The IHT is dead--long live the IHT

Hello, readers. It has, once again, been too long since I've typed at you about bloggy things. The reason--honest--is that it has been busy times here at my desk in Hong Kong. Tomorrow, the International Herald Tribune becomes the International New York Times after being identified for years as "the global edition of the New York Times."

I didn't know a ton about the IHT before I moved overseas. But it's a name with a lot of history.

And more than that, it's a name you kind of expect to see in a sweltering hotel lobby in Hanoi or laid out among morning tea in Delhi. An expat fixture, in other words.

A famous guy reading a famous paper in a famous place.

So there are many arguments to be had over what's in a name (and there is an incredible retrospective here). But regardless of all that, it is a bit sad to see an element of old-school expat life disappear. See you in the funny papers, IHT....

A crime brief

As a writer and a journalist, there's one artist I have always admired: Elmore Leonard.

A journalism teacher once told me to study his knack for brevity and punch. He was right. Leonard delivered tension and snap with every line. No word was wasted. Every noun and verb made a point. Adverbs? For suckers.

A writing instructor once told me to study his dialogue. He was right too. Leonard's characters hit all the right notes. They sounded different. They sounded natural. Their dialects added color without washing it out with caricature.

Famously, he wrote:

1. Never open a book with weather.
2. Avoid prologues.
3. Never use a verb other than "said" to carry dialogue.
4. Never use an adverb to modify the verb "said”…he admonished gravely.
5. Keep your exclamation points under control. You are allowed no more than two or three per 100,000 words of prose.
6. Never use the words "suddenly" or "all hell broke loose."
7. Use regional dialect, patois, sparingly.
8. Avoid detailed descriptions of characters.
9. Don't go into great detail describing places and things.
10. Try to leave out the part that readers tend to skip.

My most important rule is one that sums up the 10.

If it sounds like writing, I rewrite it.

His work made me a better writer (although I routinely violate No. 9), and I never met the guy. I never will, either: he died Tuesday at age 87. But he was prolific, even well into his ninth decade, and that's something to be happy about. Although he chose his words carefully, he ended up leaving quite a few behind to enjoy.

A farewell to good grammar

I'd like to think I'm still too young to be a curmudgeon, but every once in a while I spot something that, linguistically speaking, makes me want to scream "Get off my lawn!"

In this case, it's the main headline on the homepage of a certain international news organization that will remain nameless.

 

Dios mio.

I have never been a grammar dork (no, really, I'm serious), but I appreciate good English and have been known to write a headline or two in my day. Using "farewell" as a verb... that's just viscerally painful. It doesn't even sound right! Sure, sure--it's a tight space for a headline, but come on, I promise you there is a two-line hed somewhere in the universe that will accommodate crazy stuff like the rules that govern the English language.

That's my rant. Now I'm off to the 5 p.m. buffet before Wheel of Fortune comes on.

Golden rule days

This weekend, there will be a reunion of the University Daily Kansan, the student newspaper of the University of Kansas.

Readers of the Blog are probably familiar with the university, given my seasonal predilection toward writing about basketball. But I don't think I have ever said anything about the Kansan. (And a warning: this is going to be text-only. All the photos I have of that era are good, old-fashioned prints that have never visited the inside of a scanner. This will also help protect the guilty, including me.)

Although the newspaper is run and staffed by students, I have always hesitated to call it a "student newspaper." It is (or was) supported by its own ad revenue, and the students running the show were acting as professionals; all the management positions were paid.

When I was there in the glorious days of yesteryear--let's just say this was back in the day when the phrase "dot-com boom" was spoken unironically--the Kansan had a great crew. Sharp people. Fun people. It was a good time.

But more than that, we all learned a lot. Some of it was good old fashioned classroom learnin', but a sizable chunk of it was out in the real world. We learned how to chase stories by chasing them. We learned good news judgment by deciding what to pursue and how to play it. Art direction. Photography. We got better because we were doing them every day.

And to me, one of the the most incredible things about that time is that I completely took for granted how fortunate I was to work in a real newsroom before I worked in a real newsroom. In literally every job I have had--including my current one--I have encountered roughly the same organizational structure, meeting schedule, newsroom layout and even jargon as I did at the Kansan. Even then, in the early days of Web media, we had an online editor who was working hard to create a well-trafficked news site.

I don't think of myself as a newspaperman anymore. I'm a print journalist in an era where most of the printed words appear on screens of various sizes. It's an exciting time. But it turns out that the lessons I learned at the Kansan still apply today, and I suspect this is true for most of my fellow co-workers who are still in the business.

Which I guess made us students, and the term "student newspaper" perfectly appropriate.

What's in a name?

The answer really depends on what you're looking for. If you're like me, and just got assigned a Chinese name on your business card, you're looking for the characters that make up that name. A simple proposition, right? Yeah, there it is on Google, "most commonly used Cantonese characters"… oh, wait, there are 3,000 of them.

Google translate: also no help.

This is no knock on Google; Chinese is an enormously complex langauge with characters rooted in all kinds of things, from direct visual representation of their meanings to phono-semantic compounds, which I'll let you go ahead and look up on Wikipedia. There does not seem to be an easy way to translate a proper name, even though all the characters in my name allegedly mean something.

And since the Internet has failed me and I only have a printed version, I guess I'm left with simply describing it to you.

