The Future of Reading
Digital Versus Print
This is the first in a series of New York Times articles that will look at how the Internet and other technological and social forces are changing the way people read.
Read the first article here.
Sunday, July 27, 2008
Tuesday, July 22, 2008
My Son, the Blogger: An M.D. Trades Medicine for Apple Rumors
For eight years, Arnold Kim has been trading gossip, rumor and facts about Apple, the notoriously secretive computer company, on his Web site, MacRumors.com.
Read the whole article here.
It had been a hobby — albeit a time-consuming one — while Dr. Kim earned his medical degree. He kept at it as he completed his medical training and began diagnosing patients’ kidney problems. Dr. Kim’s Web site now attracts more than 4.4 million people and 40 million page views a month, according to Quantcast, making it one of the most popular technology Web sites.
It is enough to make Dr. Kim hang up his stethoscope. This month he stopped practicing medicine and started blogging full time....
Read the whole article here.
Saturday, July 19, 2008
Gore Wows the Netroots Crowd
AUSTIN — Former Vice President Al Gore surprised a convention of bloggers here, appearing on stage after Nancy Pelosi, the speaker of the House, held a question-and-answer session that included tough questions on the wiretapping bill....
Read the entire NY Times article here.
Read the entire NY Times article here.
Friday, July 18, 2008
Wikipedia Goes to Alexandria, Home of Other Great Reference Works
More than 600 Wikipedia contributors, administrators and fans from 47 countries gathered Thursday in Alexandria, Egypt — home to the world’s greatest library about 2,000 years ago — for their annual gathering to marvel at what they’ve accomplished, fret over what’s gone wrong and plan for the future.....
Read the whole NY Times article here.
Read the whole NY Times article here.
Wikipedia Tries Approval System to Reduce Vandalism on Pages
Wikipedia is considering a basic change to its editing philosophy to cut down on vandalism. In the process, the online encyclopedia anyone can edit would add a layer of hierarchy and eliminate some of the spontaneity that has made the site, at times, an informal source of news....
Read full NY Times article here.
Read full NY Times article here.
Thursday, July 17, 2008
Promoting your Blog.
So now that you have finished putting up content on your blog it's time to make it known to the world.
1) The first step is to recheck the your content for spelling, grammar errors and just make sure your putting up what your trying to convey. The reason you want to be this accurate is because if you do make errors and then you fix them it may take sometime for the search engine to re-index your page thus your site in the page rank page of google might show inaccurate descriptions even though you may have fixed the error. So for every post always wait until you have everything. It is better to post nothing at all if you haven't finished your content rather than publishing half baked content.
2) Get your site listed on google
Go to
http://www.google.com/addurl/
to do this. Google is where almost everyone first goes to search for a topic so your aim for each blog post is to make the post high on google's page ranking page.
How does the google page ranking system work?
Well the page ranking system is run by an algorithm (an equation run into a computer to produce an output). The exact algorithm is not known and it changes all the time. But the creators of google have released the following information that the system is run like the citation system of academia. Basically lets say you have 3 research papers one was on breast cancer published from the US another on lung cancer published from Denmark and another was on skin cancer from Japan and they all cited for one of there sources Dr Breken then Dr Breken would become more credible. It’s the same with websites the more websites that have links to your site the higher you'll be in the page rank of google.
3)So how do I get my links into other sites?
Submit your blogs and news articles to sites like
digg.com
newsvine.com
slashdot.org
i-am-bored.com
isnare.com
These are directories, forums or news portals. There are many of them but digg is the top one.
You could also start a group to promote your blog in your favorite online social network like facebook here is an article on that:
http://www.problogger.net/archives/2008/06/25/using-facebook-pages-to-promote-your-blog/
4)How else do I get people to view my blog?
a) Go around view websites, blogs and forums and then comment on topics. Leave constructive feed back not fluff. Sign your name and blog address at the end of the message maybe the owners of those sites come to your blog.
b) Promote your blog in real life print some flyers throw a party.
5)Change your content regularly.
Google likes when you change your content regularly more topics made equals more search hits equals higher page rank.
A lot of what I'm saying can be summarized in the site
http://www.problogger.net/archives/2006/02/28/19-strategies-for-finding-readers/
So I hope this helps,
Happy Blogging
CJ Staff
Wednesday, July 16, 2008
Collaborative Workspaces
Hey everybody, yesterday we learned about collaborative workspaces. We looked at four main tools:
Remember! The internet was invented so that people far away could share information with each other. In that sense, the internet's future will be the same as the past. Use collaborative workspaces to connect people and to create new information together with them.
- Wikis, e.g. Wikipedia and Debatepedia. To learn more about WikiMedia or to create your own wiki (it's really easy!) go to the WikiMedia homepage. You all got to experience how easy it is to edit wiki pages without knowing any code, but if you do want to learn more about editing wiki pages, check out these links: Editing Cheatsheet and Editing Tools.
- Google Docs. Use Google Docs! This is one of the easiest and most useful collaborative workspaces on the internet.
- Forums. We showed you KARL, which is OSI's content managemnt system (CMS). It is not open source and it can only be used by people who are invited by OSI employees. It's a good example, however, of how forums can be better communication tools than email when dealing with lots of people. Don't forget our class has its own KARL community, complete with blog and wiki. If you want to create your own forum community, the best place to do it is probably Google Groups, especially because it will work well with all of your other Google tools and accounts.
- Moodle. You saw Moodle, a free, online curriculum software. Creating your own Moodle course is easy. We will also be putting the Citizen Journalism curriculum on Moodle, and as soon as that is complete, we'll give you that link.
Remember! The internet was invented so that people far away could share information with each other. In that sense, the internet's future will be the same as the past. Use collaborative workspaces to connect people and to create new information together with them.
Photo Lesson: Lighting
Light can be a confusing subject. A lot of the terminology carries over from film technology, and different digital cameras use different sets of terms.
ISO (also called ASA or EI)
ISO is a measurement of your camera's sensor's sensitivity to light. Below are the ISO settings available on most digital cameras. As the number doubles, so does the light sensitivity. But as light sensitivity increases, the graininess ("digital noise") of an image increases.
Shutter Speed
Very simply put, shutter speed is the amount of time your shutter is open. It is the amount of time the image sensor is taking in light. Shutter speed is measured in fractions of a second. For example, "60" actually represents 1/60 of a second. A slower shutter speed (lower number) takes in more light than a faster shutter speed (higher number).
When photographing a moving subject, a slow shutter speed will lead to motion blur:
A high shutter speed will produce a more "frozen" image:
Aperture (F-stops)
Aperture is, simply put, the size of the hole that lets in light when the shutter opens. F-stops are the basic measurement of aperture, but most point-and-shoot digital cameras do not use f-stops. If you wish to learn more about f-stops, please read this article.
What To Do If Your Camera Does Not Have Aperture/Shutter Speed Settings
Many point-and-shoot digital cameras do not allow you to control aperture and shutter speed. Instead, they combine the two into a single setting called "EV" (Exposure Value) or "Exp." In these settings you will see a readout somewhat like this:
< -2 . . 1 . . 0 . . 1 . . 2+ >
By default, the camera will be set to the midpoint 0. Pushing it up to 1 will double the amount of light. Pushing it to 2 will quadruple the light. Likewise, moving down to -1 will cut the light in half, and -2 will divide it by four.
White Balance
When your camera takes a picture, it compresses the raw data that the sensor receives into a jpeg file. When it does this, it decides what color in the image is white, and all of the other colors are decided in relation to the color white.
While it all light may appear to be the same color to the untrained eye, different light sources the sun, flouresent bubs, etc.) have different hues. White balance is used to make white objects appear white, and the other colors appear natural as a result.
You camera has several white balance settings, usually including Auto, Sunlight, Cloudy, Florescent, Flash, Custom (and often others). Automatic white balance is often inaccurate, so it is worth trying one of the other settings. Take a picture or two to see how the image turns out.
