June 2011
10 posts
How to Write Good →
plainlanguage.gov
Frank L. Visco as originally published in the June 1986 issue of Writer’s Digest:
My several years in the word game have learnt me several rules:
- Avoid Alliteration. Always.
- Prepositions are not words to end sentences with.
- Avoid cliches like the plague. (They’re old hat.)
- Employ the vernacular.
- Eschew ampersands & abbreviations, etc.
- Parenthetical remarks (however relevant) are unnecessary.
The rest of the rules are even better.
“You get to the point where you evolve in your life where everything isn’t black and white, good and bad, and you try to do the right thing. You might not like that. You might be very cynical about that. Well, fuck it, I don’t care what you think. I’m trying to do the right thing. I’m tired of Republican-Democrat politics. They can take the job and shove it. I come from a blue-collar background. I’m trying to do the right thing, and that’s where I’m going with this.”
—Republican senator Roy McDonald in support of New York governor Cuomo’s recent same-sex marriage bill.
Actually, “STFU” is an Initialism, Not an Acronym. →
mcsweeneys.net
Remember that an acronym is pronounced as a single word, whereas an initialism is pronounced as a series of letters. So when you say “I’ve got an acronym for you, buddy: STFU!”—well, you’re actually working to erode that distinction. It’s not as if one can pronounce the word “stuh-foo” or something. That would sound quite ignorant.
What’s that? You say you want me to “literally” shut my fucking face?
Cowboys and Pit Crews →
newyorker.com
Atul Gawande’s commencement address at Harvard Medical School:
Two million patients pick up infections in American hospitals, most because someone didn’t follow basic antiseptic precautions. Forty per cent of coronary-disease patients and sixty per cent of asthma patients receive incomplete or inappropriate care. And half of major surgical complications are avoidable with existing knowledge. It’s like no one’s in charge—because no one is. The public’s experience is that we have amazing clinicians and technologies but little consistent sense that they come together to provide an actual system of care, from start to finish, for people. We train, hire, and pay doctors to be cowboys. But it’s pit crews people need.
Beautiful speech on the current state of medicine, and our struggles to translate our great advances in science and technology into real-world improvements.
