"Defacing" books
James Follett
I'm a compulsive buyer of secondhand books, particularly
reference books no matter what the subject. If I see a set of
dusty old encylopedias on sale, I'll buy it. My most recent
acquisition, to my wife's delight, is ten ancient volumes
devoted to wild flowers, published around the turn of the 20th
Century -- buckram-bound and crammed with colour plates protected
by awkward bits of tissue paper. The typeface is Garamond (sp?).
I'm not particularly interested in wild flowers, unless they can
be dried and smoked, but I love looking at those encylopedias
just to wallow in the beautiful typography and spare a thought
for the long-dead typesetter even though the results of his
labours were a sod to lug home.
Where was I? Forgotten what I was going to say. Oh yes. When
starting a new project I usually find that I'm obliged to buy
new books because one can't rely on secondhand bookshops to
provide specific subject matter. So, armed with nice, shiny new
books (that are usually typesetting disasters these days) I
while away the one-hour train journey to London, ploughing
through them, making copious margin notes with those wonderful
disposible Pental fountain pens, and marking chunks of text with
a high-light pen.
Last week every note and flourish with the high-light produced a
faint tut of disapproval from the lady sitting opposite me.
Eventually she could contain herself no longer and very politely
reprimanded me for "writing in books." She indicated some kids
from Godalming 6th Form College in the carriage and said that I
was setting a bad example. I've experienced similar frowns of
disapproval on previous occasions but this was the first time
that I've been addressed by a stranger on the subject. It
prompted me to wonder if others have had similar experiences.
Just how widespread is the awe that we hold books in, that makes
us reluctant to "deface" them? Don't get me wrong -- I love
having plenty of books around me, but I own them -- they don't
own me.
An afterthought: I often come across neatly-written marginal
notes in my secondhand reference books and usually find them of
interest, thinking that someone else in the distant past has
ploughed the same furrow, holding the same book.
--
James Follett -- novelist http://www.davew.demon.co.uk
René
especially their own.
--
René Meertens
mailto:r...@who.dk
http://users.skynet.be/guide/
(Guide anglais-francais de la traduction)
Sent via Deja.com http://www.deja.com/
Before you buy.
Skitt
James Follett <ja...@marage.demon.co.uk> wrote in message
news:20000122.1...@marage.demon.co.uk...
> Just how widespread is the awe that we hold books in, that makes
> us reluctant to "deface" them? Don't get me wrong -- I love
> having plenty of books around me, but I own them -- they don't
> own me.
I was taught to never write in a book, so I don't. My books, even after
many years, are in "showroom" condition.
> An afterthought: I often come across neatly-written marginal
> notes in my secondhand reference books and usually find them of
> interest, thinking that someone else in the distant past has
> ploughed the same furrow, holding the same book.
I must confess that I loved the used college texts I had to read. Once the
curriculum caught up with what I already knew from my European high school
education, and I had to "crack the books" again, the highlighting of the
salient parts by a previous user allowed me to spend much less time reading,
thus leaving a lot more time for partying.
The drawback of this was that I never really learned how to study, but that
did not seem to affect my progress. Most things can be figured out, but
those that had to be learned by rote, such as historic events and their
timetables, were subjects I barely passed. But I digress ...
--
Skitt (on Florida's Space Coast) http://i.am/skitt/
... information is gushing toward your brain like a fire hose aimed
at a teacup. -- Dogbert
Murray Arnow
>us reluctant to "deface" them? Don't get me wrong -- I love
>having plenty of books around me, but I own them -- they don't
>own me.
>
I'm unable to even write my name on the cover--bookshelves are filled with the
contributions I made to sticky-fingered colleagues, students, and cleaning
crews.
I had a high school English teacher who couldn't distinguish the difference
between being educated and being a pedantic snob. She instructed us while
reading on a public conveyance to make liberal use of a pen to underline and
annotate books in order to impress other passengers, as if they gave a damn.
This did wonders in building my contempt for marking up books.
More relevantly, book annotations are a distraction: they often highlight the
annotators ignorance without adding value to the material.
Murray Arnow
>She instructed us while
>reading on a public conveyance to make liberal use of a pen to underline and
>annotate books in order to impress other passengers, as if they gave a damn.
I'm sure glad she didn't read this sentence. Perhaps some punctuation and a
"that" here or there may help--maybe not.
Marilyn Welch
Artists, especially Anne Hamilton cut the insides out of books,
and use them sculpture components.
Seeing books used in art has helped me to get over my reverence
for books, which my parents instilled in me. After all, there are
now so many old books and so many are turning yellow and
falling apart. Since the use or acid wood fibre paper,
books are deteriorating in the millions.
Also many artists use sentences and paragraphs from books in collage.
Marilyn
On Sat, 22 Jan 2000, Skitt wrote:
>
> James Follett <ja...@marage.demon.co.uk> wrote in message
> news:20000122.1...@marage.demon.co.uk...
>
> > Just how widespread is the awe that we hold books in, that makes
> > us reluctant to "deface" them? Don't get me wrong -- I love
> > having plenty of books around me, but I own them -- they don't
> > own me.
>
Robert Lieblich
[responding to Jimbo]
> There should be special institutions for people who deface books,
> especially their own.
Such places exist. In the US they're called "colleges" or
"universities."
Murray Arnow
Welcome back, Bob.
Albert Marshall
>
<...>
>Just how widespread is the awe that we hold books in, that makes
>us reluctant to "deface" them? Don't get me wrong -- I love
>having plenty of books around me, but I own them -- they don't
>own me.
All in favour of annotating your own books. What really gets up my nose
is finding a library book with notes all over it, even (in one or two
cases) with incorrect "corrections" of facts.
>
>An afterthought: I often come across neatly-written marginal
>notes in my secondhand reference books and usually find them of
>interest, thinking that someone else in the distant past has
>ploughed the same furrow, holding the same book.
>
Aaaaah!
--
Albert Marshall
Visual Solutions
England
Sara Moffat Lorimer
> Just how widespread is the awe that we hold books in, that makes
> us reluctant to "deface" them? Don't get me wrong -- I love
> having plenty of books around me, but I own them -- they don't
> own me.
When I was 14, my alleged teacher made us follow along in our copies of
"To Kill A Mockingbird" while she told us which sentences to underline
(using ballpoint pens and rulers). She never bothered to explain what it
was that made those particular sentences worthy of underlining. Now that
I'm free to make my own decisions, my books fall into two groups --
those that can be written in, propped open with a bottle of olive oil,
dogeared, etc.; and books I am nice to. I'm not sure how I decide which
are which.
--
SML in Queens, New York
sara at onepine dot com
Robert Lieblich
Merci, Murray. Obviously, a little lurking is a dangerous thing.
Stan Brown
alt.usage.english:
>Last week every note and flourish with the high-light produced a
>faint tut of disapproval from the lady sitting opposite me.
>Eventually she could contain herself no longer and very politely
>reprimanded me for "writing in books."
It seems to me that it would show commendable restraint to
respond "Madam, they are my bloody books and I'll bloody well
write in them when I bloody well want to. Unless I start to write
in your bloody books, please keep your bloody opinions to
yourself."
--
Stan Brown, Oak Road Systems, Cleveland, Ohio, USA
http://www.mindspring.com/~brahms/
alt.usage.English intro and FAQs: http://go.to/aue
WWWebster online dictionary: http://www.m-w.com/mw/netdict.htm
more FAQs: http://www.mindspring.com/~brahms/faqget.htm
Simon R. Hughes
[example setting snip]
> Eventually she could contain herself no longer and very politely
> reprimanded me for "writing in books." She indicated some kids
> from Godalming 6th Form College in the carriage and said that I
> was setting a bad example. I've experienced similar frowns of
> disapproval on previous occasions but this was the first time
> that I've been addressed by a stranger on the subject. It
> prompted me to wonder if others have had similar experiences.
> Just how widespread is the awe that we hold books in, that makes
> us reluctant to "deface" them? Don't get me wrong -- I love
> having plenty of books around me, but I own them -- they don't
> own me.
[example setting snip]
If I lost my books, I would lose my notes on those books, it's as
simple as that.
I was brought up to respect books, which included not writing, drawing
or otherwise destroying them. That is the general principle by which I
still live. However, when I am working with a book, all the pages look
the same. I need some way of being able to find the place where I was
captivated by the motivation for the new narrative level, or whatever.
The best way I have found to re-find those special places is by
writing my notes directly in the text. When I skim the book looking
for the right place, I skim my notes, rather than the text itself.
Needless to say, I buy paperbacks for studying and keep them separate
from my hard-backed prides and joys, for fear of contamination.
I also suffer from extreme guilt, and hide my paperbacks from my
parents, should they happen to drop in.
--
Simon R. Hughes -- http://sult.8m.com/
<!-- Excuse the quality of my English; I have never learned Latin. -->
Quoting Usenet Articles in Follow-ups -- http://sult.8m.com/quote.html
Matti Lamprhey
whodunnits had strange endings. I eventually noticed that someone had
substituted ending pages from different books, but selecting the transition
point quite carefully. The page numbering gave it away, of course.
This was deemed to be quite serious back in the 60s, and the matter was
investigated. It was traced to a local JP, and it turned out that his
butler did it.
Matti
René
lieb...@erols.com wrote:
> René wrote:
>
> [responding to Jimbo]
>
> > There should be special institutions for people who deface books,
> > especially their own.
>
> Such places exist. In the US they're called "colleges" or
> "universities."
This reminds me of what a female MP said in the British Parliament a
few years ago:
There should be special places for men who rape underage girls.
To which a male MP replied:
"That's a jolly good idea!"