For the most accurate color, use Custom (Manual) white balance. This setting allows you to set the white balance based on on actual white object. To do so, place a white piece of paper directly in your light source. Point the camera at the paper and make sure it fills the frame (you should see nothing but white, and no shadow). Select the Custom/Manual white balance, and then hit "OK" (called "Func." on some cameras). You white balance will now be set perfectly for your lighting conditions. Remember: if the light changes at all, you will need to reset the white balance.
Supplementary Materials
ISO (also called ASA or EI)
ISO is a measurement of your camera's sensor's sensitivity to light. Below are the ISO settings available on most digital cameras. As the number doubles, so does the light sensitivity. But as light sensitivity increases, the graininess ("digital noise") of an image increases.
- 100 - Very crisp image, very low light sensitivity
- 200
- 400 - Decent image clarity, decent light sensitivity.
- 800
- 1600 - Very noisy image, very high light sensitivity
Shutter Speed
Very simply put, shutter speed is the amount of time your shutter is open. It is the amount of time the image sensor is taking in light. Shutter speed is measured in fractions of a second. For example, "60" actually represents 1/60 of a second. A slower shutter speed (lower number) takes in more light than a faster shutter speed (higher number).
When photographing a moving subject, a slow shutter speed will lead to motion blur:
A high shutter speed will produce a more "frozen" image:
Aperture (F-stops)
Aperture is, simply put, the size of the hole that lets in light when the shutter opens. F-stops are the basic measurement of aperture, but most point-and-shoot digital cameras do not use f-stops. If you wish to learn more about f-stops, please read this article.
What To Do If Your Camera Does Not Have Aperture/Shutter Speed Settings
Many point-and-shoot digital cameras do not allow you to control aperture and shutter speed. Instead, they combine the two into a single setting called "EV" (Exposure Value) or "Exp." In these settings you will see a readout somewhat like this:
< -2 . . 1 . . 0 . . 1 . . 2+ >
By default, the camera will be set to the midpoint 0. Pushing it up to 1 will double the amount of light. Pushing it to 2 will quadruple the light. Likewise, moving down to -1 will cut the light in half, and -2 will divide it by four.
White Balance
When your camera takes a picture, it compresses the raw data that the sensor receives into a jpeg file. When it does this, it decides what color in the image is white, and all of the other colors are decided in relation to the color white.
While it all light may appear to be the same color to the untrained eye, different light sources the sun, flouresent bubs, etc.) have different hues. White balance is used to make white objects appear white, and the other colors appear natural as a result.
You camera has several white balance settings, usually including Auto, Sunlight, Cloudy, Florescent, Flash, Custom (and often others). Automatic white balance is often inaccurate, so it is worth trying one of the other settings. Take a picture or two to see how the image turns out.
For the most accurate color, use Custom (Manual) white balance. This setting allows you to set the white balance based on on actual white object. To do so, place a white piece of paper directly in your light source. Point the camera at the paper and make sure it fills the frame (you should see nothing but white, and no shadow). Select the Custom/Manual white balance, and then hit "OK" (called "Func." on some cameras). You white balance will now be set perfectly for your lighting conditions. Remember: if the light changes at all, you will need to reset the white balance.
Supplementary Materials
- The Exposure Triangle (an explanation of the relationship between shutterspeed, ISO, and aperture)
- ISO Settings in Digital Photography
- Introduction to Aperture in Digital Photography
- Introduction to Shutter Speed in Digital Photography
- Introduction to White Balance
- Expressing Motion In Photography (This article discusses different uses of shutter speed to display motion)
Adding a News Feed to your Blog
• go to http://news.google.com/
• Click on Edit this personalized page
• Click on Add a Custom Section
• Type in keywords related to the theme of your blog
• Specify number of stories
• Click on Add Section
• Back in Google News, click on section title (e.g., Uganda)
• Click on RSS in left frame
• A new page pops up. Click on Add to Google Reader
• In Blogger, go to Layout
• Click on Add a Page Element
• Now here's the tricky part. To add this feed to your blog, instead of going to Feed, go to Blog List and click on Add to Blog
• In the Configure window, delete the title unless you're going to have more than one news feed
• In the bottom window click on Add a Blog to your List
• Click on Import Subscriptions from Google Reader
• Find your feed and click in its box and then on Add.
• Click on Save
• Back in the Blogger layout page you can rearrange the order of the items in the right frame if you like
• Save your changes and view post
• Click on Edit this personalized page
• Click on Add a Custom Section
• Type in keywords related to the theme of your blog
• Specify number of stories
• Click on Add Section
• Back in Google News, click on section title (e.g., Uganda)
• Click on RSS in left frame
• A new page pops up. Click on Add to Google Reader
• In Blogger, go to Layout
• Click on Add a Page Element
• Now here's the tricky part. To add this feed to your blog, instead of going to Feed, go to Blog List and click on Add to Blog
• In the Configure window, delete the title unless you're going to have more than one news feed
• In the bottom window click on Add a Blog to your List
• Click on Import Subscriptions from Google Reader
• Find your feed and click in its box and then on Add.
• Click on Save
• Back in the Blogger layout page you can rearrange the order of the items in the right frame if you like
• Save your changes and view post
Tuesday, July 15, 2008
here's one for you
can u decorate and at the same time addvocate or does decorate exclude addvocate?
Positive Thinking
Here is a post that I liked on my friend's blog. Positive Thinking
Blogged with the Flock Browser
Stephen Colbert on Wikipedia
Click here to read how Stephen Colbert got blocked by Wikipedia. Click on the links below to view the videos.
Wikiality
Wiki Lobbying
Interview with Wikipedia Founder Jimmy Wales
_______________
And click here to see Colbert's incredible speech at the Correspondent's Dinner where he attacked George Bush, who was sitting a few feet away.
Wikiality
Wiki Lobbying
Interview with Wikipedia Founder Jimmy Wales
_______________
And click here to see Colbert's incredible speech at the Correspondent's Dinner where he attacked George Bush, who was sitting a few feet away.
Web 2.0 Photo Tools
Students: This blog post is not finished. I posted this version so we would have the links in class. A more thorough post will soon be available.
PICASA WEB ALBUMS
- Let's do this.
You can easily geotag your photos using Picasa and Google Earth.
- Publish and map your photos with Picasa (Picasa Web Albums and geotagging with Google Earth)
- Embed a Google Map in your website.
- Examples of panorama at Flickr
- Create panoramas with a free software called Hugin
- Panographies: Panoramas on steroids
- Publish your panoramas at Panoye
- Use stereoscopic projection to create "small planets"
- Free time lapse footage at openfootage.net
- How to assemble a stop motion movie in Windows Movie Maker.
- CHDK Wiki (Includes list of supported cameras at left)
- CHDK Guide from Lifehacker
- A more thorough guide to using a CHDK-equipped camera from Hack-A-Day
- Tweak Firefox to display "true" color (by recognizing color space)
- View photos with Piclens.
- BREAK!
- Use Greasemonkey to customize other websites
- Better Gmail and Better GReader
- This is not your daddy's search engine. Do not type full sentences into Google.
- Use search modifiers (Google Cheat Sheet)
- Ten Obscure Google Search Tricks from Lifehacker's Google School
- Use Google Alerts to have Google email you search results for a certain term.
- Use labels and filters to organize your email (manually and automatically!)
- Search within your mail with modifiers to find anything.
- Use Quick Links to find your media .
Grammar check example
I thought it might be useful to show the power and the limitations of grammar checkers.
Let's take the following paragraph written by a non-native writer:
And anyway these kind of youth activities is good way how to understand how people are living in different countries. Understand the way how they are thinking and behaving. “I'm crazy about traveling!” Pandy says. Almost all China is conquered by Pandy. She have traveled in most parts of the China. She have even been in the Africa. But now she is going to take her camera and visit most brand new place for her – Europe. Czech Republic, Prague, small villages in France and Latvia is that what had attracted the attention of young Chinese girl.
