The word “clutter” is never far from my mind. It was the subject of the second piece published on this Blog, on the day it was born. That piece links to this November 2007 “Writers Rooms” article in the Guardian. It shows the late Russell Hoban’s working environment. I am surprised to find that this… Continue reading Word of the week: clutter
Which Beatles album covers can you visualize right now? A few of them can be classed as Universal Knowledge for people over a certain age, and they are an occasional source of quiz questions. Here’s an example from a recent edition of “The 100k Drop”: “Which member of the Beatles wears a blue military coat… Continue reading Beatles Album Covers, seeing and observing
Back in the 1970s, when walking to school, I often passed a man who behaved in a way that was unique to pedestrians in this part of West London. He walked purposefully, carried a briefcase in his right hand, and held an open book in his left hand, not quite at arm’s length, just below… Continue reading Walking and reading
As you may have noticed, Kazuo Ishiguro was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature last month. As you probably know, he wrote “Remains of the Day”, which won the Booker Prize in 1989. Back then it was called the Booker Prize, which is how I refer to it throughout this piece, although it’s known as… Continue reading Nobels and Bookers
Back in the 1990s I read many books by Carl Hiaasen, crime novels set in Florida. I enjoyed them enormously, and my recollections of them have merged into an indistinct mix of plotlines, characters and memorable phrases. The memory that comes to mind most often is of a character who always parks in the shade.… Continue reading “Always park in the shade”
In the last two months I have written about serifs, in this piece about “Stig of the Dump” and this piece about readability. Perhaps I should have clarified what a serif is and what it does. Webopedia, here, describes it as a “small decorative line added as embellishment to the basic form of a character”… Continue reading More about serifs
Last month, in this piece about “Stig of the Dump” and typefaces, I mentioned how, many years ago, I used to deliver training courses on desktop publishing applications. I enjoyed teaching people the differences between typefaces, “beyond the basics of why body text is usually set in a serif, rather than sans serif, font”. [If… Continue reading More about typefaces, serifs and readability
