1. Tell the truth.
2. Entice, or fail.
3. To emphasize, summarize.
4. If it ain't short, it don't work.
5. Be clear.
And so I don't forget:
Don't explain. Just tell a story.
Don't argue. Just say things that make sense.
Expect people to be bored by the writing, and shorten it.
Make the wording easy to take.
Remove Loose Ends -- the interesting one-liners that go nowhere.
Sunday, December 29, 2024
Monday, November 25, 2024
"Both" is often a problem; this is worse
About that last sentence...
Both the central bank and the government impact the economy...
That is true.
... the central bank and the government impact the economy...
That is equally true. Depending on the context, it may be better to include the word "both".
... the central bank and the government impact the economy through monetary policy and fiscal policy...
That would make a good sentence. Neither policy is explicitly assigned to either institution, so the sentence is true.
... the central bank and the government impact the economy through monetary and fiscal policy, respectively.
That one is the most informative would-be sentence of all these options, because the policies are correctly assigned to the institutions. And finally:
Both the central bank and the government impact the economy through monetary and fiscal policy, respectively.
That
is gibberish. Investopedia is saying that the central bank and the
government, both of them, use both monetary and fiscal policy. (That is not true; the central bank was created specifically to handle monetary policy, and is held to be "independent" and free from government interference.) And in the same sentence Investopedia is also saying
that the first of the two institutions uses the first policy noted, and
the second institution uses the second policy. This they are correct in saying, but it is contradicted by all the words that come before "respectively" because of that damn "both".
That is, because they open with the word "both" they are saying that both the central bank and the government use the two policies -- that each institution uses both policies. And because the word respectively is used, they are also saying that the
central bank uses only monetary policy and the government uses only fiscal policy. Because they have the word "respectively" there, the sentence is not only wrong but is also embarrassingly bad. I imagine, however, that Investopedia is not at all embarrassed, because they are unaware of the problem. That's how illiteracy works.
Frankly, I have similar problems with Investopedia's economics.
Monday, February 5, 2024
"Nine inches of rain" is ONE measurement
Nine inches of rain is one measurement, so I say Nine inches of rain has fallen, rather than Nine inches of rain have fallen (as CNN says).
Tuesday, February 14, 2023
Installing the paint-dot-net upgrade
I use paint.net often. Microsoft Paint is better at some things, so I switch off. But paint.net is good.
But I just installed the paint.net update, and an "Overview/Features" page came up in my browser. It says:
paint.net 5 is the best free image and photo editing application for Windows based PCs since paint.net 4.
So why would I want to use version 5? They compare version 5 to version 4, and they explicitly point out that version 5 is not better.
If they said 5 is better, and left it at that, I wouldn't question their sanity.
If they said 5 is the best version ever, I'd be all in.
But when they
Oh, drop it, Art!
Tuesday, September 27, 2022
Right and wrong
At the US Census Bureau...
From the definition of "family household":
... The count of family household members differs from the count of family members, however, in that the family household members include all people living in the household, whereas family members include only the householder and his/her relatives.
From the definition of "family":
... The number of families is equal to the number of family households, however, the count of family members differs from the count of family household members because family household members include any non-relatives living in the household.
In their definition of "family" quoted above, I would change the first comma to a period, and use a capital "H" for "however". It is a simple fix.
The simplicity of the fix, unfortunately, may make it seem as if the error is not a significant one. However, the error is significant.
(The simple fix should NOT be made to their definition of "family household".)
For me it is a problem. I got distracted because they don't know how to punctuate the word "however". Because I got distracted I'm not going to remember the definitions. When I need them again, I'll have to look them up again.
Wednesday, March 2, 2022
andor
"People are paid to create goods and/or services ..."
"People are paid to create goods andor services ..."
I'm ready for that word. I looked for it on the internet. Seems to be drowned out by Andor, the TV series.