--
René Meertens
mailto:r...@who.dk
http://users.skynet.be/guide/
(Guide anglais-français de la traduction)
Alex Chernavsky
>I often come across neatly-written marginal notes
>in my secondhand reference books and usually find
>them of interest, thinking that someone else in the
>distant past has ploughed the same furrow
I beg to differ, James. I prefer my books, like my women, to be previously
unploughed.
--
Alex Chernavsky
al...@astrocyte-design.com
Steve MacGregor
news:20000122.1...@marage.demon.co.uk...
>>It prompted me to wonder if others have had similar experiences. Just
how widespread is the awe that we hold books in, that makes us reluctant
to "deface" them? Don't get me wrong -- I love having plenty of books
around me, but I own them -- they don't own me.
If you're writing in your own book (a copy you own -- not necessarily
one that you have written), you're annotating it, as is your right. If
you don't own it, you're defacing it.
I will sometimes write in my own books (except Bibles, for some reason),
but will not write in, for example, a library book, except occasionally
to correct an obvious tpyo.
James Follett
<MPG.12f462748...@news.online.no>
shu...@tromso.online.no "Simon R. Hughes" wrote:
>I also suffer from extreme guilt, and hide my paperbacks from my
>parents, should they happen to drop in.
What? Both of them?
Sorry, Simon -- cheap jibe (FX: wrist being slapped). I
have a similar problem with a couple of video tapes.
James Follett
<1YHi4.5245$mj7.3...@typhoon.nyroc.rr.com>
al...@astrocyte-design.com "Alex Chernavsky" wrote:
>James Follett wrote, in part:
>
>>I often come across neatly-written marginal notes
>>in my secondhand reference books and usually find
>>them of interest, thinking that someone else in the
>>distant past has ploughed the same furrow
>
>I beg to differ, James. I prefer my books, like my women, to be previously
>unploughed.
Why's this Alex? Scared of comparision?
N.Mitchum
------
> Just how widespread is the awe that we hold books in, that makes
> us reluctant to "deface" them? Don't get me wrong -- I love
> having plenty of books around me, but I own them -- they don't
> own me.
Great, when you do own them. Not so great when you settle down
with a library book for a pleasant evening of reading and see
those underlinings and marginalia waiting for you on every page
with their hints that you may be missing the best bits.
------
> An afterthought: I often come across neatly-written marginal
> notes in my secondhand reference books and usually find them of
> interest, thinking that someone else in the distant past has
> ploughed the same furrow, holding the same book.
>.....
A voice from the distant past would indeed be fascinating. A
voice from the class of 1998 would be somewhat less interesting.
Even the crabbed penmanship holds no attractions.
----NM
James Follett
guid...@angelfire.com "René" wrote:
> ja...@marage.demon.co.uk wrote:
>>
>> I'm a compulsive buyer of secondhand books, particularly
>> reference books no matter what the subject.
(Loads of Follett drivel snipped)
>There should be special institutions for people who deface books,
>especially their own.
Dear Rene,
It's helpful to trim re-posts to salient points.
Particularly long, boring posts from that dreadful Follett person.
PS: Your sig. file is broken. It appeared in my follow-up
so I had to delete it.
--
Jimbo
James Follett
<MPG.12f429733...@news.mindspring.com>
bra...@mindspring.com "Stan Brown" wrote:
>Said ja...@marage.demon.co.uk (James Follett) in
>alt.usage.english:
>>Last week every note and flourish with the high-light produced a
>>faint tut of disapproval from the lady sitting opposite me.
>>Eventually she could contain herself no longer and very politely
>>reprimanded me for "writing in books."
>
>It seems to me that it would show commendable restraint to
>respond "Madam, they are my bloody books and I'll bloody well
>write in them when I bloody well want to. Unless I start to write
>in your bloody books, please keep your bloody opinions to
>yourself."
I take your point. What her reaction does illustrate, as do
several follow-ups in this thread, is just how deeply-ingrained
the aversion to writing in books is. It's akin to waking up in
the night to go for a pee rather than wet the bed.
James Follett
SteveMa...@USA.Net "Steve MacGregor" wrote:
>If you're writing in your own book (a copy you own -- not necessarily
>one that you have written), you're annotating it, as is your right. If
>you don't own it, you're defacing it.
This is an interesting definition, and quite elegant, too.
But is it one you've hatched or have you come across it in
a dictionary etc?
Mike Barnes
>I was brought up to respect books, which included not writing, drawing
>or otherwise destroying them. That is the general principle by which I
>still live. However, when I am working with a book, all the pages look
>the same. I need some way of being able to find the place where I was
>captivated by the motivation for the new narrative level, or whatever.
>The best way I have found to re-find those special places is by
>writing my notes directly in the text. When I skim the book looking
>for the right place, I skim my notes, rather than the text itself.
I find post-it notes invaluable for this. They have the advantage that
they allow as much space as I want, they're easy to find, and they can
be removed without defacing the book. Of course their utility does
rather depend on just how many notes you want to make, and the extent to
which obscuring some of the original text is acceptable.
--
Mike Barnes
Stan Brown
>On Sun, 23 Jan 2000 12:29:24 +0000, Mike Barnes <mi...@senrab.com>
>wrote:
>>I find post-it notes invaluable for this. They have the advantage that
>>they allow as much space as I want, they're easy to find, and they can
>>be removed without defacing the book. Of course their utility does
>>rather depend on just how many notes you want to make, and the extent to
>>which obscuring some of the original text is acceptable.
>
I would counsel against using them in valuable books. I found
that in a book that I Post-Ited, then put on a shelf for years,
the Post-Its no longer peeled off the pages well. The adhesive
had mutated to a weak form of scotch tape.
Brian J Goggin
wrote:
[...]
>I find post-it notes invaluable for this. They have the advantage that
>they allow as much space as I want, they're easy to find, and they can
>be removed without defacing the book. Of course their utility does
>rather depend on just how many notes you want to make, and the extent to
>which obscuring some of the original text is acceptable.
Their utility further depends on their having been invented. When I
were a lad, they hadn't been so, when studying a book, I'd write all
over it: noting, summarising, arguing, criticising .... Writing makes
for active learning (they tell me); writing on the book (pre-Post-its)
made it easy to match the note to its place in the text.
bjg
Bob Bridges
But I kept hearing other folks, mostly authors, talk about the joys of finding old notes in their own secondhand books, the thoughts and, as it were, missives of fellow readers. And somewhere along the line it began to sink in. I don't remember exactly when I started writing preaching little agreements and disagreements in philosophical works, but my copy of "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance" looks like the transcript of a reading in Hyde Park.
As well, I now write in every book I acquire my name and email address, plus the date and where/how I acquired it. Most just say "EMf", meaning I picked it up on the free shelf of my favorite second-hand bookstore, Ed MacKay's in Greensboro, NC. Others, though, were gifts from a best friend, a Christmas present, something I bought at a library sale or from a displayed-for-atmosphere shelf at a hotel or restaurant. Then when I give one to my daughter or a friend, or write "next reader help yourself" inside the cover and leave it in the subway or an airport, the legacy is passed on, as it were.
I'm beginning to appreciate the charm of such comments in the books I read, too. Some of them seem pretty worthless, but none have seemed merely distracting. The one place I don't particularly care for them is in textbooks, where writing in the answers makes it seem kind of like doing a used crossword puzzle. I imagine others would feel just the opposite, though.
---
Bob Bridges, rhb...@attglobal.net, 336 621-6487
/* The plot of "Gianni Schicchi" is that Buoso is dead, and a bunch of people sing very loudly about this in Italian for 45 minutes of opera time, which, for a normal human, works out to roughly a month. I spent most of this time lying still on the bed with my mouth open. This turns out to be very difficult. When you have to hold perfectly still in front of hundreds of people, you become a seething mass of primitive bodily needs. You develop overpowering urges to swallow, twitch, scratch, burp, emit vapors and -- above all -- lick your lips....You find yourself abandoning all concerns about personal hygiene and praying that Puccini was thoughtful enough to include a part in "Gianni Schicchi" where the singers decide, for whatever reason, to lick the corpse's lips. -Dave Barry, describing his debut on the operatic stage */
--- James Follett wrote:
> ...armed with nice, shiny new
> books (that are usually typesetting disasters these days) I
> while away the one-hour train journey to London, ploughing
> through them, making copious margin notes with those wonderful
> disposible Pental fountain pens, and marking chunks of text with
> a high-light pen.
>
> Last week every note and flourish with the high-light produced a
> faint tut of disapproval from the lady sitting opposite me.
> Eventually she could contain herself no longer and very politely
> reprimanded me for "writing in books." She indicated some kids
> from Godalming 6th Form College in the carriage and said that I
> was setting a bad example. I've experienced similar frowns of
> disapproval on previous occasions but this was the first time
> that I've been addressed by a stranger on the subject. It
> prompted me to wonder if others have had similar experiences.
> Just how widespread is the awe that we hold books in, that makes
> us reluctant to "deface" them? Don't get me wrong -- I love
> having plenty of books around me, but I own them -- they don't
> own me.
>
Simon R. Hughes
> On Sunday, in article
> <MPG.12f462748...@news.online.no>
> shu...@tromso.online.no "Simon R. Hughes" wrote:
>
> >I also suffer from extreme guilt, and hide my paperbacks from my
> >parents, should they happen to drop in.
>
> What? Both of them?
>
> Sorry, Simon -- cheap jibe (FX: wrist being slapped). I
> have a similar problem with a couple of video tapes.
No, no. Those books are hardbacks and are kept out of everybody's
view. Immaculate, they are, too (perhaps "immaculate" was the wrong
choice of word).
Brian J Goggin
wrote:
>Brian J Goggin <b...@wordwrights.ie> wrote:
>>Their utility further depends on their having been invented. When I
>>were a lad, they hadn't been so, when studying a book, I'd write all
>>over it: noting, summarising, arguing, criticising .... Writing makes
>>for active learning (they tell me); writing on the book (pre-Post-its)
>>made it easy to match the note to its place in the text.
