'Every sensitive reader has pet peeves. One of mine is attributing the power of sight to things that don’t have eyes, as in this sentence from the Wall Street Journal: “Restaurant sales are expected to see a warming trend this spring as menu prices rise and consumers spend more.”
@cyrilpedia
This makes me sad. Personification is an effective tool for evoking vivid mental imagery, especially when conveying complex concepts. Menus see. Brains predict. The weather knows. Writing and reading should be fun.
@NicoleCRust Fair enough - but Owen did open the article stating that this is a pet peeve, we're all entitled to some....
@cyrilpedia @NicoleCRust
That reminds me of late Texas columnist Molly Ivins who said a NYT editor changed "beer gut" in one of her columns to "protuberant abdomen."
@Woodchaz @cyrilpedia
😂 Very different mental imagery, for sure (verified by a google search on that phrase).
@NicoleCRust @cyrilpedia
Texans like her are in short supply these days. All we've got left are Willie Nelson & Kinky Friedman and who knows for how much longer.
@Woodchaz @cyrilpedia @NicoleCRust OMG. Molly was great!
@Woodchaz @cyrilpedia @NicoleCRust One of our manuscripts was rejected because the editor took issue with. “…rats were killed..”. Over drinks one night we came up with multiple adjectives, including how they were actually killed: the most humane quick rat-sized guillotine (common back then). That was also rejected. What they recommended was ‘sacrificed’. 🙄
@cyrilpedia @NicoleCRust Reminds me of the recent opinion piece in 'New Scientist' re: anthropomorphism...
@NicoleCRust @cyrilpedia 'Why we shouldn't attribute human motivations to animals like bees' https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg25734210-900-why-we-shouldnt-attribute-human-motivations-to-animals-like-bees/
@NicoleCRust @cyrilpedia Many (many!) decades ago our first required reading 📖 in philosophy class was Thomas Nagel’s “What is it like to be a bat? “. Despite the major criticisms of his thesis, we are constrained by our human filters no matter how much we try to deny it. We can imagine, but not truly, completely know.
@lzvolk @cyrilpedia
Nagel really did land on a compelling way to convey that idea in that piece.
@NicoleCRust @cyrilpedia Indeed. I’ve left a copy on many desks. 😉
@NicoleCRust There's a famous letter Raymond Chandler wrote to an editor at The Atlantic, which includes this brilliant quote:
"Would you convey my compliments to the purist who reads your proofs and tell him or her that I write in a sort of broken-down patois which is something like the way a Swiss waiter talks, and that when I split an infinitive, God damn it, I split it so it will stay split, and when I interrupt the velvety smoothness of my more or less literate syntax with a few sudden words of barroom vernacular, this is done with the eyes wide open and the mind relaxed but attentive. The method may not be perfect, but it is all I have."