All well and good

In some circles the distinction between the adjective good and the adverb well is not as clear as it used to be; UK readers will be familiar with the sports reporters' jokey cliche "the boy done good".

But last night a TV documentary on the roots of the credit crunch featured an interview with a venture capitalist who has been making investments in run-down urban areas. He explained: “It’s possible to do good and to do well.” A well turned phrase which is a timely reminder, perhaps, of why it’s worth holding the line on English usage.

PS
I recently came across a phrase (in a very old motor cycle magazine) which baffled me. A rider who had been beset by mechanical problems concluded his tale of woe: "Train home; too tired to mote." The only use I can track down for mote as a verb has to do with giving permission. Does anyone out there have any idea of what it might have meant in Edwardian England?

Yes, JD is on LinkedIn

Just a quick one from me today - I wanted to say that I do have a profile on the networking site LinkedIn and if any Engine Room regular wants to add me as a contact, that's fine. Just send me an email at engineroomblog@gmail.com and I'll give you my details.

I'm especially interested in building up a network with fellow subs, copy editors, editors, proofreaders and the like.


(Although my identity obviously isn't a secret, I don't give my full name on this blog or list the publications I work for. That's just to keep some distance between my professional life and my blogging life.)

The credit crunch is over - recession is here

Last week the editor-in-chief made in plain to us subs: our publications should now refer to the 'recession' rather than the 'credit crunch' or even the 'economic downturn' .

Not a surprising call, but it's always good to have guidance.

Incidentally, BBC Breakfast last week used the term 'the long slump', which I thought sounded suitably sinister.

In which JD's boss isn't paying attention

Yesterday:

My boss: How do you spell 'zucchini'?
Me: C-O-U-R-G-E-T-T-E.
My boss: No, zucchini. It's what Americans call courgettes.

Portmanteau into space: balloonatic

Knowing JD's appreciation of portmanteau words I made a note of one I heard coined by the splendidly named Barth Netterfield during a TV documentary about the BLAST project (a clever low-cost international programme involving the use of balloons to take telescopes into space; well worth a look on Google).

Barth, who was the programme's Canadian Principal Investigator, coined a word to describe anyone crazy enough to explore the history of the universe by balloon: balloonatic.

A clever name and a clever idea: after enough setbacks to make the documentary gripping stuff, the technology worked perfectly.

News from the island: 2

The Middle East, the credit crunch... there's no shortage of bad news. Fortunately the news from the Isle of Wight is rather more comforting:

Town councillors have given the green light to demolish Yarmouth's public toilets at Bridge Road and replace them with new ones.

Fire crews put out a small fire in the bedroom of a Ryde flat on Sunday. Two pumps, police and ambulance crews went to the property. Nobody was injured.

Shock! Production staff eat healthy snack!

Working here on the production desk is not a great way to stay slim.

Deadlines mean we sometimes miss, rush or postpone lunches, which encourages us to snack. Our lovely freelancers often bring in cakes and other treats to, erm, keep us sweet. And at Christmas, even the manufacturers in the industry we cover send us goodies (or rather, send the writers goodies and they filter down to us).

Recently I kept a record of all the bad snacks to appear over the course of a working week:

Monday: Wine gums
Tuesday: Doughnuts, liquorice allsorts and Maltesers
Wednesday: Little Guylian chocolates and a giant Cadbury Fruit & Nut chocolate bar
Thursday: Biscuits (I was on a training course)
Friday: Mini Cadbury Dairy Milk chocolates

And they wasn't even a particularly bad week.

So when, through Fuelmyblog, I was sent some suspiciously healthy-sounding 'mixed seed bars with hemp' to review, I decided to share them with some of my production colleagues.

The bars in question were '9 Bar Original' from Wholebake and here's what my workmates thought:

Design editor: "It's rather nice."
Group art & production editor*: "I've had these before, they're lovely."
Digital assistant: "It tastes like a Tracker bar."
Group art and production editor (again): "No it doesn't!"

Back home, my girlfriend jokingly asked whether they would get her stoned (there's a big picture of a hemp leaf on the packet, as you can see from the picture below). She then tried one and declared: "Absolutely delicious - so good that I would happily replace my afternoon snack with it."

So, positive opinions all round. Perhaps next time I'll be sent something shoddy so I can have fun writing a critical review...


Oh - just for the record, the presence of something slightly healthy in the office today didn't stop us also eating some stollen and a packet of Cadbury Mini Rolls.


*Our group art and production editor would like it pointed out that he has his own blog - North downs and beyond, "thoughts and reports of the natural world from north Surrey". Can I have that payrise now please, Steve?

London Lite, Apple, iTunes and headline-writing

The London Lite made an interesting headline choice today. Here's the headline in question and part of the story:

Apple slices 20p off iTunes songs

Apple is introducing a new pricing structure to iTunes, meaning the cost of some tracks will fall by 20p to 59p. From April, a three-tiered system will see songs priced at 59p, 79p and 99p. Currently, all tracks cost 79p.

The London Lite could easily have gone with a negative rather than positive headline - after all, some songs are increasing in price by 20p. It would have been just as accurate, and we all know that bad news sells.

So why didn't it? Perhaps because the headline writer liked the play on words of 'Apple slices', or perhaps because the original press release was also positive (as press releases invariably are). Perhaps, for some reason, the London Lite didn't want to upset Apple. Who knows?

I'll have that stake rare

Another rather sweet quote from Mrs Apus’s favourite TV house buying programme: “All the stakes rest on this property.”