>>
>
>The test of those annotations is time. If you still possess those books, are
>your comments still meaningful or even useful?
The comments are meaningful, when taken in context, but their
usefulness is determined largely by that of the books themselves. If I
needed, in the morning, to take undergraduate exams in Economics as
understood in the 1970s, my annotations would be a great help.
bjg
Skitt
"Brian J Goggin" <b...@wordwrights.ie> wrote in message
news:608o8s41aa4q6mfd3...@4ax.com...
> ... If I needed, in the morning, to take undergraduate exams in Economics
as
> understood in the 1970s, my annotations would be a great help.
You mean, there are people who understand Economics? Or are they merely
good at parroting what their instructor has said.
In the Economics class I took, the tests were graded on a "add one point for
a correct answer, subtract two for a wrong one" basis. The best score was
way in the minuses. Bad parrots we were. Not like the Norwegian Blues at
all.
I digress. Sorry.
--
Skitt (on Florida's Space Coast) http://skitt.i.am/
CAUTION: My veracity is under a limited warranty
Skitt
"Bob Bridges" <rhb...@attglobal.net> included in message
news:388C0AAE...@attglobal.net...
>
> /* The plot of "Gianni Schicchi" is that Buoso is dead, and a bunch of
people sing very loudly about this in Italian for 45 minutes of opera time,
which, for a normal human, works out to roughly a month. I spent most of
this time lying still on the bed with my mouth open. This turns out to be
very difficult. When you have to hold perfectly still in front of hundreds
of people, you become a seething mass of primitive bodily needs. You
develop overpowering urges to swallow, twitch, scratch, burp, emit vapors
and -- above all -- lick your lips....You find yourself abandoning all
concerns about personal hygiene and praying that Puccini was thoughtful
enough to include a part in "Gianni Schicchi" where the singers decide, for
whatever reason, to lick the corpse's lips. -Dave Barry, describing his
debut on the operatic stage */
I wish I could do that. The writing, not the licking. Dave Barry is my
idol.
Stephen Toogood
<ja...@marage.demon.co.uk> writes
>On Saturday, in article
> <MPG.12f429733...@news.mindspring.com>
> bra...@mindspring.com "Stan Brown" wrote:
>
>>Said ja...@marage.demon.co.uk (James Follett) in
>>alt.usage.english:
>>>faint tut of disapproval from the lady sitting opposite me.
>>>Eventually she could contain herself no longer and very politely
>>>reprimanded me for "writing in books."
>>
>>respond "Madam, they are my bloody books and I'll bloody well
>>write in them when I bloody well want to. Unless I start to write
>>in your bloody books, please keep your bloody opinions to
>>yourself."
>
>I take your point. What her reaction does illustrate, as do
>several follow-ups in this thread, is just how deeply-ingrained
>the aversion to writing in books is. It's akin to waking up in
>the night to go for a pee rather than wet the bed.
>
frontispiece the slogan 'a good book is a thing of beauty and a joy for
ever'? Perhaps someone will tell us which publisher it was. Anyway we
had quite a few of them at school.
The notion is, that a book is something precious and permanent, and that
by writing in it you are denying the next generation the chance to find
it in its proper state. To that extent, you can never really be said to
own a book. You are merely its custodian for a time, and with possession
comes a duty of stewardship.
The argument with the lady in the train, and I doubt that she was under
40, is really I think about permanence versus ephemerality, and about
the modern view that the ideas of the past have no relevance to the
present. Still, this is an excellent thread, and thank you for starting
it.
--
Stephen Toogood
Murray Arnow
>The comments are meaningful, when taken in context, but their
>needed, in the morning, to take undergraduate exams in Economics as
>understood in the 1970s, my annotations would be a great help.
>
Then you are a very skillful annotator. I never found an annotation in any
book that was in the least bit useful. Annotations quite often are cryptic;
eg, underlining and highlighting of text for no apparent reason, calculations
of mysterious origins, and unrelated commentaries--all wasteful distractions.
I use a notebook for making notes. By putting highlights, calculations and
comments in a separate book, the only reader left to wonder about reasons,
origins and relationships is myself.
Colin Rosenthal
Robert Lieblich <lieb...@erols.com> wrote:
>René wrote:
>
>[responding to Jimbo]
>
>> especially their own.
>
>"universities."
Having watched the habits of US students in a number of college
cafeterias, I'm convinced many of them annotate their textbooks as
a substitute for reading them.
--
Colin Rosenthal
Astrophysics Institute
University of Oslo
James Follett
sk...@i.am "Skitt" wrote:
>... Not like the Norwegian Blues at all.
Beautiful plumage, particular when their feathers are ruffled
after a long squawk.
Sam Melton
> On Sun, 23 Jan 2000 12:29:24 +0000, Mike Barnes <mi...@senrab.com>
> wrote:
>
> >I find post-it notes invaluable for this. They have the advantage
> >that they allow as much space as I want, they're easy to find, and
> >they can be removed without defacing the book. Of course their
> >utility does rather depend on just how many notes you want to make,
> >and the extent to which obscuring some of the original text is
> >acceptable.
>
> were a lad, they hadn't been so, when studying a book, I'd write all
> over it: noting, summarising, arguing, criticising .... Writing makes
> for active learning (they tell me); writing on the book (pre-Post-its)
> made it easy to match the note to its place in the text.
>
William Shakespeare which were my grandmother's textbooks at Baylor
University (Waco, Texas) in the '20s. Her notes are written on thin
paper which is inserted at the appropriate spot in the text. The paper
appears to be gummed on the inserted edge because sheets cannot be
easily removed from the book. The paper is the exact size of the pages
of the book. I'm not sure of a word to describe the quality of this
paper, it's more flimsy than standard writing paper, but strong enough
to withstand the scratchings of a fountain pen.
The Browning volume is a particular treasure; her professor was a noted
Browning authority. I used it as a reference when I was writing on
Browning in high school.
V/R
Sam Melton
Brian J Goggin
wrote:
[...]
>I use a notebook for making notes. By putting highlights, calculations and
>comments in a separate book, the only reader left to wonder about reasons,
>origins and relationships is myself.
But then, with my economics (etc) books, nobody else is ever likely to
read them.
bjg
Murray Arnow
>But then, with my economics (etc) books, nobody else is ever likely to
>read them.
I see, a brilliantly nefarious plan to confound archeologists.
Rowan Dingle
>Guess you haven't been to a contemporary art gallery lately.
>Artists, especially Anne Hamilton cut the insides out of books,
>and use them sculpture components.
>
>Seeing books used in art has helped me to get over my reverence
>for books, which my parents instilled in me. After all, there are
>now so many old books and so many are turning yellow and
>falling apart. Since the use or acid wood fibre paper,
>books are deteriorating in the millions.
>
>Also many artists use sentences and paragraphs from books in collage.
Guess you are familiar with the oeuvre of the duo known as Orton &
Halliwell? Many of their works are both deeply moving and incomparably
thought-provoking. I can hardly think of their 'Preface Deface' without
being moved to tears.
Oh dear! Gotta go.
--
Rowan Dingle
Rowan Dingle
>Years ago I used a library in Surrey, and found that many of their
>whodunnits had strange endings. I eventually noticed that someone had
>substituted ending pages from different books, but selecting the transition
>point quite carefully. The page numbering gave it away, of course.
>
>This was deemed to be quite serious back in the 60s, and the matter was
>investigated. It was traced to a local JP, and it turned out that his
>butler did it.
Terrific sleuthing! But what did the butler see in such behaviour? He
can't have done it for the loot.
--
Rowan Dingle
Brian J Goggin
wrote:
>Brian J Goggin <b...@wordwrights.ie> wrote:
They'll become a sort of Rosetta Stone, enabling archaeologists to
translate between English and Economics.
By then, everybody will be speaking Economics.
Y = C + I + G + X -- M.
bjg
Bob Cunningham
said:
[ . . . ]
>I have a Complete Works of Robert Browning and a Complete Works of
>William Shakespeare which were my grandmother's textbooks at Baylor
>University (Waco, Texas) in the '20s. Her notes are written on thin
>paper which is inserted at the appropriate spot in the text.
I think rubber cement would probably work for that. The paper would
be held firmly in place, but could be removed by pulling gently, and
there would be no mark left in the book after the paper was removed.
This sounds like a good idea. I think I'll try it.
>The paper
>appears to be gummed on the inserted edge because sheets cannot be
>easily removed from the book. The paper is the exact size of the pages
>of the book. I'm not sure of a word to describe the quality of this
>paper, it's more flimsy than standard writing paper, but strong enough
>to withstand the scratchings of a fountain pen.
Onionskin? From _The American Heritage Dictionary_:
on·ion·skin [...] n. A thin, strong, translucent paper.
Stan Brown
>Then you are a very skillful annotator. I never found an annotation in any
>book that was in the least bit useful. Annotations quite often are cryptic;
>eg, underlining and highlighting of text for no apparent reason, calculations
>of mysterious origins, and unrelated commentaries--all wasteful distractions.
I will confess that I have corrected obvious errors in library
books -- e.g., placing Napoleon in Warsaw in 1912.
Stan Brown
Said sbme...@wilmington.net (Sam Melton) in alt.usage.english:
>I'm not sure of a word to describe the quality of this
>paper, it's more flimsy than standard writing paper, but strong enough
>to withstand the scratchings of a fountain pen.
Sounds like "onion skin", very thin paper often used in making
several carbon copies while typing.
