WORDS OF MORE THAN ONE SYLLABLE

For some reason, recent media blabbing about dead celebrities contained misuse of words that went beyond slips of the tongue. The writers had best stick to short Anglo-Saxon words.

Arthur Miller

The death of Arthur Miller, the playwright, provoked reporters to attempt profundity. They shouldn't do that. One woman called him a "voyeur of American life." He was an observer, sure. But a voyeur (a French word, of course) is a "viewer who enjoys seeing the sex acts or sex organs of others." Who knows if he did or not? But that's not what his plays were about.

Jack Benny

In a radio program about Jack Benny, the speaker said he played a "vain and self-deprecating character, quite the opposite of his real character, which was modest and generous." But "self-deprecating" is modest (from Latin, de + precari, meaning to pray against).

Buzz Words

Sue S. weighed in with a complaint about misuse of technical terms:

It seems people like to use big words or snobby words to add validity to what they are saying. One of my pet peeves is using new "buzz" words inappropriately. When I worked in Chicago about 17 years ago a medical salesman asked me if I had "interfaced" with his product. I did not have a clue what he meant. This was in the early days of computers ~ not every home had them ~ but he obviously felt the need to be on the cutting edge. . . . I guess that's how things take on "a life of their own" as the saying goes.

After 17 years, "interface" is accepted, and mostly acceptable as a now-stale metaphor. But instead of "interface" the salesman could simply have asked, had she "used" or "seen" the product. Simplicity is always desirable. And elegant.

Which reminds me that I once had to correct a misapprehension about the meaning of the word "elegant," specifically as used by Jane Austen, when a reader mistakenly thought it meant fancy and overdone and pretentious. It's quite the reverse, as illustrated by this quote from Persuasion, chapter 17:

Twelve years had changed Anne from the blooming, silent, unformed girl of fifteen, to the elegant little woman of seven-and-twenty, with every beauty excepting bloom, and with manners as consciously right as they were invariably gentle.

"Elegant" means refined and tasteful. Did you know a solution to a mathematical problem can be called "elegant"? The www.dict.org search gives this definition from two technical dictionaries:

(From Mathematics) Combining simplicity, power, and a certain ineffable grace of design. Higher praise than "clever", "winning" or even cuspy.

The French aviator, adventurer, and author Antoine de Saint-Exup'ery, probably best known for his classic children's book The Little Prince, was also an aircraft designer. He gave us perhaps the best definition of engineering elegance when he said, "A designer knows he has achieved perfection not when there is nothing left to add, but when there is nothing left to take away."

WORD CRAFTS

Because I'm getting tired of winter, I'm going to write about two crafts you can do while you wait for spring. Does that sound like a non sequitur? Both of these little projects do involve words. One is easy and one is complicated.

Making Stickers

Find something in a slick magazine that you'd like to keep or use for decorating or decoupage or sticking in a window or on your computer screen. It will probably be a picture of something, but I have before me two little items I cut out of a Japanese girl's fashion magazine, which I wrote about before. One is from an ad for a T-shirt that carried a lovely, almost accidental poem written in the manner of Japanese advertisers, which I will repeat here because I like it so much:

This wants to show

the continuation

of a dream

for them.

even if the day

which bursts

into flames even

if it rains and

a wind blows,

and a calm night

are the ends

in the world.

The other is a picture of a little coin purse with cartoons on it and the slogan "JOYFUL ENGLISH LOVELY."

Find the picture and cover it completely with a piece of clear tape, like clear packing tape. The tape should be as wide as or wider than the picture so you won't have seams. For large pictures, use a sheet of clear adhesive-backed label stock, which you can find in 8 X 10" sheets. Rub the tape smoothly over the picture, using a flat edge or burnishing tool or your fingernails to smooth out any wrinkles or air pockets. Cut the picture out carefully, then drop it in a glass of water for a few minutes. Take it out of the water and gently scrape the paper off the back. The ink will remain on the tape, and you'll have a plastic-coated image to do with as you like.

Picture Matting

This project is more complicated, but with patience you can make a unique mat for a photo or other picture or art in a frame. The mat is paper, not mat board, but you have a choice of many lovely papers on which you will place a favorite poem or some writing of your own to surround your art, and you could glue the paper to mat board. I have a double photo frame, actually two small wood frames hinged together, with old photos of Fred's parents, each surround by an appropriate poem.

I used Adobe PageMaker, but you can use MS Word, and since most people have Word, I'm giving directions for that.

First, type the poem or whatever, and, of course, proofread it. Choose a type font you like; you'll be adjusting the type size later. Select the Print Layout view under View to work in. Search and replace all paragraph marks with a single space. In other words, the lines will run into each other and wrap at the end of the line, rather than break at the end of every line of poetry. Choose the Justify alignment. (PageMaker has Force Justify, which is better.)

At this point, it will be easier to work if you view your page at 50%, so you can see the whole layout on the screen.

Put your cursor somewhere in the middle of the text and insert a text box (Insert, Text Box). You may think nothing happens, but you'll see a cross. Left click and use your cursor to grab a corner of the box and stretch it (I'll explain the size later). Then click on the box and go to Format, Text Box, Layout, and choose Tight.

You'll have to do some careful measuring, then adjust the text box size and the margins of your text. The outer margin of your text has to fit the inside dimensions of your frame, that is, the border of the glass that shows, and the empty text box has to fit your art, and also has to be centered correctly. For example, if a 3 X 5" section of the glass shows, your text must fill a 3 X 5" box. If your art is 2 X 3", the blank text box inside the text must be 2 X 3".

You can adjust the dimensions of the inner blank text box by grabbing the corners and dragging the mouse diagonally, and you can move the box by grabbing it when the cursor shows as a cross at the box border and dragging.

It's easy to adjust the side margins in Word for the text itself, but your text will then probably be either too long or too short for the frame. This is when you have to start experimenting with font sizes to get it to fit properly. You'll want to leave a little space between the text and the outside margin and the empty text box.

Once you've got the text to fit as well as you can, then you have to make sure the last line goes all the way to the right margin. You may need to fiddle with spacing between words here and there (or kerning) in the last line or two to make it come out right.

Make test copies on ordinary paper to check the size. Take a test copy and lightly draw lines diagonally from corner to opposite corners (an X) in your empty text box. You will cut on those lines and fold the triangles back and crease them so they lie flat. Do not cut them off. It looks better if you have a fold around your art rather than a cut edge.

When the test frame is correct, print on your good paper and trim the outer margin to fit within the frame. Better yet, fold the edges instead of cutting. You want the text to show completely, you don't want it to be hidden under the inside edges of the frame, nor do you want too much margin showing around the text ~ unless you do ~ maybe your poem or whatever is very short! Cut the blank text box in the center on diagonal lines and fold back.

Center your photo or art behind the mat and hold it in place with tape.

If this isn't clear, e-mail me at [email protected].

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I have a contribution in a new anthology about the "center of life", Changing Course: Women's Inspiring Stories of Menopause, Midlife, and Moving Forward, edited by Yitta Halberstam.

Copyright Rhonda Keith 2005. Parvum Opus or part of it may be reproduced only with permission, but it is permissible to forward the entire newsletter as long as the copyright remains.

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