If you run this through Microsoft Word's grammar checker and accept their changes, you get the following:
And anyway these kinds of youth activities are good way how to understand how people are living in different countries. Understand the way that they are thinking and behaving. “I'm crazy about traveling!” Pandy says. Pandy conquers almost all China. She has traveled in most parts of the China. She has even been in the Africa. But now she is going to take her camera and visit most brand new place for her – Europe. Czech Republic, Prague, small villages in France and Latvia is that what had attracted the attention of young Chinese girl.
Here's what the grammar checker changed:
• singular kind to plural kinds
• the way how they are thinking is changed to the way that they are thinking
• passive voice of Almost all China is conquered by Pandy replaced by active voice of Pandy conquers almost all China.
• Incorrect verb tense of She have traveled is replaced by she has traveled.
• Incorrect verb tense of She have even been is replaced by she has even been
Although I actually prefer the passive voice in the "conquered" sentence above, the other Microsoft Word edits are correct and will improve your writing. However, to convert this to English that is more grammatically correct and more idiomatic, I would rewrite it as follows:
These kinds of youth activities are a good way to understand how people are living in different countries, the way that they are thinking and behaving. “I'm crazy about traveling!” Pandy says. Almost all of China has been conquered by Pandy. She has even been in Africa. But now she is going to take her camera and visit brand new places in Europe: Prague in the Czech Republic and small villages in France and Latvia are what attracted the attention of this young Chinese girl.
Note the deletions as much as the substitutions. The original version is 94 words; mine is 85.
Finally, the open source program Language Tools only made the following three suggestions, which are basically just one suggestion:
Let's take the following paragraph written by a non-native writer:
And anyway these kind of youth activities is good way how to understand how people are living in different countries. Understand the way how they are thinking and behaving. “I'm crazy about traveling!” Pandy says. Almost all China is conquered by Pandy. She have traveled in most parts of the China. She have even been in the Africa. But now she is going to take her camera and visit most brand new place for her – Europe. Czech Republic, Prague, small villages in France and Latvia is that what had attracted the attention of young Chinese girl.
If you run this through Microsoft Word's grammar checker and accept their changes, you get the following:
And anyway these kinds of youth activities are good way how to understand how people are living in different countries. Understand the way that they are thinking and behaving. “I'm crazy about traveling!” Pandy says. Pandy conquers almost all China. She has traveled in most parts of the China. She has even been in the Africa. But now she is going to take her camera and visit most brand new place for her – Europe. Czech Republic, Prague, small villages in France and Latvia is that what had attracted the attention of young Chinese girl.
Here's what the grammar checker changed:
• singular kind to plural kinds
• the way how they are thinking is changed to the way that they are thinking
• passive voice of Almost all China is conquered by Pandy replaced by active voice of Pandy conquers almost all China.
• Incorrect verb tense of She have traveled is replaced by she has traveled.
• Incorrect verb tense of She have even been is replaced by she has even been
Although I actually prefer the passive voice in the "conquered" sentence above, the other Microsoft Word edits are correct and will improve your writing. However, to convert this to English that is more grammatically correct and more idiomatic, I would rewrite it as follows:
These kinds of youth activities are a good way to understand how people are living in different countries, the way that they are thinking and behaving. “I'm crazy about traveling!” Pandy says. Almost all of China has been conquered by Pandy. She has even been in Africa. But now she is going to take her camera and visit brand new places in Europe: Prague in the Czech Republic and small villages in France and Latvia are what attracted the attention of this young Chinese girl.
Note the deletions as much as the substitutions. The original version is 94 words; mine is 85.
Finally, the open source program Language Tools only made the following three suggestions, which are basically just one suggestion:
- Use third-person verb with 'She': has, hasn, hast, hath or was.
... and behaving. “I'm crazy about traveling!” Pandy says. Almost all China is conquered by Pandy. She have traveled in most parts of the China. She have even been in the Africa. But now she is going to take...
- Use third-person verb with 'She': has, hasn, hast, hath or was.
...ndy says. Almost all China is conquered by Pandy. She have traveled in most parts of the China. She have even been in the Africa. But now she is going to take her camera and visit most brand new place for...
- The pronoun 'She' must be used with a third-person verb: has, hasn, hast, hath.
...ndy says. Almost all China is conquered by Pandy. She have traveled in most parts of the China. She have even been in the Africa. But now she is going to take her camera and visit most brand new place for...
Grammar Checkers
We all know about spell checkers, but fewer people know or use grammar checkers. There is one built into Microsoft Word. The only open source program I've found is Language Tool. I tried the practice window on their web site and the results, unfortunately, were quite poor, clearly worse than Microsoft Word's grammar checker.
The algorithms that go into these programs are by nature inexact, as it is very difficult for the computer to know the writer's intentions. Probably half of the suggestions are just plain wrong. However, the ones you can use may prove valuable, especially if English is not your first language.
The algorithms that go into these programs are by nature inexact, as it is very difficult for the computer to know the writer's intentions. Probably half of the suggestions are just plain wrong. However, the ones you can use may prove valuable, especially if English is not your first language.
Citizen Journalism Expert Jay Rosen Answers Your Questions
Good discussion of issues affecting citizen journalists.
"This is a "must read" for anyone interested in the growing "citizen journalism" movement either as a writer/editor or as an audience member -- and please note that Rosen and many others say, over and over, that one of the major shifts in the news media, especially online, is that there is no longer any need to be one or the other instead of both." [from intro]
Click here.
"This is a "must read" for anyone interested in the growing "citizen journalism" movement either as a writer/editor or as an audience member -- and please note that Rosen and many others say, over and over, that one of the major shifts in the news media, especially online, is that there is no longer any need to be one or the other instead of both." [from intro]
Click here.
Monday, July 14, 2008
Photo Ethics
"Any change to a news photo - any violation of that moment - is a lie. Big or small, any lie damages your credibility." --John Long, NPPA co-chair
Recap
We spoke in class the other day about ethical photography and photo editing. Together, we looked at and discussed some examples of unethical photo manipulations throughout history. Here are a couple definitions I want to make sure you understand:
Imposing Meaning
The act of manipulating or altering a photograph in a way that adds a message that is not already present in the image. This typically occurs during editing, but can also occur during shooting.
Obscuring Meaning
The act of manipulating or altering a photograph in a way that intentionally masks or obfuscates the information present in the photograph. Again, this can occur in editing (for example, cropping out a person who is affecting the behavior of another person in frame) or during shooting (simply by not including important elements in the frame, or by framing a photograph in a way that creates a relationship between two unrelated subjects).
So what can you change when editing a photograph? You may adjust brightness and contrast, or "dodge" and "burn" (darken or lighten areas of the photo). But you may only do so slightly, in a way that clarifies the image. You must not use these techniques to make a photo appear more dramatic (as in the case of the TIME Magazine cover featuring O.J. Simpson). You may crop a photo, but only if you do not remove any important information. Cropping is extremely dangerous territory. You are better of avoiding cropping all together. During our lesson, Pasqual mentioned that he only crops when he did not have time to switch from a wide lens, and thus the important information (the subject) is obscured (too small).
Homework
I would like you all to read Ethics in the Age of Digital Photography by John Long of the National Press Photographer's Association. Although it was written nearly a decade ago, the piece is still relevant. Long makes an interesting (and important) distinction between matters of taste and matters of ethics.
Resources and Supplementary Materials
Recap
We spoke in class the other day about ethical photography and photo editing. Together, we looked at and discussed some examples of unethical photo manipulations throughout history. Here are a couple definitions I want to make sure you understand:
Imposing Meaning
The act of manipulating or altering a photograph in a way that adds a message that is not already present in the image. This typically occurs during editing, but can also occur during shooting.
Obscuring Meaning
The act of manipulating or altering a photograph in a way that intentionally masks or obfuscates the information present in the photograph. Again, this can occur in editing (for example, cropping out a person who is affecting the behavior of another person in frame) or during shooting (simply by not including important elements in the frame, or by framing a photograph in a way that creates a relationship between two unrelated subjects).
