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“I just chose words carefully”

unsung.aresluna.org

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Re: “I just chose words carefully”

#121

Post by schoen »

jolmg wrote: post #111
schoen wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I remember using WordPerfect in that era and never understanding what that feature was. It seemed implausible to me that it was actually protecting human widows and orphans, but I couldn't imagine what it had to do with text layout!

Kinda cool when you learn the answer to something you were wondering about decades ago.

Absolutely! Unfortunately for me, I probably wondered about this 35 years ago and learned the answer 15 years ago. Otherwise, I could be one of today's lucky 10,000 in the xkcd 1053 sense.

Re: “I just chose words carefully”

#122

Post by bluefirebrand »

thinkafter wrote: post #102
sho_hn wrote: post #2

There's a similar anecdote Gillian Anderson recently revealed during an interview on the X-Files , saying Chris Carter had an OCD-like habit to write dialog to conform to certain text layout preferences (no widows[1]) in the script, which made for the show's distinctive style of dialog cadence. 1 = https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Widows_and_orphans

Meanwhile Xfiles has a montage on YouTube of all the times the boom mic crept into the shot. So I can’t super accept that these are geniuses - it was cheap TV. In hindsight sure, whole cult following etc. but doesn’t mean it is well designed or even thought out.

What does the writing quality, genius or otherwise, have to do with the boom mic though?

Re: “I just chose words carefully”

#123

Post by thaumasiotes »

AgentOrange1234 wrote: post #109

In programming certain word choices are valuable in this way. It's sad that pairs like true/false, good/bad, first/rest, and left/right are unequal length. But there are nice pairs like old/new, head/tail, fast/slow, same/diff, and right/wrong, which can help with create natural vertical alignment throughout a function.

> It's sad that pairs like true/false, good/bad, first/rest, and left/right are unequal length.

You're just matching them wrong. On/off and yes/no may look unequal, but what about yes/off or on/no?

Re: “I just chose words carefully”

#124

Post by thaumasiotes »

jimmydddd wrote: post #80
somat wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or Andrew Jackson approaching the problem from the other end. “It is a damn poor mind indeed which can't think of at least two ways to spell any word.” As a rather, well... "creative" speller I blame Webster for locking things down and ruining it for the rest of us.

I few years ago I saw a TV interview where some gen-z kid confidently stated: "the dictdionary is supposed to reflect how I talk, not the other was around."

That is in fact what the dictionary is supposed to do.

Re: “I just chose words carefully”

#125

Post by thaumasiotes »

saghm wrote: post #65
kibwen wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> learned that "missiles" are not spent "missles" I choose to believe that the author was channeling the spirit of Noah Webster as a deliberate champion of phonetic spelling reform.

I'd argue that "le" is not really phonetic to how people pronounce words ending in that; "missils" would be more phonetic

> I'd argue that "le" is not really phonetic to how people pronounce words ending in that

Sorry? How do you think people pronounce words such as truffle / turtle / tremble / pickle / maple / rubble / etc. etc. etc.?

Re: “I just chose words carefully”

#126

Post by defrost »

bluefirebrand wrote: post #122
thinkafter wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Meanwhile Xfiles has a montage on YouTube of all the times the boom mic crept into the shot. So I can’t super accept that these are geniuses - it was cheap TV. In hindsight sure, whole cult following etc. but doesn’t mean it is well designed or even thought out.

What does the writing quality, genius or otherwise, have to do with the boom mic though?

Bugger all - particularly given the boom mic operator and other framing "gaffs" are (as I recall) all part of the "wide screen" 16:9 later release on BluRay etc that were somewhat rushed out the door.

A number of shows of that era were filmed wide (16:9) and post processed / coloured / reframed and broadcast on TV in a box 4:3 aspect ratio

No visible boom mic operators, etc - careful eyes in the initial post production for TV phase saw to that.

Later wide screen releases were rushed with no real post production budget to address these and other issues - that's on the studios wanting a second grab at money, not the original creative teams.

Similar complaints abound for Buffy the Vampire Slayer and (IIRC) The Wire (?) and their wide screen releases.

Re: “I just chose words carefully”

#127

Post by nullsanity »

AgentOrange1234 wrote: post #109

In programming certain word choices are valuable in this way. It's sad that pairs like true/false, good/bad, first/rest, and left/right are unequal length. But there are nice pairs like old/new, head/tail, fast/slow, same/diff, and right/wrong, which can help with create natural vertical alignment throughout a function.

[dead]

Re: “I just chose words carefully”

#128

Post by Biganon »

wombatpm wrote: post #110
rectang wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Forming every paragraph of dialog into perfect rectangles is way more extreme than just avoiding "widows". The usual term for this is "full justification" and typographically when it's done it's typically through word spacing and letter spacing. Full justification in monospace through word choice (which is what the Ares Luna article is about) is bonkers, but I can't see that happening for TV dialog. I've sometimes he…

Widows are when the final line of a paragraph starts the next page. Orphans are when the first line of a paragraph ends a page.

Funny because "fixing an orphan" is hard in real life (assuming they've lost both their parents, you have to find them a foster home) but easy in typesetting (just add an empty line before), whereas "fixing a widow" is easy in real life (just remarry) but hard in typesetting.

Re: “I just chose words carefully”

#129

Post by Mikhail_Edoshin »

brooke2k wrote: post #55

this is only tangentially related to the article, but I've always found text justification strange. For me paragraphs with ragged edges are easier to read than justified paragraphs, because the irregular ending point helps me keep track of where I am. And justification can lead to some very odd-looking lines. So I've just never quite understood why it's so common in typesetting

Differences are supposed to convey information. E.g. a paragraph's first line is indented to indicate that this is a start of a paragraph. Differences in line width convey no useful information, so the are suppressed. Same goes for overall text height on a page, although this rule is broken more often.

Typesetters are known to be very specific about small details. E. g. tables are typeset with meticulous alignment rules. It may look superfluous, but it is not. The nature of the craft is that it has to be invisible unless you know where to look.

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