Now if you ask me what "carbon copies" might be, I'll *really*
feel old. :-)
Murray Arnow
>Said ar...@iname.com (Murray Arnow) in alt.usage.english:
>>Then you are a very skillful annotator. I never found an annotation in any
>>book that was in the least bit useful. Annotations quite often are cryptic;
>>eg, underlining and highlighting of text for no apparent reason, calculations
>>of mysterious origins, and unrelated commentaries--all wasteful distractions.
>
>I will confess that I have corrected obvious errors in library
>books -- e.g., placing Napoleon in Warsaw in 1912.
>
And I suppose you doubt the sighting of Elvis in the Wal-Mart parking lot.
Stan Brown
>>I will confess that I have corrected obvious errors in library
>>books -- e.g., placing Napoleon in Warsaw in 1912.
>And I suppose you doubt the sighting of Elvis in the Wal-Mart parking lot.
Is there a Wal-Mart in Warsaw? Was Elvis ever in Warsaw?
<grin>
Lindsay Endell
> On Mon, 24 Jan 2000 15:02:04 GMT, ar...@iname.com (Murray Arnow)
> wrote:
>
> [...]
>
> >I use a notebook for making notes. By putting highlights, calculations and
> >comments in a separate book, the only reader left to wonder about reasons,
> >origins and relationships is myself.
>
> But then, with my economics (etc) books, nobody else is ever likely to
> read them.
Be honest, though, Brian. Are you likely ever to read them again,
without an exam in the morning?
Linz
--
Oh, not really a pedant, I wouldn't say.
http://www.gofar.demon.co.uk/ - Issue 2.0 available now
N.Mitchum
-----
> Her notes are written on thin
> I'm not sure of a word to describe the quality of this
> paper, it's more flimsy than standard writing paper, but strong enough
> to withstand the scratchings of a fountain pen.
Onionskin? Flimsy? Tissue? Rice paper?
----NM
Sam Melton
Stan Brown also suggested onion skin, and it's not that. It's stiffer
than tissue and not as stiff as rice paper...is there something in
between those two? Flimsy describes it, but I have the feeling that
this word has a peculiar meaning and I don't have a referent to
compare.
V/R
Sam Melton
Brian J Goggin
Endell) wrote:
>Be honest, though, Brian. Are you likely ever to read them again,
>without an exam in the morning?
I'm currently re-reading one of my sociology textbooks. I have more
modern eonomics books, though: they're better written and better
structured than those extant when I were a lad.
bjg
John Doherty
ja...@marage.demon.co.uk wrote:
| So, armed with nice, shiny new books (that are usually typesetting
| disasters these days)
Hey, watch it -- we produce encyclopedic books from time to time
(including 800- to 6,000-page tomes like "The Wildflowers of Texas,"
"The Fishes of the North Atlantic," "The Fishes of the Gulf of Mexico,"
"The Snakes of North America," etc.) and they aren't typesetting
disasters. In fact, they're quite nicely done.
| Last week every note and flourish with the high-light produced a
| faint tut of disapproval from the lady sitting opposite me.
Writing in books is a nasty habit. The book, if it's worth anything to
start with, will, in all likelihood, outlast you. There's no reason for
you to mark it up.
If you want to keep notes about your reading of the book, then keep your
own damn notes, and leave the book alone for those who will come after
you. There's no reason to expect them to have any interest in whatever
notes you wanted to make.
--
D. Spencer Hines
Jabba The Hutt would be wise to stop defacing books.
"Keep your own damn notes" ---- is just the right admonition.
--
D. Spencer Hines
Lux et Veritas et Libertas
Report On the Course of Instruction
"Our object is not to teach that which is peculiar to any one of the
professions, but to lay the foundation which is common to them all....
The student must be thrown upon the resources of his own mind.
Without this, the whole apparatus of libraries, and instruments and
specimens, and lectures, and teachers, will be insufficient to secure
distinguished excellence. The scholar must form himself by his own
exertions. The advantages furnished by residence in a college can do
little more than stimulate and aid his personal efforts."
Faculty of Yale College ---- 1828
"John Doherty" <jdoh...@ix.netcom.com> wrote in message
news:jdoherty-240...@aus-tx43-48.ix.netcom.com...
Murray Arnow
>were a lad, they hadn't been so, when studying a book, I'd write all
>over it: noting, summarising, arguing, criticising .... Writing makes
>for active learning (they tell me); writing on the book (pre-Post-its)
>made it easy to match the note to its place in the text.
>
The test of those annotations is time. If you still possess those books, are
Simon R. Hughes
> [This followup was also e-mailed to the cited author.]
>
> Said sbme...@wilmington.net (Sam Melton) in alt.usage.english:
> >I'm not sure of a word to describe the quality of this
> >paper, it's more flimsy than standard writing paper, but strong enough
> >to withstand the scratchings of a fountain pen.
>
> Sounds like "onion skin", very thin paper often used in making
> several carbon copies while typing.
>
> Now if you ask me what "carbon copies" might be, I'll *really*
> feel old. :-)
Come on, Stan! Everyone knows that carbon copies are what cc: stands
for in AOL.
--
Simon R. Hughes -- http://sult.8m.com/
<!-- Excuse the quality of my English; I have never learned Latin. -->
Quoting Usenet Articles in Follow-ups -- http://sult.8m.com/quote.html
ChenHA
Rowan Dingle wrote:
> Guess you are familiar with the oeuvre of the duo known as Orton &
> Halliwell? Many of their works are both deeply moving and incomparably
> thought-provoking. I can hardly think of their 'Preface Deface' without
> being moved to tears.
Can't think why. Unless it's Halliwell defacing Orton you're thinking
about.
> Oh dear! Gotta go.
Umm, I better run.
>
>
> --
> Rowan Dingle
James Follett
<jdoherty-240...@aus-tx43-48.ix.netcom.com>
jdoh...@ix.netcom.com "John Doherty" wrote:
>In article <20000122.1...@marage.demon.co.uk>,
>ja...@marage.demon.co.uk wrote:
>
>| So, armed with nice, shiny new books (that are usually typesetting
>| disasters these days)
>
>Hey, watch it -- we produce encyclopedic books from time to time
>(including 800- to 6,000-page tomes like "The Wildflowers of Texas,"
>"The Fishes of the North Atlantic," "The Fishes of the Gulf of Mexico,"
>"The Snakes of North America," etc.) and they aren't typesetting
>disasters. In fact, they're quite nicely done.
Things to do today: read my comment again; look up meaning of
"usually". Come back and grovel at Jimbo's feet, begging for a
pat on the head and his everlasting forgiveness.
>| Last week every note and flourish with the high-light produced a
>| faint tut of disapproval from the lady sitting opposite me.
>
>Writing in books is a nasty habit. The book, if it's worth anything to
>start with, will, in all likelihood, outlast you. There's no reason for
>you to mark it up.
I've been on Methodist camping trips so I know a thing or two
about nasty habits. I don't think marking book could be termed
"nasty"; undesireable from the point of view of some, perhaps.
My original post sang the praises of a beautifully-typeset
encyclopedia and distinguished between those books I mark and those
I don't.
--
James Follett -- novelist http://www.davew.demon.co.uk
D. Spencer Hines
Your English is deteriorating ---- rapidly.
Vide infra.
--
D. Spencer Hines
Lux et Veritas et Libertas
"You are a warrior, Clarice. The enemy is dead, the baby safe. You
are a warrior. The most stable elements, Clarice, appear in the
middle of the periodic table, roughly between iron and silver.
Between iron and silver. I think that is appropriate for you.
Hannibal Lecter." _Hannibal_, Thomas Harris, Delacorte Press, [1999],
p. 32.
"Simon R. Hughes" <shu...@tromso.online.no> wrote in message
news:MPG.12f80e616...@news.online.no...
| Thus spake John Doherty, jdoh...@ix.netcom.com:
|
| > Writing in books is a nasty habit. The book, if it's worth
anything to
| > start with, will, in all likelihood, outlast you. There's no
reason for
| > you to mark it up.
| >
| > If you want to keep notes about your reading of the book, then
keep your
| > own damn notes, and leave the book alone for those who will come
after
| > you. There's no reason to expect them to have any interest in
whatever
| > notes you wanted to make.
|
| I must remember to write you out of my will.
|
| There's no reason to think that no-one will find your notes
| interesting, either. Proof? Take a look:
|
| http://news.excite.com/news/uw/000121/university-34
|
| Finally, there is a difference between choosing one's own behaviour
| and dictating the behaviour of others. That difference is commonly
| known as manners.
Simon R. Hughes
Steve MacGregor
news:20000123.2...@marage.demon.co.uk...
>>This is an interesting definition, and quite elegant, too. But is it
one you've hatched or have you come across it in a dictionary etc?
I seem to have come up with it myself, from the definition of "annotate"
and my opinion of the procedure.
Bob Bridges
---
Bob Bridges, rhb...@attglobal.net, 336 621-6487
/* This is not Peace. It is an Armistice for twenty years. -Allied marshal Foch, upon hearing the terms of the Treaty of Versailles ending WWI */
--- John Doherty wrote:
> If you want to keep notes about your reading of the book, then keep your
> own damn notes, and leave the book alone for those who will come after
> you. There's no reason to expect them to have any interest in whatever
> notes you wanted to make.
> In article <20000122.1...@marage.demon.co.uk>,
> ja...@marage.demon.co.uk wrote:
>
> | Last week every note and flourish with the high-light produced a
> | faint tut of disapproval from the lady sitting opposite me.
>
Bob Bridges
---
Bob Bridges, rhb...@attglobal.net, 336 621-6487
/* This is not Peace. It is an Armistice for twenty years. -Allied marshal Foch, upon hearing the terms of the Treaty of Versailles ending WWI */
--- Skitt wrote:
> I wish I could do that. The writing, not the licking. Dave Barry is my
> idol.