So what can you change when editing a photograph? You may adjust brightness and contrast, or "dodge" and "burn" (darken or lighten areas of the photo). But you may only do so slightly, in a way that clarifies the image. You must not use these techniques to make a photo appear more dramatic (as in the case of the TIME Magazine cover featuring O.J. Simpson). You may crop a photo, but only if you do not remove any important information. Cropping is extremely dangerous territory. You are better of avoiding cropping all together. During our lesson, Pasqual mentioned that he only crops when he did not have time to switch from a wide lens, and thus the important information (the subject) is obscured (too small).
Homework
I would like you all to read Ethics in the Age of Digital Photography by John Long of the National Press Photographer's Association. Although it was written nearly a decade ago, the piece is still relevant. Long makes an interesting (and important) distinction between matters of taste and matters of ethics.
Resources and Supplementary Materials
- Written Materials:
- Ethics in the Age of Digital Photography (Read all the sections at on the left. If your internet connection is running slow, there is a plain text version here, but it lacks the example photos)
- DigitalCustom Model Ethics Guidelines (A detailed set of guidelines on photo ethics from a company that specializes in professional photo editing)
- The New York Times: Guidelines on Our Integrity(The section on photography is at the very bottom, but the whole thing is worth reading, as you all write as well)
- "The Camera Never Lies, but the Software Can" (A 2004 New York Times article about photo manipulation, in response to the fake John Kerry/Jane Fonda photo)
- "Research News From Applied Cognitive Psychology Suggests Photos Can Change History" (A news piece about the ACP study I mentioned in class. The actual study is not yet available online.)
- Photographic Examples:
- Photo Tampering Throughout History (A timeline that includes several of the examples we viewed in class, as well as an example from this past week!)
Exporting MP3's in Audacity
Download the LAME encoder For Audacity For Windows: http://lame.buanzo.com.ar/
Save the file to the libmp3lame-win-3.97.zip file to the desktop
Open the Zip file and extract it to your My Documents folder.
Double click on the libmp3lame-win-3.97.zip file on your desktop
Click on Extract All Files on the left to open the extraction Wizard
In the Extraction Wizard, make sure that your files are extracting to your My Documents folder
Open your Audacity Project
Go to File> Export as MP3
Audacity will ask you to locate the LAME encoder (lame_enc.dll)
Find the lamd_enc.dll file in the libmp3lame-3.97 folder in My Documents and open it
Unless you move or delete this file you will never need to do this again when exporting MP3
Fill out your ID3 tag information
This the in formation that will show up in iTunes, people's media players and iPods
If you dont fill this out most players will just display the file name
I suggest putting in the following information
Title: The Title for this interview
Artist: Your name
Album: The name of your blog
Year: the year of you posted this pod cast
Genre: Speech
Comments: A brief summery of what your interview is about
Saturday, July 12, 2008
a must see:)
The link to the page of one of my professors. Jaka Bonča. He's a Slovene architect that works with symbols and fonts. and the biggest influence for my work and theories, next to NSK (laibach); their link was published on the blog be4. His work is very visual orientated but still works on mathematical principals. Just to get u thinking in terms of connecting visual to language
Cosmopolitan
Cosmopolitan
art as advocacy
So dear visual communicators:)
We have only one lesson left and after that it's all about finishing the projects... So don't forget that u still have some assignments to finish:)
So in the next 2 days, till Monday you should all have a clear idea about what the visual orientated project is going to be. So far you were supposed to come up with solutions for the handouts that I gave u now it's time to work on your own projects. Think in thermos of what could add to your topic and think how to incorporate the things that you worked on so far. Plus don't forget to finish the assignments that were given to you so far...
So it's visual time everybody... until next time:
Cosmopolitan
We have only one lesson left and after that it's all about finishing the projects... So don't forget that u still have some assignments to finish:)
So in the next 2 days, till Monday you should all have a clear idea about what the visual orientated project is going to be. So far you were supposed to come up with solutions for the handouts that I gave u now it's time to work on your own projects. Think in thermos of what could add to your topic and think how to incorporate the things that you worked on so far. Plus don't forget to finish the assignments that were given to you so far...
So it's visual time everybody... until next time:
Cosmopolitan
Friday, July 11, 2008
Bob Herbert columns
Bob Herbert is a columnist for The New York Times who frequently uses human interest stories as part of his opinion pieces. Here are two such pieces:
The Man in the Room
Who was the tall young man, the quiet guy with the small wire-rimmed glasses, who was spending the entire day, every day, with the badly wounded soldier in room 5711 at the Walter Reed Army Medical Center?
Letters From Vermont
Despite the focus on the housing crisis, gasoline prices and the economy in general, the press has not done a good job capturing the intense economic anxiety — and even dread, in some cases — that has gripped tens of millions of working Americans, including many who consider themselves solidly middle class.
Go to the complete archive of Bob Herbert articles by clicking here.
The Man in the Room
Who was the tall young man, the quiet guy with the small wire-rimmed glasses, who was spending the entire day, every day, with the badly wounded soldier in room 5711 at the Walter Reed Army Medical Center?
Letters From Vermont
Despite the focus on the housing crisis, gasoline prices and the economy in general, the press has not done a good job capturing the intense economic anxiety — and even dread, in some cases — that has gripped tens of millions of working Americans, including many who consider themselves solidly middle class.
Go to the complete archive of Bob Herbert articles by clicking here.
Writing Assignment #6
For this assignment you will be writing a feature article profiling one of your classmates (see list below). Please follow these steps:
1. Read the article in the post below this one on feature story writing.
2. Read the stories you all wrote for your previous writing assignment.
3. Interview your subject with an eye toward getting essential information and uncovering interesting stories.
4. Make notes and an outline until you have determined your story angle.
5. If you have any further questions, ask them!
6. Write an article profiling your subject with an emphasis on "human interest" and storytelling. Use at least two photographs and make use of storytelling elements whenever possible.
Who to write about:
Aleksey write about Ance
Ance write about Sally
Sally write about Forest
Forest write about Murad
Murad write about Megan
Megan write about Aleksandrs
Aleksandrs write about Pandy
Pandy write about Shelby
Shelby write about Tonny
Tonny write about Effie
Effie write about Sierra
Sierra write about Aleksey
1. Read the article in the post below this one on feature story writing.
2. Read the stories you all wrote for your previous writing assignment.
3. Interview your subject with an eye toward getting essential information and uncovering interesting stories.
4. Make notes and an outline until you have determined your story angle.
5. If you have any further questions, ask them!
6. Write an article profiling your subject with an emphasis on "human interest" and storytelling. Use at least two photographs and make use of storytelling elements whenever possible.
Who to write about:
Aleksey write about Ance
Ance write about Sally
Sally write about Forest
Forest write about Murad
Murad write about Megan
Megan write about Aleksandrs
Aleksandrs write about Pandy
Pandy write about Shelby
Shelby write about Tonny
Tonny write about Effie
Effie write about Sierra
Sierra write about Aleksey
Feature Story Writing
by Jeffrey Romanow
Some of the basic elements of a feature news story:
a. Focus on less timely subject matter
b. Use creative leads rather than straight news leads
c. Use many sources, lively quotes, creative endings, and descriptive writing to tell their story.
1. Creativity
• All good writing springs from creativity, including feature and news reporting even though it is more formal in style than other programs:
Creativity involves:
• Selecting specific details that paint pictures and allow the reader to imagine what is being described.
What to Say: Finding the Angle
• The first step in developing a story is to find the angle, or the main point of the story. One way to find the angle is to clarify the facts and then ask the question, "So what?"
• To answer the "so what?" question, you need to understand who the readers are. What news interests them? What information is relevant to their daily lives? What are they worried about? What do they feel strongly about?
• The answer to "so what?" will lead to the story angle.
The necessity of an angle
• The angle is what makes readers say, "Oh, that's important," or "That's interesting."
• Identifying the angle helps to sharpen focus for the story and leads to clearer writing. A story without an angle that covers every aspect of an issue will be confusing and lose readers
Finding the angle
While reviewing a story idea, ask:
• What is happening or what has been happening?
• Why is the story important?
• Why will readers care about this story?
• What will readers want to know?
