The Lexicographer's Rules

Now this is the kind of fact-checking I like to see. Patrick Nielsen Hayden exposes liars lying about book sales.

One of the main themes Patrick and his wife Teresa always seem to be exploring on their blog could be called the broken window theory of politics: where there’s a small lie, there’s almost always a big one. Catch the small lie, catch the big one.

Let’s also add: any author would be happy with 4402 book sales since March.

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A slang word is on its last legs, gasping for air when someone over the age of 35 seriously uses it in a sentence, then does a little smirk after they say it like, “Hey, look at me, I just said a word the kids use, aren’t I cute?”

It’s the end of my career: I’m 35! But I never smirk…

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I refreshed the design of Double-Tongued this week. I haven’t been completely happy with the look since August, so I’ve been slowly working on changes since October. I like it much better now, but it could have been better with some professional help.

In fact, several months ago I put out a request for proposals from designers. The RFP was thorough and detailed and on par with the kinds of RFPs that I know to be standard. But the responses were awful. Just horrible. Either people wanted to charge me $15,000 or more, or else they were going to give me the worst kind of crap you’ve ever seen. The whole process gave me flashbacks to more than ten years ago when the Internet was new to most people, when at various jobs we would get the same kinds of pathetic responses. The world is still full of hacks and cheats, only now they have MySpace pages in their portfolios (shiver).

Let me tell you: if you can’t be bothered to punctuate and spell correctly, there’s no way in hell you’re coming anywhere near my web site. If you can’t be bothered to read my RFP—and given the questions you’re asking, it’s pretty clear you didn’t read past the first paragraph—then I’m going to add your email address to my killfile so I never have to hear from you again. If you think sending me an invoice with your “proposal” is going to help, especially when your proposal in its complete form says “$60 per page, 100 page minimum,” then if I ever meet you on the subway I’m going step on your heels. If I ask that the site not be image- or Flash-based, and then you propose some Photoshop- or Flash-heavy ideas, then be prepared for me to tell you to go screw. If you think my RFP is a chance for you to push your fraudulent search-engine optimization services—and I do mean fraudulent—then I hope you die alone with your stupid “top links” sites and your stupid Google PageRank of 4 that you’re so proud of.

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An apropos illustration from Toothpaste for Dinner, forwarded to me by Steve Kleinedler, who is a part of the editorial team of such works as the American Heritage Dictionary at Houghton Mifflin.  (Source Link)

I like that the verbs to telescope and to concertina are synonyms and antonyms of each other. At least, they are in my vocabulary.

To concertina means “to extend, contract, or compress in the manner of a concertina organ.” Every dictionary I checked says to telescope means “to contract, slide, or collapse (into itself) in the manner of a telescope.”

However, to me to telescope also means to “extend or project (out of itself) in the manner of a telescope.” I see that I am not alone, although the most common form by far is telescope out. I suspect this peculiarity of my idiolect is from a lifetime of fooling with portable radios, where a “telescoping antenna” was an asset, the longer, the better.