> "Bob Bridges" <rhb...@attglobal.net> included in message
> news:388C0AAE...@attglobal.net...
> >
> > /* The plot of "Gianni Schicchi" is that Buoso is dead, and a bunch of
> people sing very loudly about this in Italian for 45 minutes of opera time,
> which, for a normal human, works out to roughly a month. I spent most of
> this time lying still on the bed with my mouth open. This turns out to be
> very difficult. When you have to hold perfectly still in front of hundreds
> of people, you become a seething mass of primitive bodily needs. You
> develop overpowering urges to swallow, twitch, scratch, burp, emit vapors
> and -- above all -- lick your lips....You find yourself abandoning all
> concerns about personal hygiene and praying that Puccini was thoughtful
> enough to include a part in "Gianni Schicchi" where the singers decide, for
> whatever reason, to lick the corpse's lips. -Dave Barry, describing his
> debut on the operatic stage */
D. Spencer Hines
Most of these garden-variety marginal comments are jejune. Cease and
desist constitute the best course of action.
If Leo Tolstoy or Charles Dickens had owned the book and made marginal
comments, I'd be interested.
But Jabba the Hutt's marking it up on the train to London?
No thanks, that's rather sordid.
--
D. Spencer Hines
Lux et Veritas et Libertas
"You are a warrior, Clarice. The enemy is dead, the baby safe. You
are a warrior. The most stable elements, Clarice, appear in the
middle of the periodic table, roughly between iron and silver.
Between iron and silver. I think that is appropriate for you.
Hannibal Lecter." _Hannibal_, Thomas Harris, Delacorte Press, [1999],
p. 32.
"Bob Bridges" <rhb...@attglobal.net> wrote in message
news:388E99A2...@attglobal.net...
| Ah, but they do! I agree there's no reason to expect them to, but
nevertheless they do. I don't know why, either, but I've read lots of
writings by authors who find these thoughts left behind for the next
reader kind of charming. I've even begun to be willing to appreciate
them myself, though I'm a rather reluctant convert.
|
| ---
| Bob Bridges, rhb...@attglobal.net, 336 621-6487
|
| /* This is not Peace. It is an Armistice for twenty years. -Allied
marshal Foch, upon hearing the terms of the Treaty of Versailles
ending WWI */
|
John Doherty
ja...@marage.demon.co.uk wrote:
| On Monday, in article
| <jdoherty-240...@aus-tx43-48.ix.netcom.com>
| jdoh...@ix.netcom.com "John Doherty" wrote:
|
| >In article <20000122.1...@marage.demon.co.uk>,
| >ja...@marage.demon.co.uk wrote:
| >
| >| So, armed with nice, shiny new books (that are usually typesetting
| >| disasters these days)
| >
| >Hey, watch it -- we produce encyclopedic books from time to time
| >(including 800- to 6,000-page tomes like "The Wildflowers of Texas,"
| >"The Fishes of the North Atlantic," "The Fishes of the Gulf of Mexico,"
| >"The Snakes of North America," etc.) and they aren't typesetting
| >disasters. In fact, they're quite nicely done.
|
| Things to do today: read my comment again; look up meaning of
| "usually". Come back and grovel at Jimbo's feet, begging for a
| pat on the head and his everlasting forgiveness.
Frankly, I'm not that concerned with your "forgiveness."
| I've been on Methodist camping trips so I know a thing or two
| about nasty habits.
I suspect you know lots of things about nasty habits. But that doesn't
make you particularly able to recognize your own.
| I don't think marking book could be termed "nasty"; undesireable from
| the point of view of some, perhaps.
It all depends on the book you mark up. If it's just some piece of
transient trash, then mark it up all you want: neither I nor anybody
else will care in the least.
But if it's a vlauable book that will outlast you, then you owe it to
those who will follow you to keep your grubby marks off of it.
| My original post sang the praises of a beautifully-typeset
| encyclopedia and distinguished between those books I mark and those
| I don't.
I didn't notice you making that distinction in any very clear way. Maybe
that's because I'm stupid, or maybe it's because you didn't make yourself
very clear.
I did notice where you said "I love having plenty of books around me, but
I own them -- they don't own me."
My point is that you may own those books *for now*, but pretty soon, you'll
be dead, but the books will still be around. For books that are actually
valuable, you'd do better to think of yourself as a custodian than as an
"owner."
For books that are actually valuable, try to leave them in just as good a
state as the one in which you found them. Your grubby marks are not that
likely to actually improve them.
If you're unsure of your ability to distinguish valuable books from
transient trash, then your best bet is probably to keep your grubby marks
off of all of them.
--
John Doherty
shu...@tromso.online.no (Simon R. Hughes) wrote:
| Thus spake John Doherty, jdoh...@ix.netcom.com:
|
| > Writing in books is a nasty habit. The book, if it's worth anything to
| > start with, will, in all likelihood, outlast you. There's no reason for
| > you to mark it up.
| >
| > If you want to keep notes about your reading of the book, then keep your
| > own damn notes, and leave the book alone for those who will come after
| > you. There's no reason to expect them to have any interest in whatever
| > notes you wanted to make.
|
| I must remember to write you out of my will.
That's fine. I never expected to be written into it in the first place.
| There's no reason to think that no-one will find your notes
| interesting, either.
If you want to make notes about a book, there's nothing stopping you
from keeping them separate from the book itself, and referring
in them to the book itself. If it actually turns out that your notes
are so illuminating, I'm sure that any reader of them would be happy
to follow your references.
| Finally, there is a difference between choosing one's own behaviour
| and dictating the behaviour of others. That difference is commonly
| known as manners.
I'm not "dictating" anything, although I am making some suggestions.
There are people whose profession it is to preserve valuable books
(along with lots of other books, although it's not always obvious
which are which) for posterity. I notice that these people do not
mark up the books in their care. I think that's a good practice.
In general, people who mark up books are ruining those books for
posterity. They should quit doing it, at least to valuable books.
--
Brian J Goggin
Doherty) wrote:
[...]
>My point is that you may own those books *for now*, but pretty soon, you'll
>be dead, but the books will still be around. For books that are actually
>valuable, you'd do better to think of yourself as a custodian than as an
>"owner."
When I were a lad, I had lots of toy soldiers and tanks and trains and
cars and planes and all that sort of thing.
When I found it was time to put away childish things, I destroyed
every single one of them. Every tiny toy soldier was cut in two; every
vehicle was smashed; the planes met fiery deaths.
Perhaps my books will have a Viking funeral.
bjg
Charles Riggs
I trust your little friends on the block fared better.
Charles Riggs
Stephen Toogood
<b...@wordwrights.ie> writes
>When I were a lad, I had lots of toy soldiers and tanks and trains and
>cars and planes and all that sort of thing.
>
>When I found it was time to put away childish things, I destroyed
>every single one of them. Every tiny toy soldier was cut in two; every
>vehicle was smashed; the planes met fiery deaths.
>
>
that all your books had to be buried with you in your coffin. I envisage
a huge container and groups of mourners (of which there will doubtless
be many) struggling in vain to pick it up. If it's cremation you have in
mind, they may also have a problem at the door of the furnace.
Thinking on your earlier remarks, undertakers are wont to offer a so-so
service at an inflated price; this might give you better value.
--
Stephen Toogood
Perchprism
>From: Stephen Toogood ste...@stenches.nospam.demon.co.uk
>Date: 1/26/00 6:04 AM Eastern Standard Time
>Message-id: <UNo5S1AC...@stenches.demon.co.uk>
Which brings up something I've been wondering about--can an undertaker overdo
it, in English usage?
--
Perchprism
(southern New Jersey, near Philadelphia)
Stephen Toogood
<rhb...@attglobal.net> writes
>Ah, but they do! I agree there's no reason to expect them to, but nevertheless
>they do. I don't know why, either, but I've read lots of writings by authors
>who find these thoughts left behind for the next reader kind of charming. I've
>even begun to be willing to appreciate them myself, though I'm a rather
>reluctant convert.
>
Bob: may I respectfully ask two things, since you look as though we're
going to have the pleasure of your company for a while:
1. Could you adjust your margins so that we can read your posts without
having to scroll right-left as well as up-down? 0-60 is good.
2. Could you do what the rest of us have learnt to and put your comment
after what you're commenting on? It's so much easier to read in
chronological order.
I' sorry if this is the eighth post like this you've had.
--
Stephen Toogood
Brian J Goggin
<ri...@RemoveThiseircom.net> wrote:
[...]
>I trust your little friends on the block fared better.
What is a block in English usage? And how are friends on it?
bjg
Richard Fontana
I don't think Charles meant "friends on auction". From the context,
I believe he meant the North American urban block, which primarily
means:
a segment of street, bounded by two street intersections, and only
consisting of one side of that street (I'd say), but referring to
the collection of homes or other structures, and their inhabitants,
located on that side of the street. Well, no, I suppose it
might include the people on the other side of the street too. Does
someone who lives across the street from you live on your block?
I don't remember; it's been too long.
However, we also have the phrase "around the block", or I have it,
anyway, which means "around a rectangular segment of street grid"
and so if you walk around the block you are traversing segments of
four different streets. I don't otherwise primarily think of such a
rectangular segment of street grid as a "block", though I suppose
it is. If someone lives right around the corner, they certainly
don't live on your block.
But I believe "on the block" can be used rather loosely to mean "in
the neighborhood"; so a new kid on the block may be the same as a new
kid in town.
So Charles would like to know that you didn't cause harm to your
childhood friends, those who lived within walking distance that is.
Richard
Skitt
"Brian J Goggin" <b...@wordwrights.ie> wrote in message
news:0eau8s81bots19l9r...@4ax.com...