Think about:
Readers
a. Who are they?
b. What will make them identify with the story and find it relevant and interesting?
c. What do they already know or think about the issue?
d. What other questions would they like to have answered?
e. Why did the event occur?
f. What do people think about the event that occurred?
g. Who is involved in the event and why?
h. Will something happen in the future as a result of the news event
Some of the basic elements of a feature news story:
a. Focus on less timely subject matter
b. Use creative leads rather than straight news leads
c. Use many sources, lively quotes, creative endings, and descriptive writing to tell their story.
1. Creativity
• All good writing springs from creativity, including feature and news reporting even though it is more formal in style than other programs:
Creativity involves:
• Selecting specific details that paint pictures and allow the reader to imagine what is being described.
What to Say: Finding the Angle
• The first step in developing a story is to find the angle, or the main point of the story. One way to find the angle is to clarify the facts and then ask the question, "So what?"
• To answer the "so what?" question, you need to understand who the readers are. What news interests them? What information is relevant to their daily lives? What are they worried about? What do they feel strongly about?
• The answer to "so what?" will lead to the story angle.
The necessity of an angle
• The angle is what makes readers say, "Oh, that's important," or "That's interesting."
• Identifying the angle helps to sharpen focus for the story and leads to clearer writing. A story without an angle that covers every aspect of an issue will be confusing and lose readers
Finding the angle
While reviewing a story idea, ask:
• What is happening or what has been happening?
• Why is the story important?
• Why will readers care about this story?
• What will readers want to know?
Think about:
Readers
a. Who are they?
b. What will make them identify with the story and find it relevant and interesting?
c. What do they already know or think about the issue?
d. What other questions would they like to have answered?
e. Why did the event occur?
f. What do people think about the event that occurred?
g. Who is involved in the event and why?
h. Will something happen in the future as a result of the news event
Thursday, July 10, 2008
Tuesday, July 8, 2008
CJ Writing Assignments #4 and #5 — due this Thursday
Assignment 4: Web Research
Do some web research and find at least one good article from a reputable source that relates directly to the subject matter of your blog. Write a short intro to this article (a few sentences) and then provide a link to it. For example...
________________________
Harsh treatment awaits children fleeing war and persecution
In this article from The Guardian (London) dated June 3, 2008, the reporter follows the lives of children fleeing the horrors of war and civil turmoil in such places as Afghanistan and the Congo to their arrival in Greece, where they are liable to end up in abysmal conditions, housed in detention centers alongside hardened criminals.
Click here to read the whole article.
_________________________
Reminder: to create a link to the article, do the following:
• copy the URL of the article to the clipboard
• back in the Blogger "New Post" window, highlight the word or words you want them to click on to get to the article
• click on the link icon (= a chain) in the tool bar at the top of the New Post edit window
• paste in the URL you just copied
Assignment 5: Storytelling
Telling a good story is not just for movies and novels, it's also a key skill for the journalist. Your first storytelling assignment is to simply tell a story in a page or two. You can tell any story you want. It does not have to have anything to do with your blog or to be "newsworthy." All stories will be read aloud in class!
Some key components to consider:
• characterization
• visualization of their world
• conflicting forces
• dramatic tension
• empathy
• building our interest (the un-inverted pyramid!)
• playing with expectations; plot "twists"
• the ending offers a payoff
Do some web research and find at least one good article from a reputable source that relates directly to the subject matter of your blog. Write a short intro to this article (a few sentences) and then provide a link to it. For example...
________________________
Harsh treatment awaits children fleeing war and persecution
In this article from The Guardian (London) dated June 3, 2008, the reporter follows the lives of children fleeing the horrors of war and civil turmoil in such places as Afghanistan and the Congo to their arrival in Greece, where they are liable to end up in abysmal conditions, housed in detention centers alongside hardened criminals.
Click here to read the whole article.
_________________________
Reminder: to create a link to the article, do the following:
• copy the URL of the article to the clipboard
• back in the Blogger "New Post" window, highlight the word or words you want them to click on to get to the article
• click on the link icon (= a chain) in the tool bar at the top of the New Post edit window
• paste in the URL you just copied
Assignment 5: Storytelling
Telling a good story is not just for movies and novels, it's also a key skill for the journalist. Your first storytelling assignment is to simply tell a story in a page or two. You can tell any story you want. It does not have to have anything to do with your blog or to be "newsworthy." All stories will be read aloud in class!
Some key components to consider:
• characterization
• visualization of their world
• conflicting forces
• dramatic tension
• empathy
• building our interest (the un-inverted pyramid!)
• playing with expectations; plot "twists"
• the ending offers a payoff
Monday, July 7, 2008
Interesting Example of Investigative Reporting that Mixes Traditional and Citizen Journalism
http://www.guardian.co.uk
I think this is an interesting example of the blurring lines between traditional and citizen journalism. This is a professionally produced piece that relies heavily on a citizen journalist whose video footage was recorded with a camera the Guardian supplied him. Clearly, there were professional reporters involved in the production and editing of this piece. However, without a citizen journalist willing to work with new media, the Guardian would have been unable to produce this piece.
Furthermore, it’s a piece produced by a newspaper that relies on heavily on video footage that readers of the print edition would only be able to view over the Internet. I suspect that this report is featured in today’s print edition of the Guardian. The eyewitness account of voter fraud that Mr .Yuda provides likely wouldn’t have been printed were there not the accompanying video.
Sadly, this piece will likely have no effect whatsoever on the mess that Mugabe has made of Zimbabwe, but it’s nonetheless an interesting example of the mixture of old and new media.
—Noel S.
Blogging Homework Assignment 3
For those of you using your own laptops in class please install
itunes:
http://www.apple.com/itunes/download/
you will need it to distribute your own podcasts (which I will teach you how to do in my next lesson) and listen other peoples podcasts.
For those of you using the idebate (OSI) laptops don't worry itunes will be on them by tomorrow.
Good Luck,
Jonathan Sadler
itunes:
http://www.apple.com/itunes/download/
you will need it to distribute your own podcasts (which I will teach you how to do in my next lesson) and listen other peoples podcasts.
For those of you using the idebate (OSI) laptops don't worry itunes will be on them by tomorrow.
Good Luck,
Jonathan Sadler
The Facebooker Who Friended Obama
An interesting article in today's New York Times about the 24-year-old co-founder of Facebook joining the Barack Obama campaign:
Read it here.
Read it here.
Conducting an Interview
Overview
Interviewing is a tricky, often overlooked skill. An interviewer must coordinate several things at the same time: Listening, observing body language, taking notes, planning ahead, recording good audio, and still making the interviewee feel comfortable. Like an actor, an interviewer must coordinate several processes, all the while attempting to appear natural. The good news is this process will become more instinctive and natural the more you practice conducting an interview. At its best, an interview should feel like a conversation. And the more your interviewee feels this way, the more they feel engaged, the better the interview will go.
Tips For Conducting An Interview
Interviewing is a tricky, often overlooked skill. An interviewer must coordinate several things at the same time: Listening, observing body language, taking notes, planning ahead, recording good audio, and still making the interviewee feel comfortable. Like an actor, an interviewer must coordinate several processes, all the while attempting to appear natural. The good news is this process will become more instinctive and natural the more you practice conducting an interview. At its best, an interview should feel like a conversation. And the more your interviewee feels this way, the more they feel engaged, the better the interview will go.
Tips For Conducting An Interview
- Make sure your equipment works BEFORE you get to your interview.
- Be prepared for your interviewee. Do research. If they have been interviewed for a public media source before, be sure you have read/seen this interview.
- Make sure you know how much time you have to conduct an interview. Don't ask for too much, as you may intimidate the interviewee. Don't ask for too little, or you might not get enough out of the interview. Remember: If an interview goes well, the interviewee will probably let it run on longer.
- Use an icebreaker, a question that has nothing to do with your interview topic, to get interviewee comfortable. For example, you can ask them to spell their name (and check your recording levels as they do so).
- Write your questions in advance. Write them in a logical order, so that one question flows into the next.
- Ask open-ended questions. Do not ask yes/no questions.
