Archive for the 'style & grammar' Category



Font babies

Breaking news: according to an article by Macworld’s Linotype Univers Condensed Semibold Italic Haslam, Arial is the top font to use as a child’s name:
Asked “Which font would you name a child after,” the top choices were Arial (24 per cent), Geneva (18%), and Zapf Dingbats (12%). More disturbing was the choice of Linotype […]

Final font thoughts

Because this is my weblog, and I can damn well beat a dead horse if I feel like it, here are some final thoughts on the font and dating discussion.
Philip from Hoptown weighed in:
Men tend to use whatever font their computer is stuck on. Women are more promiscuous and experiment with fonts of different degrees […]

Font does matter!

Oh my…
A great follow-up to the recent typeface/dating discussions is the Font Fetish site. Probably not safe for work (at the very least, turn your volume down).
PS According to the font foreplay game, I’m a “courier clown.” No wonder I can’t get a date!

No Tags

Alarmed by Sassy J’s dating typeface trauma, Geeky B writes:
So those of us who are naturally paranoid and distrusting of html email have our plain text musings automatically written off as boring? Wait, don’t answer that.

Geeky B raises an interesting point. His caution is wise; after all, transmitting a virus or other nastiness would surely […]

An e-mail from my friend Sassy J:
Beck,
Would you continue to date someone who writes in the font below?

It’s too late—I’m already having a date with him tomorrow. But—the font! Help!
Good question, Sassy. This guy obviously has some kerning issues. Does the lack of space between his letters indicate an underlying insecurity? […]

Another silly grammar quiz–and this one’s wrong! The quiz promotes Lynn Truss’s (not this again) book, Eats, Shoots & Leaves, and claims that the following sentence requires a comma:
Of course there weren’t enough tickets to go round.
A difference between British and American English? A comma is optional after a short, introductory prepositional […]

Fonts in the news

A slew of font-related news yesterday…
Yale University now has its own typeface, designed to be “a kind of core element of [the school’s] identity.” The smart-ass in me wants to steal the font and use it on Good Grief!, but I’d rather not mix it up with a bunch of snooty New England graphic […]

It’s OK to feel good!

Attention grammar wannabes: the sentence I feel good is correct. So is I feel bad, for that matter. As someone once told me, “feeling badly is the sign of an inept dirty-old-man.” Note the first paragraph of a grammar article in today’s Deseret Morning News (emphasis mine):
James Brown feels good. The […]

Grammar Commies

What is a grammar-conscious, pseudo libertarian supposed to think of this one? In Prague, the Communist Party of Bohemia and Moravia (KSCM) sponsored an amendment to a media bill that will order “nationally broadcast commercial radio and television stations to use correct grammar in their news programs.” Not surprisingly, some party members have […]

UPDATE 4/26/2004: I don’t know what’s afoot in the grammar world, but this page is suddenly getting a tremendous amount of hits on searches for “queen’s grammar,” etc. If you’re looking for more information on Professor Sinha and his book, I’m sorry that this site can’t be more helpful–I looked for a useful […]