> On Wed, 26 Jan 2000 09:03:14 +0000, Charles Riggs
> <ri...@RemoveThiseircom.net> wrote:
>
> [...]
>
> >I trust your little friends on the block fared better.
>
> What is a block in English usage? And how are friends on it?
WWWebster:
block
[...]
6 a (1) : a usually rectangular space (as in a city) enclosed by streets and
occupied by or intended for buildings (2) : the distance along one of the
sides of such a block
[...]
--
Skitt (on Florida's Space Coast) http://skitt.i.am/
CAUTION: My veracity is under a limited warranty
Rachel M. Kadel-Garcia
Richard Fontana wrote:
>Brian J Goggin sez:
>>On Wed, 26 Jan 2000 09:03:14 +0000, Charles Riggs
>><ri...@RemoveThiseircom.net> wrote:
>>
>>[...]
>>
>>>I trust your little friends on the block fared better.
>>
>>What is a block in English usage? And how are friends on it?
>
>I believe he meant the North American urban block, which primarily
And suburban.
>means:
>a segment of street, bounded by two street intersections, and only
>consisting of one side of that street (I'd say), but referring to
>the collection of homes or other structures, and their inhabitants,
>located on that side of the street. Well, no, I suppose it
>might include the people on the other side of the street too. Does
>someone who lives across the street from you live on your block?
>I don't remember; it's been too long.
>
>However, we also have the phrase "around the block", or I have it,
>anyway, which means "around a rectangular segment of street grid"
>and so if you walk around the block you are traversing segments of
>four different streets. I don't otherwise primarily think of such a
>rectangular segment of street grid as a "block", though I suppose
>it is. If someone lives right around the corner, they certainly
>don't live on your block.
! Yes they do. And no, the people across the street aren't on your
block, they're across the street.
To me, the primary meaning of "block" in this sense is an area bounded and
not crossed by streets; blocks in places with sane grids are usually
rectangular, but this isn't essential. A child might be told they can
go out to play if they don't leave the block, on the theory that they'll
be safe so long as they don't cross the street. If the area is too big or
the border is too complicated, then it loses its blockishness.
The "segment of a street from one intersection to the next" is a secondary
meaning, and mostly useful as a unit of distance (again, in places with
sane grids).
Rachel
Eric The Read
> However, we also have the phrase "around the block", or I have it,
> anyway, which means "around a rectangular segment of street grid"
This is the primary meaning I've always understood.
> and so if you walk around the block you are traversing segments of
> four different streets. I don't otherwise primarily think of such a
> rectangular segment of street grid as a "block", though I suppose
> it is. If someone lives right around the corner, they certainly
> don't live on your block.
Of course they do! Your block is defined, generally, as the area you can
travel to without crossing a street, which allows for the odd layouts one
sometimes finds. This definition applies only in urban areas, as one can
often go miles in the country without encountering any cross-streets at
all.
The other meaning you're alluding to is more a unit of distance, not
area-- it's how far you go when someone says, "it's three blocks
thataway." Such directions mean that you travel the length of three
blocks to get there; they don't redefine the term "block".
> But I believe "on the block" can be used rather loosely to mean "in
> the neighborhood"; so a new kid on the block may be the same as a new
> kid in town.
I think "new kid on the block" is an indivisible unit; you're right in
that it means "the new guy", but I don't know that "on the block" or "the
block" are generally used in this way without that prefix on them. I've
generally lived in suburbia or rural areas, though, so I won't claim any
authority here.
-=Eric
--
"Cutting the space budget really restores my faith in humanity. It
eliminates dreams, goals, and ideals and lets us get straight to the
business of hate, debauchery, and self-annihilation."
-- Johnny Hart
Evan Kirshenbaum
> Brian J Goggin sez:
> >On Wed, 26 Jan 2000 09:03:14 +0000, Charles Riggs
> ><ri...@RemoveThiseircom.net> wrote:
> >
> >>I trust your little friends on the block fared better.
> >
> >What is a block in English usage? And how are friends on it?
>
> I don't think Charles meant "friends on auction". From the context,
> I believe he meant the North American urban block, which primarily
> means: a segment of street, bounded by two street intersections, and
> only consisting of one side of that street (I'd say), but referring
> to the collection of homes or other structures, and their
> inhabitants, located on that side of the street. Well, no, I
> suppose it might include the people on the other side of the street
> too. Does someone who lives across the street from you live on your
> block? I don't remember; it's been too long.
When I grew up in Chicago, it certainly did. The block also served to
bound a set of 100 possible addresses on the street. I lived on the
7200 block of North Oconto, which meant that all of the addresses were
greater than or equal to 7200 and less than 7300. (With odd addresses
on one side of the street and even ones on the other.)
> However, we also have the phrase "around the block", or I have it,
> anyway, which means "around a rectangular segment of street grid"
> and so if you walk around the block you are traversing segments of
> four different streets.
And, at least in Chicago geography, the walk is half a mile (four
blocks) long. It would be possible to walk truly "around the block"
by walking along the alleys in back of the properties (an alley ran
between each two populated streets, which all ran in the same
direction), but "around the block" was always used as you say, to
start on one street and walk without crossing a street until you wind
up back at your starting point.
--
Evan Kirshenbaum +------------------------------------
HP Laboratories |Those who would give up essential
1501 Page Mill Road, Building 1U |Liberty, to purchase a little
Palo Alto, CA 94304 |temporary Safety, deserve neither
|Liberty nor Safety.
kirsh...@hpl.hp.com | Benjamin Franklin
(650)857-7572
Richard Fontana
That sounds about average for rectangular around-the-block blocks
in the parts of New York with relatively regular grid patterns.
In the typical around-the-block block in Flatbush, Brooklyn,
certainly, the longer side of the rectangle (or parallelogram,
at least) was somewhere between three and four times the length of
the short side. This probably works for the gridded part of
Manhattan too; one bit of folklore has it that the average distance
between numbered north-south avenues is three so-called city blocks.
(I'm not sure this can be accurate, unless you ignore the far west side.)
A "city block" is the distance between one numbered Manhattan
east-west street in the rectangular grid and the next or
previous street, as you walk up or down one of the north-south avenues.
Folklore also has it that 20 city blocks = 1 mile, and that
it takes about a minute for the average person to walk one city block.
Richard
Albert Marshall
>On Wed, 26 Jan 2000 07:35:39 +0000, Brian J Goggin
><b...@wordwrights.ie> wrote:
>
>>When I were a lad, I had lots of toy soldiers and tanks and trains and
>>cars and planes and all that sort of thing.
>>
>>When I found it was time to put away childish things, I destroyed
>>every single one of them. Every tiny toy soldier was cut in two; every
>>vehicle was smashed; the planes met fiery deaths.
>
>
--
Albert Marshall
Visual Solutions
England
Evan Kirshenbaum
> rfon...@wesleyan.edu (Richard Fontana) writes:
> > and so if you walk around the block you are traversing segments of
> > four different streets. I don't otherwise primarily think of such a
> > rectangular segment of street grid as a "block", though I suppose
> > it is. If someone lives right around the corner, they certainly
> > don't live on your block.
>
> Of course they do! Your block is defined, generally, as the area
> you can travel to without crossing a street, which allows for the
> odd layouts one sometimes finds.
Not true in Chicago, at least, when I grew up there. The stores on
Harlem, including the furniture store across the alley from the back
of our yard (the one whose burglar alarm went off for no apparent
reason several nights a week), were "one block over", not on our
block. All of the houses on my block had Oconto addresses (with the
possible exception of the ones on the corners).
--
Evan Kirshenbaum +------------------------------------
HP Laboratories |The reason that we don't have
1501 Page Mill Road, Building 1U |"bear-proof" garbage cans in the
Palo Alto, CA 94304 |park is that there is a significant
|overlap in intelligence between the
kirsh...@hpl.hp.com |smartest bears and the dumbest
(650)857-7572 |humans.
| Yosemite Park Ranger
Aaron J. Dinkin
rga...@is06.fas.harvard.edu (Rachel M. Kadel-Garcia) wrote:
> To me, the primary meaning of "block" in this sense is an area bounded and
> not crossed by streets; blocks in places with sane grids are usually
> rectangular, but this isn't essential. A child might be told they can
> go out to play if they don't leave the block, on the theory that they'll
> be safe so long as they don't cross the street. If the area is too big or
> the border is too complicated, then it loses its blockishness.
How do dead-end streets affect blockishness? That is, the (suburban) block
I live on is shaped approximately as follows (assuming you read Usenet in a
monospaced font):
--------------
-------------' \
-----------' \
------' \ \
----' O \ \
| | \ \
| | \ \
| | | \ \
| | | \ \
------------------------------------------------------------
Does that count as a single block? Does it matter that the easternmost
dead-end street on the map is continued by a short unpaved path through a
wooded area that actually does meet up with the street on the north side?
-Aaron J. Dinkin
Dr. Whom
Richard Fontana
>This probably works for the gridded part of
>Manhattan too; one bit of folklore has it that the average distance
>between numbered north-south avenues is three so-called city blocks.
>(I'm not sure this can be accurate, unless you ignore the far west side.)
>A "city block" is the distance between one numbered Manhattan
>east-west street in the rectangular grid and the next or
>previous street, as you walk up or down one of the north-south avenues.
>Folklore also has it that 20 city blocks = 1 mile, and that
>it takes about a minute for the average person to walk one city block.
It looks like the term "city block" as a unit of distance, as opposed
to just "block", is used in many parts of the US, and perhaps in
other places. The precise meaning will presumably vary from city to
city, but I wonder if a "city block" always refers to the shorter
side of the rectangle, in those cities which don't use square
blocks.
Richard
Reinhold (Rey) Aman
Rachel M. Kadel-Garcia wrote:
> the people across the street aren't on your block,
> they're across the street.