- Listen to your subject during the interview. Don't just wait for later to
- Do not be afraid to stray away from your questions and your order of questions. And...
- Improvise. Ask follow-up questions.
- Don't ramble on when you ask questions. Keep your questions short.
- Don't cut your interviewee off. If they say something that raises a question in your mind, write it down and ask it later when they are finished talking.
- Use silence. Sometimes the best way to get a person to talk is to remain silent when they pause, and...
- Make eye contact. This is key to making the person feel like the interview is a conversation.
- Don't state your aim. You risk alienating your subject if you ask this. Use this question as a LAST RESORT. Ask it at the end of an interview in order to get any information you may have missed.
- Instead write oblique questions that will cause your interviewee to talk about your aim without you actually stating it.
Sunday, July 6, 2008
George Orwell
Politics and the English Language
Most people who bother with the matter at all would admit that the English language is in a bad way, but it is generally assumed that we cannot by conscious action do anything about it. Our civilization is decadent and our language — so the argument runs — must inevitably share in the general collapse. It follows that any struggle against the abuse of language is a sentimental archaism, like preferring candles to electric light or hansom cabs to aeroplanes. Underneath this lies the half-conscious belief that language is a natural growth and not an instrument which we shape for our own purposes.
Now, it is clear that the decline of a language must ultimately have political and economic causes: it is not due simply to the bad influence of this or that individual writer. But an effect can become a cause, reinforcing the original cause and producing the same effect in an intensified form, and so on indefinitely. A man may take to drink because he feels himself to be a failure, and then fail all the more completely because he drinks. It is rather the same thing that is happening to the English language. It becomes ugly and inaccurate because our thoughts are foolish, but the slovenliness of our language makes it easier for us to have foolish thoughts. The point is that the process is reversible. Modern English, especially written English, is full of bad habits which spread by imitation and which can be avoided if one is willing to take the necessary trouble. If one gets rid of these habits one can think more clearly, and to think clearly is a necessary first step toward political regeneration: so that the fight against bad English is not frivolous and is not the exclusive concern of professional writers. I will come back to this presently, and I hope that by that time the meaning of what I have said here will have become clearer. Meanwhile, here are five specimens of the English language as it is now habitually written.These five passages have not been picked out because they are especially bad — I could have quoted far worse if I had chosen — but because they illustrate various of the mental vices from which we now suffer. They are a little below the average, but are fairly representative examples. I number them so that I can refer back to them when necessary:
1. I am not, indeed, sure whether it is not true to say that the Milton who once seemed not unlike a seventeenth-century Shelley had not become, out of an experience ever more bitter in each year, more alien [sic] to the founder of that Jesuit sect which nothing could induce him to tolerate.
Professor Harold Laski (Essay in Freedom of Expression)
2. Above all, we cannot play ducks and drakes with a native battery of idioms which prescribes egregious collocations of vocables as the Basic put up with for tolerate, or put at a loss for bewilder.
Professor Lancelot Hogben (Interglossia)
3. On the one side we have the free personality: by definition it is not neurotic, for it has neither conflict nor dream. Its desires, such as they are, are transparent, for they are just what institutional approval keeps in the forefront of consciousness; another institutional pattern would alter their number and intensity; there is little in them that is natural, irreducible, or culturally dangerous. But on the other side, the social bond itself is nothing but the mutual reflection of these self-secure integrities. Recall the definition of love. Is not this the very picture of a small academic? Where is there a place in this hall of mirrors for either personality or fraternity?
Essay on psychology in Politics (New York)
4. All the ‘best people’ from the gentlemen's clubs, and all the frantic fascist captains, united in common hatred of Socialism and bestial horror at the rising tide of the mass revolutionary movement, have turned to acts of provocation, to foul incendiarism, to medieval legends of poisoned wells, to legalize their own destruction of proletarian organizations, and rouse the agitated petty-bourgeoise to chauvinistic fervor on behalf of the fight against the revolutionary way out of the crisis.
Communist pamphlet
Each of these passages has faults of its own, but, quite apart from avoidable ugliness, two qualities are common to all of them. The first is staleness of imagery; the other is lack of precision. The writer either has a meaning and cannot express it, or he inadvertently says something else, or he is almost indifferent as to whether his words mean anything or not. This mixture of vagueness and sheer incompetence is the most marked characteristic of modern English prose, and especially of any kind of political writing. As soon as certain topics are raised, the concrete melts into the abstract and no one seems able to think of turns of speech that are not hackneyed: prose consists less and less of words chosen for the sake of their meaning, and more and more of phrases tacked together like the sections of a prefabricated hen-house. I list below, with notes and examples, various of the tricks by means of which the work of prose-construction is habitually dodged.
5. If a new spirit is to be infused into this old country, there is one thorny and contentious reform which must be tackled, and that is the humanization and galvanization of the B.B.C. Timidity here will bespeak canker and atrophy of the soul. The heart of Britain may be sound and of strong beat, for instance, but the British lion's roar at present is like that of Bottom in Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream — as gentle as any sucking dove. A virile new Britain cannot continue indefinitely to be traduced in the eyes or rather ears, of the world by the effete languors of Langham Place, brazenly masquerading as ‘standard English’. When the Voice of Britain is heard at nine o'clock, better far and infinitely less ludicrous to hear aitches honestly dropped than the present priggish, inflated, inhibited, school-ma'amish arch braying of blameless bashful mewing maidens!
Letter in Tribune
DYING METAPHORS. A newly invented metaphor assists thought by evoking a visual image, while on the other hand a metaphor which is technically ‘dead’ (e. g. iron resolution) has in effect reverted to being an ordinary word and can generally be used without loss of vividness. But in between these two classes there is a huge dump of worn-out metaphors which have lost all evocative power and are merely used because they save people the trouble of inventing phrases for themselves. Examples are: Ring the changes on, take up the cudgel for, toe the line, ride roughshod over, stand shoulder to shoulder with, play into the hands of, no axe to grind, grist to the mill, fishing in troubled waters, on the order of the day, Achilles’ heel, swan song, hotbed. Many of these are used without knowledge of their meaning (what is a ‘rift’, for instance?), and incompatible metaphors are frequently mixed, a sure sign that the writer is not interested in what he is saying. Some metaphors now current have been twisted out of their original meaning without those who use them even being aware of the fact. For example, toe the line is sometimes written as tow the line. Another example is the hammer and the anvil, now always used with the implication that the anvil gets the worst of it. In real life it is always the anvil that breaks the hammer, never the other way about: a writer who stopped to think what he was saying would avoid perverting the original phrase.
OPERATORS OR VERBAL FALSE LIMBS. These save the trouble of picking out appropriate verbs and nouns, and at the same time pad each sentence with extra syllables which give it an appearance of symmetry. Characteristic phrases are render inoperative, militate against, make contact with, be subjected to, give rise to, give grounds for, have the effect of, play a leading part (role) in, make itself felt, take effect, exhibit a tendency to, serve the purpose of, etc., etc. The keynote is the elimination of simple verbs. Instead of being a single word, such as break, stop, spoil, mend, kill, a verb becomes a phrase, made up of a noun or adjective tacked on to some general-purpose verb such as prove, serve, form, play, render. In addition, the passive voice is wherever possible used in preference to the active, and noun constructions are used instead of gerunds (by examination of instead of by examining). The range of verbs is further cut down by means of the -ize and de- formations, and the banal statements are given an appearance of profundity by means of the not un- formation. Simple conjunctions and prepositions are replaced by such phrases as with respect to, having regard to, the fact that, by dint of, in view of, in the interests of, on the hypothesis that; and the ends of sentences are saved by anticlimax by such resounding commonplaces as greatly to be desired, cannot be left out of account, a development to be expected in the near future, deserving of serious consideration, brought to a satisfactory conclusion, and so on and so forth.