In Chinese, my name is (Cross With an Upward Carat Next to Upside-Down Capital T With Small Extra Crossbar Halfway Up) (Cross With No Top and Upward Carat and Apostrophe Next to Top Hat With Two Stripes) (Gently Curved Upward Slash Crossed by Upside-Down, Backwards Capital L).

Pleased to meet you.

The really tall building by that one mall in Dubai

Conversations involving directions are always a bit comical in the UAE. Taxiese, for instance, exists solely because there is no other way (besides learning Urdu) to navigate via cab.

Food delivery is also an adventure, mostly because there are no addresses. It's all "after Delma bridge" this and "opposite mosque" that. And even navigating by landmark is difficult, as the definition of landmark varies from person to person. Some landmarks, however, should be universal, as illustrated by this conversation related to me by a friend (note--"Du" is one of the two telecoms providers in the UAE):

DU

What is your location, ma'am, so we can send our engineer?

FRIEND

Burj Khalifa.

DU

And what is your landmark?

F

I live in Burj Khalifa.

DU

Yes, ma'am, but we need a landmark so our engineer can locate you.

F

I live in Burj Khalifa, the tallest building in the world.

DU

But we need a landmark.

F

Really? OK, Dubai Mall. Are you actually in Dubai?

DU

Yes, ma'am. And how do you spell Burj Khalifa?

F

K-H-A-L-I-F-A.

DU

S for sugar.

F

No, F for Freddie.

DU

OK, we will send our engineer to you at Burj Khalisa near to the Dubai Mall.

Now, in Abu Dhabi, they are considering addressing (ha) this problem by using GPS coordinates for mail delivery and, it is assumed, things like emergency services. I guess if you throw enough money at that solution, it could work. Still seems a little more expensive and complicated, however, than just putting numbers on all the buildings....

IMO, et al

Language has been changing since some caveman decided it was easier to grunt than gesture. Words that were innocuous develop less-innocent meanings (I'm looking at you here, "gay"), words that don't exist get invented--radar--and words that were common disappear.

Now, thanks to the Internet, or maybe cell phones, or maybe just "kids, get off my lawn!" words that aren't words at all become words. Wisconsin recently discovered that this can be a problem.

The folks at the Wisconsin Tourism Federation, a 30-year-old tourism lobbying coalition based in Sun Prairie, couldn't possibly have predicted how the Internet would change the lingo.

While its abbreviation, WTF, was fairly innocuous a few decades ago, it means something entirely different these days.

That meaning - a phrase that can't be printed in a family newspaper, even though kids all over the country are texting it on a regular basis - isn't what anyone in tourism wants potential visitors to associate with Wisconsin.

Yeah, Wisconsin has never made me think "WTF?" either, except maybe the Mars Cheese Castle.

This and that

More linguistic nonsense. If you're a words dork, like certain author-blogger-editors I could name, you notice the way people say and write things. In Abu Dhabi, I am surrounded by a simmering jambalaya of different accents and usages: British, Australian, Arabic, Taxiese... the list is long and distinguished. (insert Top Gun reference here)

But lately I have noticed a new one. When the guy sitting next to me, code named "Karl," calls someone, he'll say, "is that so and so?" when the call is connected. Me, I say, "is this so and so." And 10 minutes ago, I got a call from a bank in which the caller asked, "is that Mr. Matthew?"

So, as editors tend to do, I'm sitting here trying to figure out who is right. On the one hand, there is a certain logical harmony to saying "is that x?" because, well, "this" would refer to the speaker (this is Mr. Matthew speaking) whereas "that" would refer to some external person (that is the person to whom I am speaking.)

On the other hand, if you hear an unidentified voice on the other end of the phone, wouldn't you ask, "who is this?"

On the third hand--yes, just pretend you're an alien for a second--grammatically speaking, the answer is a little vague. "This" is to be used for something close to the speaker; "That" is to be used for something far from the speaker. It's just a matter of mental gymnastics. The telephone speaker is a half-inch from my brain, yet the person on the other end of the phone is, say, in Chicago.

So, whatever. We're all correct. Except for all the people who try to put a "u" in "favorite."

Still learning the language

A new phrase in Taxiese, which, as I'm learning, is an even more vital means of communication than Arabic and English combined. Which is ironic, because that's essentially what Taxiese is.

Anyway, as I was riding to the grocery store on Sunday, the taxi was cut off by a gargantuan Lexus SUV. The driver snorted and said:

Too much business adj.: 1 too wealthy to pay attention to one's surroundings.

It took me a couple of minutes (and another SUV cutting across three lanes of busy traffic) for me to figure out what he meant. But now you know what to say the next time a financial analyst in a Honda Civic swerves into your lane on Southwest Trafficway.

The meaning of "fit" and other observations

In British English, apparently, "fit" doesn't mean "athletic" or "in good cardiovascular health." It's more like hot. As in, "damn--the Bulls' cheerleaders are quite fit." Which, as an example, is pretty awful because it works both ways. But you know what I mean. Additionally, sometimes if someone says it with a Scottish accent, it sounds like "fat," which could potentially lead to hysterical misunderstandings.

The other thing I observed is that despite living in a desert, maintenance types are in no hurry to restore someone's water service if it is interrupted. Happily, the H2O began flowing again roughly 18 hours after it stopped, and everyone got to shower, the end.

Lots of pictures from my Abu Dhabi wanderings yesterday. They'll be coming after I get situated with Internet in the new apartment.