Five Questions Meme
This lot comes from baldanders. As usual, if you would like me to ask you five questions, please say so in the comments. I shall respond with five questions, in the comments, which questions you should copynpaste into an entry in your journal, in which entry you should respond to the questions.
1. I am perplexed by "Editorial Eyrie" and the linked Google map. Explain?
"Editorial Eyrie" is the name that sabotabby and I gave to our place, back before we had a place, when she was living in a small bachelor apartment over a sushi place and I was living in a one-bedroom basement apartment near the railway tracks. She was despondent about some landlord issues, and I proposed combining our availiable housing resources and finding a loft or loft-style apartment and setting up a freelance editorial business (we had both been working at the Comma Mines, where sabotabby still works). I believe I said something like "There will be cats, commas, coffee, chocolate, curry, and other good things some of which will begin with the letter 'c'! It'll be great!"
We found a vast third-storey apartment (top of the low-rise building), though alas not a loft (no dance floor for Zingerella), with a rooftop garden, and room for an office, in Toronto's Annex neighbourhood, nicely downtown. The freelance business didn't quite happen the way we planned-she's still working at the Comma Mines and PublisherDude came looking for me to offer me the perfect job-but we do both do some editorial work at home, and we have a nice collection of editing references.
I don't remember when we started calling it the Editorial Eyrie-certainly in the planning stages, before we found the actual apartment . We were thrilled when we found a place that was indeed higher-up than anyplace else in the immediate vicinity (excepting the church across the street, but nobody lives in the bell tower, we don't think.)
2. What's your favorite rhetorical trope?
By "trope" do you mean "device," or "recurring argument"?
Back when I was studying Cicero, I struggled with the language a fair bit-my syntax was shaky, and I had a tendency to get lost in Cicero's sub-clauses. Tricola often meant that a paragraph or an argument was coming to an end, finally. Also, I could usually recognize them.
I'm also very fond of reductio ad absurdem, because it's amusing, and often easy to shoot down.
3. What dance has surprised you the most?
Okay, that's another interesting question, because "dance" isn't exactly a clear term: There's a particular choreographed entity, like, say Gelosia or a specific Modern dance choreograpy, or a given set dance (say The Clare Lancers), or dance forms, like lindy hop or modern dance.
I went through my adolescence convinced that I was uncoordinated, graceless, and generally useless on the dance floor or in any sport that required coordination. When I was compelled by school rules to join a sports team, I joined the cross-country running team, because it was very unpopular and didn't have tryouts. Anyone who showed up for practice was accepted. Furthermore, all I had to do was run and not fall down too often-I didn't have to jump over anything, catch anything, throw anything, kick or hit anything ... it was the best sport possible for a klutz.
High school dances terrified me. I didn't know what to do with my arms, my legs, my hips, my anything. I went, gamely, and lurked by the door, or helped out, and went home wondering why people thought this was fun.
Learning that I could dance, could follow a choreography and enjoy it (as long as someone told me the steps) was a huge surprise, in and of itself. I guess that started with SCA dance, in first year university. Then I figured out that I liked doing this kind of dancing, and I was good at it.
So, Arbeau's dances were my first dance surprise.
The other dance form that surprised me, and caused me to re-evaluate my self-image was West Coast swing. I don't do much West Coast anymore, but I started it because it was fast, and spinny, and could be really sexy. I knew that I was pretty good at dances that relied on liveliness and bounciness (I'm a fairly lively, bouncy person), but didn't think sultry, sexy, and feline were within my grasp. Turned out I was wrong. It was a lot of fun bringing some slink into my other dance forms-from the fifteenth-century Italian to, eventually, Ragtime tango and blues.
4. What accomplishment in your life are you most proud of?
Gah. I keep hoping I'll acquire more answers to that. I've never really done anything praiseworthy, I don't think. At the same time, I'm pretty happy with who I am. I guess I'm proudest of myself for learning to stop beating myself up for not being the person I thought I was supposed to be, and becoming the person I am.
That's a pretty self-centred thing, isn't it? Wow.
Homework for the next little while: Do something not-self-centred to be proud of. Go out there and save the world, or negotiate a lasting peace in the Middle East, or make written English safe for the singular "they," or get rid of government-funded religious education in Canada or something.
Mind you, I'm also proud of the Medicine Hatters (Dr. M., A., and baby D.). I had the good sense to introduce M. to A., back in university, when I couldn't chase A. because I was married. A. and I would have made a terrible couple, but he and M., almost a decade later, are happily married and have a really cute kid.
5. Prescriptive or descriptive?
I'm a grammarwhore. If my client is a prescriptivist latinate-grammar fetishist, then I'm as tightass a Thistlebottom as ever set red pen to double-spaced manuscript. If my client is a Choamskyite descrivist whole-language hippie freak, then, man, I'll google for usage with the best of them.
When money doesn't enter into it, I straddle the line in a way I think is common to editors with linguistic training or an appreciation for change in language. Copy-editing is, by its very nature, prescriptivist: We apply rules of grammar, syntax, usage, and spelling to text, and someone has to decide what's standard, what's correct.
But I appreciate that language changes, lives, and grows, and I'm fascinated by shifts in usage, neologisms, and language weirding. In my own writing, I tend to cherrypick among the "Classical" rules, employing those that I see as increasing clarity and grace and ignoring those that I see as unnecessary, stuffy, or plain dumb.