PRETENTIOUS DICTION. Words like phenomenon, element, individual (as noun), objective, categorical, effective, virtual, basic, primary, promote, constitute, exhibit, exploit, utilize, eliminate, liquidate, are used to dress up a simple statement and give an air of scientific impartiality to biased judgements. Adjectives like epoch-making, epic, historic, unforgettable, triumphant, age-old, inevitable, inexorable, veritable, are used to dignify the sordid process of international politics, while writing that aims at glorifying war usually takes on an archaic colour, its characteristic words being: realm, throne, chariot, mailed fist, trident, sword, shield, buckler, banner, jackboot, clarion. Foreign words and expressions such as cul de sac, ancien regime, deus ex machina, mutatis mutandis, status quo, gleichschaltung, weltanschauung, are used to give an air of culture and elegance. Except for the useful abbreviations i. e., e. g. and etc., there is no real need for any of the hundreds of foreign phrases now current in the English language. Bad writers, and especially scientific, political, and sociological writers, are nearly always haunted by the notion that Latin or Greek words are grander than Saxon ones, and unnecessary words like expedite, ameliorate, predict, extraneous, deracinated, clandestine, subaqueous, and hundreds of others constantly gain ground from their Anglo-Saxon numbers(1). The jargon peculiar to Marxist writing (hyena, hangman, cannibal, petty bourgeois, these gentry, lackey, flunkey, mad dog, White Guard, etc.) consists largely of words translated from Russian, German, or French; but the normal way of coining a new word is to use Latin or Greek root with the appropriate affix and, where necessary, the size formation. It is often easier to make up words of this kind (deregionalize, impermissible, extramarital, non-fragmentary and so forth) than to think up the English words that will cover one's meaning. The result, in general, is an increase in slovenliness and vagueness.
MEANINGLESS WORDS. In certain kinds of writing, particularly in art criticism and literary criticism, it is normal to come across long passages which are almost completely lacking in meaning(2). Words like romantic, plastic, values, human, dead, sentimental, natural, vitality, as used in art criticism, are strictly meaningless, in the sense that they not only do not point to any discoverable object, but are hardly ever expected to do so by the reader. When one critic writes, ‘The outstanding feature of Mr. X's work is its living quality’, while another writes, ‘The immediately striking thing about Mr. X's work is its peculiar deadness’, the reader accepts this as a simple difference opinion. If words like black and white were involved, instead of the jargon words dead and living, he would see at once that language was being used in an improper way. Many political words are similarly abused. The word Fascism has now no meaning except in so far as it signifies ‘something not desirable’. The words democracy, socialism, freedom, patriotic, realistic, justice have each of them several different meanings which cannot be reconciled with one another. In the case of a word like democracy, not only is there no agreed definition, but the attempt to make one is resisted from all sides. It is almost universally felt that when we call a country democratic we are praising it: consequently the defenders of every kind of regime claim that it is a democracy, and fear that they might have to stop using that word if it were tied down to any one meaning. Words of this kind are often used in a consciously dishonest way. That is, the person who uses them has his own private definition, but allows his hearer to think he means something quite different. Statements like Marshal Petain was a true patriot, The Soviet press is the freest in the world, The Catholic Church is opposed to persecution, are almost always made with intent to deceive. Other words used in variable meanings, in most cases more or less dishonestly, are: class, totalitarian, science, progressive, reactionary, bourgeois, equality.
Now that I have made this catalogue of swindles and perversions, let me give another example of the kind of writing that they lead to. This time it must of its nature be an imaginary one. I am going to translate a passage of good English into modern English of the worst sort. Here is a well-known verse from Ecclesiastes:Here it is in modern English:
I returned and saw under the sun, that the race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, neither yet bread to the wise, nor yet riches to men of understanding, nor yet favour to men of skill; but time and chance happeneth to them all.
This is a parody, but not a very gross one. Exhibit (3) above, for instance, contains several patches of the same kind of English. It will be seen that I have not made a full translation. The beginning and ending of the sentence follow the original meaning fairly closely, but in the middle the concrete illustrations — race, battle, bread — dissolve into the vague phrases ‘success or failure in competitive activities’. This had to be so, because no modern writer of the kind I am discussing — no one capable of using phrases like ‘objective considerations of contemporary phenomena’ — would ever tabulate his thoughts in that precise and detailed way. The whole tendency of modern prose is away from concreteness. Now analyze these two sentences a little more closely. The first contains forty-nine words but only sixty syllables, and all its words are those of everyday life. The second contains thirty-eight words of ninety syllables: eighteen of those words are from Latin roots, and one from Greek. The first sentence contains six vivid images, and only one phrase (‘time and chance’) that could be called vague. The second contains not a single fresh, arresting phrase, and in spite of its ninety syllables it gives only a shortened version of the meaning contained in the first. Yet without a doubt it is the second kind of sentence that is gaining ground in modern English. I do not want to exaggerate. This kind of writing is not yet universal, and outcrops of simplicity will occur here and there in the worst-written page. Still, if you or I were told to write a few lines on the uncertainty of human fortunes, we should probably come much nearer to my imaginary sentence than to the one from Ecclesiastes.
Objective considerations of contemporary phenomena compel the conclusion that success or failure in competitive activities exhibits no tendency to be commensurate with innate capacity, but that a considerable element of the unpredictable must invariably be taken into account.
As I have tried to show, modern writing at its worst does not consist in picking out words for the sake of their meaning and inventing images in order to make the meaning clearer. It consists in gumming together long strips of words which have already been set in order by someone else, and making the results presentable by sheer humbug. The attraction of this way of writing is that it is easy. It is easier — even quicker, once you have the habit — to say In my opinion it is not an unjustifiable assumption that than to say I think. If you use ready-made phrases, you not only don't have to hunt about for the words; you also don't have to bother with the rhythms of your sentences since these phrases are generally so arranged as to be more or less euphonious. When you are composing in a hurry — when you are dictating to a stenographer, for instance, or making a public speech — it is natural to fall into a pretentious, Latinized style. Tags like a consideration which we should do well to bear in mind or a conclusion to which all of us would readily assent will save many a sentence from coming down with a bump. By using stale metaphors, similes, and idioms, you save much mental effort, at the cost of leaving your meaning vague, not only for your reader but for yourself. This is the significance of mixed metaphors. The sole aim of a metaphor is to call up a visual image. When these images clash — as in The Fascist octopus has sung its swan song, the jackboot is thrown into the melting pot — it can be taken as certain that the writer is not seeing a mental image of the objects he is naming; in other words he is not really thinking. Look again at the examples I gave at the beginning of this essay. Professor Laski (1) uses five negatives in fifty three words. One of these is superfluous, making nonsense of the whole passage, and in addition there is the slip — alien for akin — making further nonsense, and several avoidable pieces of clumsiness which increase the general vagueness. Professor Hogben (2) plays ducks and drakes with a battery which is able to write prescriptions, and, while disapproving of the everyday phrase put up with, is unwilling to look egregious up in the dictionary and see what it means; (3), if one takes an uncharitable attitude towards it, is simply meaningless: probably one could work out its intended meaning by reading the whole of the article in which it occurs. In (4), the writer knows more or less what he wants to say, but an accumulation of stale phrases chokes him like tea leaves blocking a sink. In (5), words and meaning have almost parted company. People who write in this manner usually have a general emotional meaning — they dislike one thing and want to express solidarity with another — but they are not interested in the detail of what they are saying. A scrupulous writer, in every sentence that he writes, will ask himself at least four questions, thus: What am I trying to say? What words will express it? What image or idiom will make it clearer? Is this image fresh enough to have an effect? And he will probably ask himself two more: Could I put it more shortly? Have I said anything that is avoidably ugly? But you are not obliged to go to all this trouble. You can shirk it by simply throwing your mind open and letting the ready-made phrases come crowding in. The will construct your sentences for you — even think your thoughts for you, to a certain extent — and at need they will perform the important service of partially concealing your meaning even from yourself. It is at this point that the special connection between politics and the debasement of language becomes clear.