That's my basic understanding, too, but: in smaller communities, people
have "block parties." That is, everyone on this block -- from *both*
sides of the street -- brings some food or drink, and then the bourgeois
fun begins.
Thus "block" has two meanings: (1) one side of a street, (2) both sides
of a street.
--
Reinhold (Rey) Aman
Santa Rosa, CA 95402, USA
M.J.Powell
<ste...@stenches.nospam.demon.co.uk> writes
>>cars and planes and all that sort of thing.
>>
>>When I found it was time to put away childish things, I destroyed
>>every single one of them. Every tiny toy soldier was cut in two; every
>>vehicle was smashed; the planes met fiery deaths.
>>
>>
>Here's another Idea for you. You might consider stipulating in your will
>that all your books had to be buried with you in your coffin. I envisage
>a huge container and groups of mourners (of which there will doubtless
>be many) struggling in vain to pick it up. If it's cremation you have in
>mind, they may also have a problem at the door of the furnace.
>
>Thinking on your earlier remarks, undertakers are wont to offer a so-so
>service at an inflated price; this might give you better value.
Cremated by his own books! Brilliant idea! I'll write it into my will.
Mike
--
M.J.Powell
Lindsay Endell
> On Mon, 24 Jan 2000 20:59:06 GMT, go...@nospam.demon.co.uk (Lindsay
> Endell) wrote:
>
> >Be honest, though, Brian. Are you likely ever to read them again,
> >without an exam in the morning?
>
> I'm currently re-reading one of my sociology textbooks. I have more
> modern eonomics books, though: they're better written and better
> structured than those extant when I were a lad.
>
Heck. The only books I re-read are, you know, stories. Linguistics
textbooks don't count as stories. I was going to say novels, but that
brings to mind romance and romantic fiction and I'm not keen on Mills
& Boon...
Linz
Eric The Read
> Eric The Read <emsc...@rmi.net> writes:
> > Your block is defined, generally, as the area
> > you can travel to without crossing a street, which allows for the
> > odd layouts one sometimes finds.
>
> Not true in Chicago, at least, when I grew up there. The stores on
> Harlem, including the furniture store across the alley from the back
> of our yard (the one whose burglar alarm went off for no apparent
> reason several nights a week), were "one block over", not on our
> block. All of the houses on my block had Oconto addresses (with the
> possible exception of the ones on the corners).
Er, I'm not sure I understand what's going on here. Let me use my
admittedly poor skill at ASCII art to see if I can work out what you're
trying to say:
My definition of a block is:
| | | |
----| |------------------| |-----
Street A
----| |------------------| |-----
|S | |S |
|t | |t |
|r | |r |
|e | This is a block. |e |
|e | |e |
|t | |t |
| | | |
|C | |D |
| | | |
----| |------------------| |-----
Street B
----| |------------------| |-----
| | | |
It sounds like you're saying (wrt the following graphic):
| | | |
----| |------------------| |-----
Street A
----| |------------------| |-----
|S | |S |
|t | |t |
|r | |r |
|e | This is a block. |e |
|e | |e |
|t |------------------|t |
| | | |
|C | This is another |D |
| | Block | |
----| |------------------| |-----
Street B
----| |------------------| |-----
| | | |
Where the '-' marks represent an alleyway.
Usage out here in Colorado seems to be that alleyways do not affect the
definition of a block.
Brian J Goggin
Fontana) wrote:
>Brian J Goggin sez:
>>On Wed, 26 Jan 2000 09:03:14 +0000, Charles Riggs
>><ri...@RemoveThiseircom.net> wrote:
[...]
>>>I trust your little friends on the block fared better.
>>What is a block in English usage? And how are friends on it?
[...]
>So Charles would like to know that you didn't cause harm to your
>childhood friends, those who lived within walking distance that is.
Thanks. I should have worked that out, I suppose, but there was a
double difficulty: first, that the word is not (or was not) used in
that sense in Ireland and, second, that I lived on a road that was
first rural and then suburban. There were cottages and factories and
stuff, but no blocks.
bjg
Brian J Goggin
Kadel-Garcia) wrote:
[...]
>The "segment of a street from one intersection to the next" is a secondary
>meaning, and mostly useful as a unit of distance (again, in places with
>sane grids).
What is a non-sane grid? And what of places with no grids?
bjg
Brian J Goggin
[...]
>WWWebster:
>block
>[...]
>6 a (1) : a usually rectangular space (as in a city) enclosed by streets and
>occupied by or intended for buildings (2) : the distance along one of the
>sides of such a block
>[...]
That wouldn't have struck me as applying to the road on which I grew
up.
bjg
Richard Fontana
>On 26 Jan 2000 18:49:21 GMT, rga...@is06.fas.harvard.edu (Rachel M.
>Kadel-Garcia) wrote:
>
>[...]
>
>>The "segment of a street from one intersection to the next" is a secondary
>>meaning, and mostly useful as a unit of distance (again, in places with
>>sane grids).
[...]
>And what of places with no grids?
I would still use "block" as a unit of distance provided it wasn't
too inappropriate; I think this would require a relatively urbanized
(including quasi-suburban urban) community with a street layout
that contained a sufficient number of quadrilateral around-the-block
blocks and where the average distance between street intersections
was sufficiently small.
Richard
Evan Kirshenbaum
> Evan Kirshenbaum <ev...@garrett.hpl.hp.com> writes:
> > Eric The Read <emsc...@rmi.net> writes:
> > > Your block is defined, generally, as the area you can travel to
> > > without crossing a street, which allows for the odd layouts one
> > > sometimes finds.
> >
> > Not true in Chicago, at least, when I grew up there. The stores on
> > Harlem, including the furniture store across the alley from the back
> > of our yard (the one whose burglar alarm went off for no apparent
> > reason several nights a week), were "one block over", not on our
> > block. All of the houses on my block had Oconto addresses (with the
> > possible exception of the ones on the corners).
>
> Er, I'm not sure I understand what's going on here. Let me use my
> admittedly poor skill at ASCII art to see if I can work out what you're
> trying to say:
>
> My definition of a block is:
[drawing of a "block" as area bounded by streets]
>
> It sounds like you're saying (wrt the following graphic):
[drawing of a "block" as area bounded by streets of alleys]
>
> Where the '-' marks represent an alleyway.
>
> Usage out here in Colorado seems to be that alleyways do not affect
> the definition of a block.
I'm pretty sure that they did in Chicago. Your block was determined
by the street your house fronted on. I'm pretty sure (although I'm
not positive) that the block included both sides of the street, so
"they lived down the block on the other side of the street" was a
meaningful statement. Just a bare "down the block", though, was
limited to the same side of the street.
The kids on my block (Scott, Big Joey, Little Joey, and Ginny) were
all on my side of the street, but I'm not sure there *were* any kids
around my age on the other side.
--
Evan Kirshenbaum +------------------------------------
HP Laboratories |If the human brain were so simple
1501 Page Mill Road, Building 1U |That we could understand it,
Palo Alto, CA 94304 |We would be so simple
|That we couldn't.
kirsh...@hpl.hp.com
(650)857-7572
Rachel M. Kadel-Garcia
Aaron J. Dinkin wrote:
>In article <slrn88ugdg....@is06.fas.harvard.edu>,
>> not crossed by streets; blocks in places with sane grids are usually
>> rectangular, but this isn't essential. A child might be told they can
>> go out to play if they don't leave the block, on the theory that they'll
>> be safe so long as they don't cross the street. If the area is too big or
>> the border is too complicated, then it loses its blockishness.
>
>How do dead-end streets affect blockishness? That is, the (suburban) block
>I live on is shaped approximately as follows (assuming you read Usenet in a
>monospaced font):
>
> --------------
> -------------' \
> -----------' \
> ------' \ \
> ----' O \ \
> | | \ \
> | | \ \
> | | | \ \
> | | | \ \
> ------------------------------------------------------------
>
>Does that count as a single block? Does it matter that the easternmost
>dead-end street on the map is continued by a short unpaved path through a
>wooded area that actually does meet up with the street on the north side?
The whole thing is probably both too big and too complicated to fit my
mental image of a "block"; I might consider the things enclosed by the
dead-end streets and their imaginary extensions blocks, or I might just
consider the whole thing ineligible for block-hood.
Driveways and alleys don't count as streets for this purpose. The big new
suburban sprawl things with the twisty streets and all the cul-de-sacs
don't have blocks.
Rachel
Rachel M. Kadel-Garcia
I'd say "block" has two meanings: (1) a small section of land enclosed by
streets, (2) a length of street between two intersections.
The block parties I've encountered have invited people from a wider area
than either their block(1) or their block(2).
Rachel
Evan Kirshenbaum
> Evan Kirshenbaum sez:
> >rfon...@wesleyan.edu (Richard Fontana) writes:
> >> However, we also have the phrase "around the block", or I have it,
> >> anyway, which means "around a rectangular segment of street grid"
> >> and so if you walk around the block you are traversing segments of
> >> four different streets.
> >
> >And, at least in Chicago geography, the walk is half a mile (four
> >blocks) long.
I just looked at a map, and that's incorrect. Each block in Chicago
is exactly twice as long as it is wide (which is what my memory would
have said if I thought about it), so the walk is three blocks (three
eighths of a mile) long.
> That sounds about average for rectangular around-the-block blocks
> in the parts of New York with relatively regular grid patterns.
> In the typical around-the-block block in Flatbush, Brooklyn,
> certainly, the longer side of the rectangle (or parallelogram,
> at least) was somewhere between three and four times the length of
> the short side. This probably works for the gridded part of
> Manhattan too; one bit of folklore has it that the average distance
> between numbered north-south avenues is three so-called city blocks.