Okay, who's next?
1. I am perplexed by "Editorial Eyrie" and the linked Google map. Explain?
"Editorial Eyrie" is the name that sabotabby and I gave to our place, back before we had a place, when she was living in a small bachelor apartment over a sushi place and I was living in a one-bedroom basement apartment near the railway tracks. She was despondent about some landlord issues, and I proposed combining our availiable housing resources and finding a loft or loft-style apartment and setting up a freelance editorial business (we had both been working at the Comma Mines, where sabotabby still works). I believe I said something like "There will be cats, commas, coffee, chocolate, curry, and other good things some of which will begin with the letter 'c'! It'll be great!"
We found a vast third-storey apartment (top of the low-rise building), though alas not a loft (no dance floor for Zingerella), with a rooftop garden, and room for an office, in Toronto's Annex neighbourhood, nicely downtown. The freelance business didn't quite happen the way we planned-she's still working at the Comma Mines and PublisherDude came looking for me to offer me the perfect job-but we do both do some editorial work at home, and we have a nice collection of editing references.
I don't remember when we started calling it the Editorial Eyrie-certainly in the planning stages, before we found the actual apartment . We were thrilled when we found a place that was indeed higher-up than anyplace else in the immediate vicinity (excepting the church across the street, but nobody lives in the bell tower, we don't think.)
2. What's your favorite rhetorical trope?
By "trope" do you mean "device," or "recurring argument"?
Back when I was studying Cicero, I struggled with the language a fair bit-my syntax was shaky, and I had a tendency to get lost in Cicero's sub-clauses. Tricola often meant that a paragraph or an argument was coming to an end, finally. Also, I could usually recognize them.
I'm also very fond of reductio ad absurdem, because it's amusing, and often easy to shoot down.
3. What dance has surprised you the most?
Okay, that's another interesting question, because "dance" isn't exactly a clear term: There's a particular choreographed entity, like, say Gelosia or a specific Modern dance choreograpy, or a given set dance (say The Clare Lancers), or dance forms, like lindy hop or modern dance.
I went through my adolescence convinced that I was uncoordinated, graceless, and generally useless on the dance floor or in any sport that required coordination. When I was compelled by school rules to join a sports team, I joined the cross-country running team, because it was very unpopular and didn't have tryouts. Anyone who showed up for practice was accepted. Furthermore, all I had to do was run and not fall down too often-I didn't have to jump over anything, catch anything, throw anything, kick or hit anything ... it was the best sport possible for a klutz.
High school dances terrified me. I didn't know what to do with my arms, my legs, my hips, my anything. I went, gamely, and lurked by the door, or helped out, and went home wondering why people thought this was fun.
Learning that I could dance, could follow a choreography and enjoy it (as long as someone told me the steps) was a huge surprise, in and of itself. I guess that started with SCA dance, in first year university. Then I figured out that I liked doing this kind of dancing, and I was good at it.
So, Arbeau's dances were my first dance surprise.
The other dance form that surprised me, and caused me to re-evaluate my self-image was West Coast swing. I don't do much West Coast anymore, but I started it because it was fast, and spinny, and could be really sexy. I knew that I was pretty good at dances that relied on liveliness and bounciness (I'm a fairly lively, bouncy person), but didn't think sultry, sexy, and feline were within my grasp. Turned out I was wrong. It was a lot of fun bringing some slink into my other dance forms-from the fifteenth-century Italian to, eventually, Ragtime tango and blues.
4. What accomplishment in your life are you most proud of?
Gah. I keep hoping I'll acquire more answers to that. I've never really done anything praiseworthy, I don't think. At the same time, I'm pretty happy with who I am. I guess I'm proudest of myself for learning to stop beating myself up for not being the person I thought I was supposed to be, and becoming the person I am.
That's a pretty self-centred thing, isn't it? Wow.
Homework for the next little while: Do something not-self-centred to be proud of. Go out there and save the world, or negotiate a lasting peace in the Middle East, or make written English safe for the singular "they," or get rid of government-funded religious education in Canada or something.
Mind you, I'm also proud of the Medicine Hatters (Dr. M., A., and baby D.). I had the good sense to introduce M. to A., back in university, when I couldn't chase A. because I was married. A. and I would have made a terrible couple, but he and M., almost a decade later, are happily married and have a really cute kid.
5. Prescriptive or descriptive?
I'm a grammarwhore. If my client is a prescriptivist latinate-grammar fetishist, then I'm as tightass a Thistlebottom as ever set red pen to double-spaced manuscript. If my client is a Choamskyite descrivist whole-language hippie freak, then, man, I'll google for usage with the best of them.
When money doesn't enter into it, I straddle the line in a way I think is common to editors with linguistic training or an appreciation for change in language. Copy-editing is, by its very nature, prescriptivist: We apply rules of grammar, syntax, usage, and spelling to text, and someone has to decide what's standard, what's correct.
But I appreciate that language changes, lives, and grows, and I'm fascinated by shifts in usage, neologisms, and language weirding. In my own writing, I tend to cherrypick among the "Classical" rules, employing those that I see as increasing clarity and grace and ignoring those that I see as unnecessary, stuffy, or plain dumb.
Okay, who's next?