In our time it is broadly true that political writing is bad writing. Where it is not true, it will generally be found that the writer is some kind of rebel, expressing his private opinions and not a ‘party line’. Orthodoxy, of whatever colour, seems to demand a lifeless, imitative style. The political dialects to be found in pamphlets, leading articles, manifestos, White papers and the speeches of undersecretaries do, of course, vary from party to party, but they are all alike in that one almost never finds in them a fresh, vivid, homemade turn of speech. When one watches some tired hack on the platform mechanically repeating the familiar phrases — bestial, atrocities, iron heel, bloodstained tyranny, free peoples of the world, stand shoulder to shoulder — one often has a curious feeling that one is not watching a live human being but some kind of dummy: a feeling which suddenly becomes stronger at moments when the light catches the speaker's spectacles and turns them into blank discs which seem to have no eyes behind them. And this is not altogether fanciful. A speaker who uses that kind of phraseology has gone some distance toward turning himself into a machine. The appropriate noises are coming out of his larynx, but his brain is not involved, as it would be if he were choosing his words for himself. If the speech he is making is one that he is accustomed to make over and over again, he may be almost unconscious of what he is saying, as one is when one utters the responses in church. And this reduced state of consciousness, if not indispensable, is at any rate favourable to political conformity.
In our time, political speech and writing are largely the defence of the indefensible. Things like the continuance of British rule in India, the Russian purges and deportations, the dropping of the atom bombs on Japan, can indeed be defended, but only by arguments which are too brutal for most people to face, and which do not square with the professed aims of the political parties. Thus political language has to consist largely of euphemism, question-begging and sheer cloudy vagueness. Defenceless villages are bombarded from the air, the inhabitants driven out into the countryside, the cattle machine-gunned, the huts set on fire with incendiary bullets: this is called pacification. Millions of peasants are robbed of their farms and sent trudging along the roads with no more than they can carry: this is called transfer of population or rectification of frontiers. People are imprisoned for years without trial, or shot in the back of the neck or sent to die of scurvy in Arctic lumber camps: this is called elimination of unreliable elements. Such phraseology is needed if one wants to name things without calling up mental pictures of them. Consider for instance some comfortable English professor defending Russian totalitarianism. He cannot say outright, ‘I believe in killing off your opponents when you can get good results by doing so’. Probably, therefore, he will say something like this:
The inflated style itself is a kind of euphemism. A mass of Latin words falls upon the facts like soft snow, blurring the outline and covering up all the details. The great enemy of clear language is insincerity. When there is a gap between one's real and one's declared aims, one turns as it were instinctively to long words and exhausted idioms, like a cuttlefish spurting out ink. In our age there is no such thing as ‘keeping out of politics’. All issues are political issues, and politics itself is a mass of lies, evasions, folly, hatred, and schizophrenia. When the general atmosphere is bad, language must suffer. I should expect to find — this is a guess which I have not sufficient knowledge to verify — that the German, Russian and Italian languages have all deteriorated in the last ten or fifteen years, as a result of dictatorship.
‘While freely conceding that the Soviet regime exhibits certain features which the humanitarian may be inclined to deplore, we must, I think, agree that a certain curtailment of the right to political opposition is an unavoidable concomitant of transitional periods, and that the rigors which the Russian people have been called upon to undergo have been amply justified in the sphere of concrete achievement.’
But if thought corrupts language, language can also corrupt thought. A bad usage can spread by tradition and imitation even among people who should and do know better. The debased language that I have been discussing is in some ways very convenient. Phrases like a not unjustifiable assumption, leaves much to be desired, would serve no good purpose, a consideration which we should do well to bear in mind, are a continuous temptation, a packet of aspirins always at one's elbow. Look back through this essay, and for certain you will find that I have again and again committed the very faults I am protesting against. By this morning's post I have received a pamphlet dealing with conditions in Germany. The author tells me that he ‘felt impelled’ to write it. I open it at random, and here is almost the first sentence I see: ‘[The Allies] have an opportunity not only of achieving a radical transformation of Germany's social and political structure in such a way as to avoid a nationalistic reaction in Germany itself, but at the same time of laying the foundations of a co-operative and unified Europe.’ You see, he ‘feels impelled’ to write — feels, presumably, that he has something new to say — and yet his words, like cavalry horses answering the bugle, group themselves automatically into the familiar dreary pattern. This invasion of one's mind by ready-made phrases (lay the foundations, achieve a radical transformation) can only be prevented if one is constantly on guard against them, and every such phrase anaesthetizes a portion of one's brain.
I said earlier that the decadence of our language is probably curable. Those who deny this would argue, if they produced an argument at all, that language merely reflects existing social conditions, and that we cannot influence its development by any direct tinkering with words and constructions. So far as the general tone or spirit of a language goes, this may be true, but it is not true in detail. Silly words and expressions have often disappeared, not through any evolutionary process but owing to the conscious action of a minority. Two recent examples were explore every avenue and leave no stone unturned, which were killed by the jeers of a few journalists. There is a long list of flyblown metaphors which could similarly be got rid of if enough people would interest themselves in the job; and it should also be possible to laugh the not un- formation out of existence(3), to reduce the amount of Latin and Greek in the average sentence, to drive out foreign phrases and strayed scientific words, and, in general, to make pretentiousness unfashionable. But all these are minor points. The defence of the English language implies more than this, and perhaps it is best to start by saying what it does not imply.
To begin with it has nothing to do with archaism, with the salvaging of obsolete words and turns of speech, or with the setting up of a ‘standard English’ which must never be departed from. On the contrary, it is especially concerned with the scrapping of every word or idiom which has outworn its usefulness. It has nothing to do with correct grammar and syntax, which are of no importance so long as one makes one's meaning clear, or with the avoidance of Americanisms, or with having what is called a ‘good prose style’. On the other hand, it is not concerned with fake simplicity and the attempt to make written English colloquial. Nor does it even imply in every case preferring the Saxon word to the Latin one, though it does imply using the fewest and shortest words that will cover one's meaning. What is above all needed is to let the meaning choose the word, and not the other way around. In prose, the worst thing one can do with words is surrender to them. When you think of a concrete object, you think wordlessly, and then, if you want to describe the thing you have been visualising you probably hunt about until you find the exact words that seem to fit it. When you think of something abstract you are more inclined to use words from the start, and unless you make a conscious effort to prevent it, the existing dialect will come rushing in and do the job for you, at the expense of blurring or even changing your meaning. Probably it is better to put off using words as long as possible and get one's meaning as clear as one can through pictures and sensations. Afterward one can choose — not simply accept — the phrases that will best cover the meaning, and then switch round and decide what impressions one's words are likely to make on another person. This last effort of the mind cuts out all stale or mixed images, all prefabricated phrases, needless repetitions, and humbug and vagueness generally. But one can often be in doubt about the effect of a word or a phrase, and one needs rules that one can rely on when instinct fails. I think the following rules will cover most cases:
- Never use a metaphor, simile, or other figure of speech which you are used to seeing in print.
- Never use a long word where a short one will do.
- If it is possible to cut a word out, always cut it out.
- Never use the passive where you can use the active.
- Never use a foreign phrase, a scientific word, or a jargon word if you can think of an everyday English equivalent.
- Break any of these rules sooner than say anything outright barbarous.
I have not here been considering the literary use of language, but merely language as an instrument for expressing and not for concealing or preventing thought. Stuart Chase and others have come near to claiming that all abstract words are meaningless, and have used this as a pretext for advocating a kind of political quietism. Since you don't know what Fascism is, how can you struggle against Fascism? One need not swallow such absurdities as this, but one ought to recognise that the present political chaos is connected with the decay of language, and that one can probably bring about some improvement by starting at the verbal end. If you simplify your English, you are freed from the worst follies of orthodoxy. You cannot speak any of the necessary dialects, and when you make a stupid remark its stupidity will be obvious, even to yourself. Political language — and with variations this is true of all political parties, from Conservatives to Anarchists — is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind. One cannot change this all in a moment, but one can at least change one's own habits, and from time to time one can even, if one jeers loudly enough, send some worn-out and useless phrase — some jackboot, Achilles’ heel, hotbed, melting pot, acid test, veritable inferno, or other lump of verbal refuse — into the dustbin where it belongs.
—1946
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