> (I'm not sure this can be accurate, unless you ignore the far west side.)
> A "city block" is the distance between one numbered Manhattan
> east-west street in the rectangular grid and the next or
> previous street, as you walk up or down one of the north-south avenues.
> Folklore also has it that 20 city blocks = 1 mile, and that
> it takes about a minute for the average person to walk one city block.
Folklore in Chicago had 8 blocks to the mile. According to the CTA
web site, folklore was correct:
Chicago was built on a grid system with a "major" street every half
mile - equal to four blocks. The starting point is at the
intersection of State and Madison in the heart of the Loop. State
Street runs north/south. All of the other north/south streets are
numbered as so many blocks east or west of State, with the
addresses increasing by 100 for each block (except downtown, where
streets do not always correspond to a full block). For example,
Ashland Avenue runs north/south and is 16 blocks west of State and
so its "address" is 1600 West. Since there are 8 blocks to a mile,
we can also determine that Ashland is 2 miles west of
State. Similarly all east/west streets are numbered as north or
south of Madison, which runs east/west. The street that runs
parallel to Madison eight blocks to the north (Chicago Avenue) is
referred to as 800 North, and is one mile north of Madison.
Using this system you can always figure out how far and in what
direction you have strayed from downtown, and by knowing a cross
street's address you can find any building in the city. A building
with an address of 800 North Ashland Ave. will be 8 blocks north of
Madison on Ashland which is 16 blocks west of State Street, at the
intersection of Chicago Ave. and Ashland Ave. A building with an
address of 1601 West Chicago Ave. will be on another corner of the
same intersection.
http://www.yourcta.com/maps/systemmaps.html
--
Evan Kirshenbaum +------------------------------------
HP Laboratories |The purpose of writing is to inflate
1501 Page Mill Road, Building 1U |weak ideas, obscure poor reasoning,
Palo Alto, CA 94304 |and inhibit clarity. With a little
|practice, writing can be an
kirsh...@hpl.hp.com |intimidating and impenetrable fog!
(650)857-7572 | Calvin
Evan Kirshenbaum
> It looks like the term "city block" as a unit of distance, as opposed
> to just "block", is used in many parts of the US, and perhaps in
> other places. The precise meaning will presumably vary from city to
> city, but I wonder if a "city block" always refers to the shorter
> side of the rectangle, in those cities which don't use square
> blocks.
In Chicago it was the long side and equal to an eighth of a mile.
(The short side was half that.) I remember car odometers being
confusing, as there was no intuitive feel for a tenth of a mile, and
most of us kids wondered why they didn't just do the fractions in
eighths, which everybody would understand.
--
Evan Kirshenbaum +------------------------------------
HP Laboratories |A burro is an ass. A burrow is a
1501 Page Mill Road, Building 1U |hole in the ground. As a
Palo Alto, CA 94304 |journalist, you are expected to
|know the difference.
kirsh...@hpl.hp.com | UPI Stylebook
(650)857-7572
Rachel M. Kadel-Garcia
>On 26 Jan 2000 18:49:21 GMT, rga...@is06.fas.harvard.edu (Rachel M.
>Kadel-Garcia) wrote:
>
>[...]
>
>>The "segment of a street from one intersection to the next" is a secondary
>>meaning, and mostly useful as a unit of distance (again, in places with
>>sane grids).
>
Cambridge, Somerville, and Boston, MA, have insane grids (if you define
"grid" as "street layout") or no grids (if you define "grid" as "evenly
spaced rectilinear street layout"). You can determine the sanity of your
grid as follows: Start out on a major street. Check your watch and
compass. Walk down the street and take the next two right turns. Check
your watch and compass again. If this took more than about 10 minutes, or
if the angle between your initial direction and your final direction is
less than about 160 degrees, your grid is probably not sane. In places
with insane grids, you can still say "it's five blocks down Mass Ave", but
there are much fewer conclusions that can be drawn from that statement.
Rachel
Evan Kirshenbaum
> How do dead-end streets affect blockishness? That is, the (suburban)
> block I live on is shaped approximately as follows (assuming you
> read Usenet in a monospaced font):
I think that the rule of thumb for me is that if you have to cross a
street or turn a corner, you're no longer on the same block.
(Crossing alleys is ok.)
Note that there is a difference between this notion of a block and the
notion of a block as a unit of distance, which is the canonical length
of a block in the given area (or the area you grew up in...I still
think of blocks as an eighth of a mile). It is perfectly reasonable to
speak of a short block as being "only half a block long" or a long one
being "well over a block long".
--
Evan Kirshenbaum +------------------------------------
HP Laboratories |People think it must be fun to be a
1501 Page Mill Road, Building 1U |super genius, but they don't
Palo Alto, CA 94304 |realize how hard it is to put up
|with all the idiots in the world.
kirsh...@hpl.hp.com | Calvin
(650)857-7572
Skitt
Richard Fontana <rfon...@wesleyan.edu> wrote in message
news:slrn88uotk....@localhost.localdomain...
> It looks like the term "city block" as a unit of distance, as opposed
> to just "block", is used in many parts of the US, and perhaps in
> other places. The precise meaning will presumably vary from city to
> city, but I wonder if a "city block" always refers to the shorter
> side of the rectangle, in those cities which don't use square
> blocks.
In the old residential area near downtown for San Jose, CA, there are long
blocks for north-south streets and short blocks for east-west ones. That's
how we told the distance -- go two long blocks, then turn right an go a
short block more.
--
Skitt (on Florida's Space Coast) http://i.am/skitt/
... information is gushing toward your brain like a fire hose aimed
at a teacup. -- Dogbert
Simon R. Hughes
> In article <MPG.12f80e616...@news.online.no>,
> shu...@tromso.online.no (Simon R. Hughes) wrote:
>
> | Thus spake John Doherty, jdoh...@ix.netcom.com:
> |
[snip]
> | There's no reason to think that no-one will find your notes
> | interesting, either.
>
> If you want to make notes about a book, there's nothing stopping you
> from keeping them separate from the book itself, and referring
> in them to the book itself. If it actually turns out that your notes
> are so illuminating, I'm sure that any reader of them would be happy
> to follow your references.
I have tried that, and find it inconvenient and time-consuming to
juggle with a notebook and the text. I can manage with a book and a
red pen.
> | Finally, there is a difference between choosing one's own behaviour
> | and dictating the behaviour of others. That difference is commonly
> | known as manners.
>
> I'm not "dictating" anything, although I am making some suggestions.
Sorry, it was the imperative tone (?).
> There are people whose profession it is to preserve valuable books
> (along with lots of other books, although it's not always obvious
> which are which) for posterity. I notice that these people do not
> mark up the books in their care. I think that's a good practice.
>
> In general, people who mark up books are ruining those books for
> posterity. They should quit doing it, at least to valuable books.
I am adding value to the untouched books by defacing my copies. The
reason I don't deface the books that cost me a lot of money is the
prospect of having to replace them if/when they become unreadable.
Do you really think that any product of our mass- and over-producing
times will be worth anything in the future? I find it difficult to
believe.
--
Simon R. Hughes -- http://sult.8m.com/
<!-- Excuse the quality of my English; I have never learned Latin. -->
Quoting Usenet Articles in Follow-ups -- http://sult.8m.com/quote.html
Aaron J. Dinkin
<ev...@garrett.hpl.hp.com> wrote:
> din...@fas.harvard.edu (Aaron J. Dinkin) writes:
>
> > How do dead-end streets affect blockishness? That is, the (suburban)
> > block I live on is shaped approximately as follows (assuming you
> > read Usenet in a monospaced font):
>
> I think that the rule of thumb for me is that if you have to cross a
> street or turn a corner, you're no longer on the same block.
> (Crossing alleys is ok.)
But if it's a dead-end street, you don't _have_ to cross it. You could walk
all the way up it to the end and then back down the other side.
In practice, of course, when I take a "walk around the block" from my
house, I usually do cross the dead-end streets. "Walk around the block" is
the term I regularly use for the itinerary around the perimeter of the
diagram in my previous message.
Aaron J. Dinkin
rga...@is06.fas.harvard.edu (Rachel M. Kadel-Garcia) wrote:
> In article <rplu8s060t15do6af...@4ax.com>, Brian J Goggin wrote:
> >On 26 Jan 2000 18:49:21 GMT, rga...@is06.fas.harvard.edu (Rachel M.
> >Kadel-Garcia) wrote:
> >
> >[...]
> >
> >>The "segment of a street from one intersection to the next" is a secondary
> >>meaning, and mostly useful as a unit of distance (again, in places with
> >>sane grids).
> >
> >What is a non-sane grid? And what of places with no grids?
>
> Cambridge, Somerville, and Boston, MA, have insane grids (if you define
> "grid" as "street layout") or no grids (if you define "grid" as "evenly
> spaced rectilinear street layout").
In general, that is. Parts of Boston, like the Back Bay (and I think South
Boston also?) have very sane grids.
Gary G. Taylor
wrote:
>bra...@mindspring.com (Stan Brown) wrote:
>>Said ar...@iname.com (Murray Arnow) in alt.usage.english:
>>>Then you are a very skillful annotator. I never found an annotation in any
>>>book that was in the least bit useful. Annotations quite often are cryptic;
>>>eg, underlining and highlighting of text for no apparent reason, calculations
>>>of mysterious origins, and unrelated commentaries--all wasteful distractions.
>>
>>I will confess that I have corrected obvious errors in library
>>books -- e.g., placing Napoleon in Warsaw in 1912.
>>
>
>And I suppose you doubt the sighting of Elvis in the Wal-Mart parking lot.
Nononono, that was Jed Giraffe. Elvis appeared in the Piggly-Wiggly
lot.
--
Gary G. Taylor 29 Palms, CA
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