignment, but for others, it was a chore.

As part of the class, each of us had to proof-read others’ work and make comments before their final work was handed in for grading.

I had a difficult time editing content when it came to such simple things as grammar and structure. I found a few good writers in the class that I would volunteer to edit, knowing that their work was good enough that all I would have to do was to move a sentence or make a minor correction.

I found myself being sympathetic toward professors who had to read and grade papers every week.

Howard, if you haven’t heard of him already, the late Richard Mitchell wrote the Underground Grammarian (to which he signed himself “Assistant Circulation Manager”) from about ‘77 to ‘91. Therein he lampoons, mercilessly and hilariously, the prose of various educationists, but also manages over time to articulate very profound truths about the relationship between thinking and communicating, which in the end are found to be so tightly coupled as to be practically indistinguishible. The full text of the newsletters can be found here. Additionally the full text of his several books is on-line. I’m just about through his first, Less than Words Can Say. It is brilliant!

Happy hunting!